WHY ECONOMIC CRISIS ACTION PLANS ARE INADEQUATE

[Morpheal]

WHY ECONOMIC CRISIS ACTION PLANS ARE INADEQUATE

Economic crisis action plans in most nations do not go far enough, nor do they show indications of moving ahead fast enough. There is a reluctance, based on belief in the free enterprise, free market, capitalist system being an adequately self correcting process. This is driven by the false belief in human nature, which is based on the dialectic of good and evil. Largely that dialectic argument is the argument whether people are essentially good or evil by their inherent nature. With the end of the Cold War, the Capitalist, American led, argument won out and came out on top, as a consequence of that conflict being won, not as a result of convincing rational consideration of scientific facts. Since then the tendency has been to believe America in this regard, as in many other matters. We now see how high a price American Cold War victory brings, in purely ideological terms. Unopposed, the often baseless beliefs, of a nation acknowledged as economic “superpower”, become the world’s economic religion. Science can settle the question of good or evil nature. It is neither. The dispute was a Cold War illusion, meant to increase the hatred and conflict between two warring sides. Of course education becomes education for war, not peace. The false ideas are taught, regardless of science, to maintain conflict at its maximum level. That is the monstrous legacy we are seeing today. We see what are unscientific, irrational, often baseless beliefs, held by one side in a military and propaganda oriented conflict, continuing to bring ruin and destruction. In war the ability to question propagandized beliefs is severely impaired if not totally destroyed. In victory of one side against another that ability does not return easily if at all. Not until another opponent wins, or until events prove it incontrovertibly wrong despite the deeply inculcated blind reluctance to accept that fact. War propaganda, ideological foundations for war, are most similar to religion. Reason has little role in it. The truth is always the first casualty. In the current economic crisis the truth, in that regard, is still on the coroner’s table, awaiting autopsy results, but those are being suppressed by those responsible for the cause of death.

(We need not go into how religion and economics have become intertwined and how religious systems typically deal with issues of belief and proof. That is a worthwhile subject to explore, but far too complex. Let us simply say that religiosity in economics has been and remains a mainstay of both capitalist and communist systems as they manifest during the Cold War and as Capitalism continues today. A true science of economics, and the purely rational regulation of economic systems is one of the victims. We might add that the American position in the dialectic with communism, distorted and forced the communist and socialist positions into extremes of opposition to capitalist economics due to the extremism of the American led side. In war that is to be expected. You dehumanize and discredit your enemy, exaggerating the differences, to enable conflict, including killing “them”. True economic dialogue and rational decisions are not served by warfare.)

American led globalization failed to recognize that investment abroad, in hopes of quick big profit, does not provide for and build a good society at home. We are referring to unregulated, free market, free enterprise, globalization where the profit motive proves to be the only governing motive. At least the belief in quicker, larger, profits. Forgetting that the capital to gain those profits, taking on the risk, is no longer invested in the society from where it was generated. It is now invested elsewhere. The portion of the economic pie that was to have benefitted society at home simply isn’t there anymore.

Neither is the business tax base that existed previously. This is a very important point. You then have a massive erosion of traditional tax revenues from various municipal and state coffers and ultimately from the national purse. This growing failure of government revenue generation leads to bankruptcy of governments. They can no longer pick up the shortfall in terms of that portion of the economic pie that needed to go back into benefitting local society. The spiral of deterioration simply becomes worse as budgets are increasingly cut to save taxpayer dollars for both political gain and to avoid losing remaining enterprises.

In a completely free enterprise, free market, system, enterprises that find that their costs, including taxation, are rising, are free to leave and go elsewhere. Either that or simply to close down, refusing to pay. This black mail tends to force governments to have to avoid raising revenues by means that might cause a worsening of the already worsening situation. As the situation progresses the tax base, as to where revenues can be obtained, grows smaller and smaller until the government is in total crisis (essentially bankrupt).

Globalization is a massive bleeding wound. That dissipation calls for rethinking nationalization of some endeavors, and indicates the need for massive and unprecedented emphasis on public sector involvement rather than private "free enterprise". Blind belief in capitalism's self-regulating for the sake of true good will not suffice. While human nature is neither good nor evil we do not live in a society that is so well educated and enlightened that it looks after the common good first before it seeks quick personal profit by any means that any within it can hope to possibly get away with in terms of the limits of the existing law and its enforcement. Entirely free enterprise and a free market capitalism are anarchic by nature, and those within the system tend to make up their own rules as they go, largely unfettered by legislative regulation. If they become more fettered, again, they simply go elsewhere. Another black mail strangle hold on government. Another reason why there has to be a rethinking of basic principles as to how to build a functional economy that provides that portion of the pie that is to benefit society, and provide for its needs as to the common good. Not to mention sufficient work, and income as another big part of that same pie.

Nationalization is likely to be the only significant method of regaining adequate revenues for governments, to replace taxation. That is, to raise adequate revenues, without increasing taxation, and bringing about further deterioration in the taxation base from which revenue is expected. Remember that you cannot truly count on having what you really need in a completely free enterprise, unconstrained, globalization, and if you do then the other side of the coin is that what you pay for it is very often being paid out such that nothing much really returns to provide for that piece of the economic pie that is meant to benefit one’s own society in one’s own nation.

This also leads to some additional constraints on how money moves. It is different as to how money moves when it is in the public rather than in the private sector. This is extremely true in a free enterprise capitalist system where, as we now know, too much money tends to leave without really benefitting society at home. Some of the pie is restored to its much needed purpose. Also, some additional stability of jobs and income is gained that otherwise defied regulation and proved largely impossible to attain. Particularly with globalization and its total failure of moral and ethical consideration as to the needs of government and society at home.

What has stood in the way of reason, of rational answers and rational clarity of vision as to the problems that should have been foreseen and remedied long before they reached crisis, is the continued blind belief in the rightness, trueness, essential goodness, of American led, originated, and war propagandized Capitalism. That made in America system, along with various forms of systemic abuse derived from Cold War obstinacy and extremism, having added to it the false justification that always comes from military victory, remains inadequately questioned. Remember that brute force does not make right. Neither does propaganda. The good of “we the people” is never served by the ideological fallout that comes from war. What we need is a resurgence of open minded, clear thinking, economic science. That is something quite different from blindly relgious belief in the idol of American Capitalism. Capitalism too is neither good nor evil, as such. It is a toolbox full of economic tools. You can use them for good or for evil, as is the case with any tools, but you have to consider them tools, not ends in themselves, only means to other ends, defined by an ethics that is based on reason, rationality, fact, not belief.

Robert Morpheal


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