Junk Economics
“The Godfather, Part III (1990): Vincent Mancini: Don Lucchesi, you are a man of finance and politics. These things I don’t understand. Don Lucchesi: You understand guns? Vincent Mancini: Yes. Don Lucchesi: Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”
― Michael Hudson, Killing the Host
Economics is involved with an understanding of the behaviour of models – and many of these models have no relation to any state of nature that has ever existed on this planet, or any that is likely to exist between now and doomsday. The word that comes to my mind when confronted by these fantasies is fraud.
– F.E. Banks
The above is as good an image of neoliberal economics as you will probably need. How does an economic system that has anything to do with humanity see multi billionaires and starving children as part of the same script. The short answer is probably that most people are to busy in protecting and enhancing the coffers of the rich they have little time for thinking about anything else. Why do we never learn about this at school? Why are we not educated to protect ourselves from propaganda and fraud?
The following paragraphs might help to explain why
“The key is how a parasite takes over a host. It has enzymes that numb the host's nervous system and brain. So when it stings or gets its claws into the host, there's a soporific anesthetic to block it from realizing that it's being taken over. The parasite then sends enzymes into the host's brain to control its behavior.
A parasite cannot take anything from the host unless it takes over the brain. The brain in modern economics is the government, the educational system, and the way that society makes economic policy for how to behave.
In nature the parasite makes the host think that the free rider, the parasite, is it’s baby, part of its body. Its aim is to convince the host to protect the parasite over itself. That's how the financial sector has taken over the economy.” Junk Economics
Poor people care about rich people more than rich people care about them. We are educated to take care of the rich. That is why they are rich and the rest of us are poor or just get by.
Which would you choose
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous – and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.
John Maynard Keynes
“Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim, kindness, or skill of another are called underdeveloped, while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all-encompassing store catalogue are called advanced.” Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality
Think about it this way If you eat dinner at your mums house, how offended would she be if you offered her mone for your meal.
In this instance the mother represents the state and this kind of protective nurturing is how the state should behave towards its citizens. But in reality the state takes the form of the resteraunt owner and demands money for services that have been paid for through sweat and taxes of the workers. Only to return these hard earned monies to the Mancini's and Lucchesi's of the corporate banking world as gifts and incentives.
What might a desirable and viable alternative to our current economic system look like beyond vague ideals and nice sounding words? Participatory economics, sometimes abbreviated to Parecon, is a relatively easy to understand and yet comprehensive model that describes how an economy can be organised as an alternative to capitalism and centrally planned socialism.
Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef on Barefoot Economics, Poverty and Why The U.S. is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation"
"Economists study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty,"
Part 2See: Human Basic Needs