What this budget, backed by the Lib Dems, is, is a return to, and advocacy for, the idea that we can't afford ever to be a caring country. It is an argument that the welfare state as it was envisaged will always and ever be unaffordable, possible only with a spendthrift government that pays people to do makework to keep the money cycling.posted by kipmanley at 6:25 PM on July 17, 2010 [5 favorites]
It is an argument that social democracy, egalitarianism and what I understand as civilisation (books, education, housing, health) are only truly affordable by the privileged.
We are seeing right-wing explanations of the crisis that explain it in terms of the personal greed of those who borrowed money to buy houses. So they attempt to blame the crisis on the victims. One of our tasks must be to say ‘no, you absolutely cannot do that’ and to try to create a consolidated explanation of this crisis as a class event in which a certain structure of exploitation broke down and is about to be displaced by an even deeper structure of exploitation. It’s very important this alternative explanation of the crisis is discussed and conveyed publicly.posted by Abiezer at 6:36 PM on July 17, 2010
the whiteness, and the lure of whiteness, has tricked these have-nothing-in-their-bank-account white people into believing that they have more than common with the rich white folks on St. Charles Avenue that didn’t lose anything in that flooding than they have in common with the black working class folks who live about 500 yards awaywe dont need to look too far back into the history of Europe to know they've killed each other at different times over land, wages, cake.
Further, once again you realise that the EMU system is designed to ensure that financial matters take priority over everything. The democratically elected government have rendered their nations vulnerable because they bullied their citizenry into entering an economic and monetary system that would always deliver hardship the first time a serious negative aggregate demand shock hit that system.Mitchell is one of the founders of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which is an explanation of how a fiat currency actually works.
Link
As currently designed, the EMU will have a central bank (the ECB) but it will not have any fiscal branch . . . It would be as if each EMU member country were to attempt to operate fiscal policy in a foreign currency; deficit spending will require borrowing in that foreign currency, according to the dictates of private markets . . .That is exactly the situation in which the EU member states find themselves today. Be very clear on this -- there are people who have a clear interest in suffocating the power of the commonwealth (government) and disciplining it to the interests of private investors. That is why they want to make sure that central banks such as the ECB cannot be democratically controlled.
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I half understand what they’re experiencing. I, too, left school in the midst of a devastating recession, when full-time jobs were simply non-existent. Canada, lest we forget, was in a fiscal and employment position as serious in the early 1990s as countries such as Spain face today: Its government debt and deficit levels were comparable and, with the higher interest rates of the time, meant we were spending 35 per cent of all tax revenue on payments to Wall Street bondholders. There seemed to be no future for people like me.
posted by KokuRyu at 6:07 PM on July 17, 2010 [4 favorites]