Even Galbraith, Dean Baker , Krugman and the best bourgeois economists rarely focus on the financial oligarchy as monopoly or concentration of wealth, the issue of inequality as far as I know. They are correctly protesting today that Obama's handling of AIG etc. is stealing from the people, but, as far as I know, they don't have an ongoing focus on the fact that AIG's whole existence is "stealing" from the masses. Keynes didn't either. By focussing on avoiding or abating crises, they sort of "hide the ball" of the secular trend of mass immiseration and poverty, inequality.
Even in the boom part of the business cycle there is mass unemployment and poverty,( and in the US today a mass prison population) the relative surplus population and reserve army of the unemployed _always_exists. There is always super concentration of wealth among the monopolies and their "shareholders" and coupon clippers; and concentration of immiseration in pockets of the working class as in the ghetto or barrio. Galbraith and Krugman don't talk about this much in their columns and articles. This is "sociology" , not "economics". And focus on business cycle crises is also , really, focusing on the ups and downs of profit rates. The way that recessions are ended is to raise the profit rate back up, in the first place. The stock market is a leading indicator on "the economy" because it changers based on whether profits are going up or down. The purpose of Keynesian fiscal or monetary measures, as I understand them, is to raise the profit rate back up, so private production will start up again, not redistribute wealth permanently or achieve permanent, literal full employment (zero unemployment, jobs or income for all). The economics profession's best definition of "full" employment is 4% unemployment. There is also a concept of "normal" unemployment. It assumes permanent mass unemployment. Mass unemployment and mass poverty is a secular trend for them. And of course, if everybody had a job or income, where would the boss get scabs if there were a strike ? True full employment would make strikes absolutely effective. It would undermine the bosses' firing power even of individual workers. That would be direct economic democracy and change from below. For a Constitutional Amendment for a right to a decent job or income... Charles _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
