adirondacker
adirondacker's JournalKrugman: Worried About Oligarchy? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
"Even those of you who talk about the 1%, you don't really get what's going on. You're living in the past.'
- Jon Queally, staff writer
In an interview with journalist Bill Moyers set to air Friday, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman celebrates both the insights and warnings of French economist Thomas Piketty whose new ground-breaking book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, argues that modern capitalism has put the world "on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy—a society of inherited wealth."
The conclusions that Piketty puts forth in the book, Krugman tells Moyers, are revelatory because they show that even people who are now employing the rhetoric of the "1% versus the 99%" do not fully appreciate the disaster that global wealth inequality is causing.
Says Krugman:
Actually, a lot of what we know about inequality actually comes from him, because he's been an invisible presence behind a lot. So when you talk about the 1 percent, you're actually to a larger extent reflecting his prior work. But what he's really done now is he said, "Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don't really get what's going on. You're living in the past. You're living in the '80s. You think that Gordon Gekko is the future."
And Gordon Gekko is a bad guy, he's a predator. But he's a self-made predator. And right now, what we're really talking about is we're talking about Gordon Gekko's son or daughter. We're talking about inherited wealth playing an ever-growing role. So he's telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth, “patrimonial capitalism.” And he does it with an enormous amount of documentation and it's a revelation. I mean, even for someone like me, it's a revelation."
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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/04/18-8
MUST SEE Video of Moyers interview with Krugman...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024839929#post1
Moyers: Fighting for the Four Freedoms
"If you believe America desperately needs a great surge of democracy in the face of fierce opposition from reactionary and corporate forces, then remembering and reviving the spirit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died 69 years ago this week, is in order.
In January 1941, FDR’s State of the Union address made it clear that a fight was inevitable, a fight to preserve, protect and defend four essential freedoms: freedom from fear and want and freedom of speech and religion.
This week, Bill speaks with historian Harvey J. Kaye, author of the new book, The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great, about how FDR’s speech was a rallying cry to build the kind of progressive society that Roosevelt hoped for but did not live to see at war’s end.
Kaye says the president was able to mobilize Americans who created “the strongest and most prosperous country in human history.” How did they do it? By working toward the Four Freedoms and making America “freer, more equal and more democratic.”
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http://www.commondreams.org/video/2014/04/12
http://vimeo.com/91545834
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/91731674" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/91731674">Fighting for the Four Freedoms</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user9013478">BillMoyers.com</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
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