Steve Kurtz sent this over. I think we either create work or we create war to absorb the energy of the poor and kill them off for a smaller population. It's happened regularly from Kublai Kahn down the second world war II. We rarely make the claim that Hitler's war policy and Jewish policy was really about full employment and national direction. The point is always that he was a monster and not seeking a cold economic goal. We also have the stories about FDR refusing to stop Pearl Harbor built on the same reasoning. Creative Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. Now that religion is impotent before business and science, immorality is free.
REH PS I add this to Sally's Roubini discussion. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000675191 <http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000675191&fid=1725> &fid=1725 News Nouriel Roubini: Social unrest will spread "Recent popular demonstrations, from the Middle East to Israel to the UK, are all driven by the same issues and tensions." 21 August 11 14:12, Globes' correspondent "Recent popular demonstrations, from the Middle East to Israel to the UK, and rising popular anger in China - and soon enough in other advanced economies and emerging markets - are all driven by the same issues and tensions: growing inequality, poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness," says Dr. Nouriel Roubini. "Even the world's middle classes are feeling the squeeze of falling incomes and opportunities." Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University's School of Business, was one of the few economists to predict the 2008 global financial crisis, and he insists that recent social unrest sweeping the world, will strengthen and spread. Roubini says that the current global economic system - capitalism - will remain in a crisis - a crisis economist Karl Marx predicted more than a century ago - until major systemic reforms are implemented. He says that social unrest and demonstrations are all being driven by the same thing, capitalism's most serious crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It stems from globalization, financial intermediation run amok, and a destructive redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital. Roubini's answer is to strike the correct balance by creating work partly through more stimulus whose goal is "productive" infrastructure investment, progressive taxation, debt reduction, "lender of last resort" support from central banks, greater supervision of the financial system, and breaking up banks deemed too big to fail. "That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of laissez-faire and voodoo economics and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Both are broken," he says. Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 21, 2011 C Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 10:57 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION; Ed Weick Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit ChecksRun Out Ed, We are both agreed, I think, that the world economy is passing through a major transition phase. The following item "Is the World facing fundamental changes?" on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14583201 will be of interest. Keith At 14:05 18/08/2011, you wrote: I don't know, Keith. You say "what we have today is a mammoth version of one of the normal sorts of trade cycles that always used to happen throughout history..." I think it's bigger than that. And quite different. It' a transition, much like when the world became transformed from an agricultural base to an industrial one. And we can't really see, as yet, where the transition is taking us. We can see some of the parts. Globalization, the ability to produce goods and services anywhere in the world and move them to market is part of it. The overdependence on credit and leveraging is also part of it. That large numbers of people don't fit in, the young even if they are educated for example, is another part. The growing reliance on a declining natural resource base is yet another. Right now, where the transition will have taken us when it is completed, if it ever is, is not at all clear. You are right in saying that Roubini has no idea of what is actually going on. I don't think anybody does. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 12:56 AM Subject: Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit ChecksRun Out Ed, Nouriel Roubini is good at diagnostics. He goes on eloquently, paragraph after paragraph, in describing what's wrong (pretty well everything, one infers) but then ends up at the end of his article with as lame a mixture of platitudes and remedies as any of the current crop of economists and politicians. In short, he has no idea of what is actually going on -- or he is in complete denial about it. He doesn't realize that what we have today is a mammoth version of one of the normal sorts of trade cycles that always used to happen throughout history in this region or that caused by over- or under-production, or surpluses or deficiencies of resources. They all caused grief to this or that section of the market place and, when foolishness was exposed and debts were purged, their economies revived soon enough. In our case we are not suffering from a shortage or over-production of goods, nor from a shortage or over-production of resources (not yet anyway) but from an over-production of credit. In the past, credit has always acted like oil in a machine -- a necessary but relatively minor part of the whole. Today, private, corporate and public credit and its counterparts (private, corporate and public debt), amounts to a very large part of the whole 'machinery' because governments themselves have been credit providers increasingly all through the past century (by printing money), particularly since crucial decisions in currency foolishness were taken, such as Bretton Woods (1944) and Nixon releasing the dollar from the discipline of gold-backing (1971). To continue the analogy, the real 'mechanical' parts of today's machine (money that is saved and then invested) can hardly operate because there's too much oil (credit and debt) sloshing around. But, essentially, today's impasse is no different from the past. Governmental foolishness must be acknowledged and credit and debt purged from the system. It was partly done in the 2008/9 crisis, but evidently not sufficiently so. There's a lot more to go yet. How long will the present Great Recession last? Even some politicians and economists are talking in terms of ten years. Probably more like a lifetime, unless America and the Eurozone agree to China's proposal to establish a stable world trading currency that can serve as the discipline to prevent more money-printing by governments. Keith At 21:57 17/08/2011, you wrote: Thanks for posting, Sally. For another gloomy piece on the economy, global this time, see what Roubini (Doctor Doom) has to say at: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/roubini41/English Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 4:25 AM Subject: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit ChecksRun Out [] <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/> E-mail This <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/apps/emailthis/head_2.gif> <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&opzn&page=www.nytim es.com/yr/mo/day/business/economy&pos=TopRight-EmailThis&sn2=92c9e17e/c39467 4&sn1=3c2ea8ec/5ea3ad3e&camp=foxsearch2011_emailtools_1629903b_nyt5&ad=tree_ 88x31_NP_may19&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efoxsearchlight%2Ecom%2Fthetreeoflife> [] This page was sent to you by: [email protected] BUSINESS DAY | July 11, 2011 Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/business/economy/as-government-aid-fades- so-may-the-recovery.html?emc=eta1> By MOTOKO RICH About 20 percent of personal income comes from government payments, and as programs are trimmed, reduced consumer spending could slow the recovery. [] <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> [] <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> Copyright 2011 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/> | Privacy Policy <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/privacy.html> _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/ _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/08/
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