These idiots don't believe in capitalism's inevitable cycles....
Some say the business cycle is unpredictable, as this web article claims,
http://economics.about.com/cs/studentresources/f/business_cycle.htmwhile others say the cycle IS predictable, see Kondratieff and others at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycleThe Bible in Leviticus 25 shows us the 'Year of Jubilee' as being a regularly needed event. Hmmm. Maybe these rightwingers would not want to be challenging the good book, eh ?
""THE FULLEST EXPRESSION of Sabbath logic is the Levitical "Jubilee": a comprehensive remission to take place every "Sabbath's Sabbath," or 49th-50th year (Leviticus 25). The Jubilee (named after the jovel, a ram's horn that sounded to herald the remission) aimed to dismantle structures of social-economic inequality by: releasing each community member from debt (Leviticus 25:35-42); returning encumbered or forfeited land to its original owners (25:13, 25-28); freeing slaves (25:47-55). The rationale for this unilateral restructuring of the community's assets was to remind Israel that the land belongs to God (25:23) and that they are an Exodus people who must never return to a system of slavery (25:42).
The Jubilee was perhaps already prefigured in the "Feast of Weeks" (Shavuot, later the feast of Pentecost), a celebration of the first fruits of the harvest (Exodus 23:16; Leviticus 23:15-25; Deuteronomy 16:9-12):
Feast of Weeks: "From the day after the Sabbath, from the day on which you bring the sheaf of the elevation offering, you shall count off seven weeks....You shall count until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days; then you shall present an offering of new grain to the Lord" (Leviticus 23:15-16).
Jubilee: "You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period...gives forty-nine years....And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants" (Leviticus 25:8, 10).
This suggests that "Sabbath economics" applied at each harvest, not just every other generation.
Lowery acknowledges that the Sabbath vision is diametrically opposed to our modern assumptions about economics. The two main assumptions of classical economics are: 1) scarcity; and 2) unlimited need. These, he writes, "breed resignation to systems of distribution so unequal as to guarantee homelessness and starvation. On the other hand, they create an imperative toward unlimited economic growth." Sabbath economics, however, based on "the principles of abundance and self-restraint, turn this classical economic approach on its head. If you assume that resources are abundant, sufficient for the survival and prosperity of human life, and that human needs and wants are limited, then no one need starve or suffer the elements through lack of housing or clothing." The conclusion we must draw, says Lowery, is that "long-term, systemic hunger, homelessness, and poverty can be viewed only as a failure of human will." "
God Speed the Year of Jubilee!--The biblical vision of Sabbath economics.
by Ched Myers
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj9805&article=980520
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