The Dominant Economic Model of the 21st Century: Pain and Suffering for — Almost — All

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/dominant-economic-model-21st-century-pain-and-suffering-almost-all



OXFORD, England—The morning after my Feb. 20 debate at the Oxford Union, I walked from my hotel along Oxford’s narrow cobblestone streets, past its storied colleges with resplendent lawns and Gothic stone spires, to meet Avner Offer, an economic historian and Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History.

Offer, the author of “ The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950,” for 25 years has explored the cavernous gap between our economic and social reality and our ruling economic ideology. Neoclassical economics, he says, is a “just-world theory,” one that posits that not only do good people get what they deserve but those who suffer deserve to suffer. He says this model is “a warrant for inflicting pain.” If we continue down a path of mounting scarcities, along with economic stagnation or decline, this neoclassical model is ominous. It could be used to justify repression in an effort to sustain a vision that does not correspond to the real world.

Offer, who has studied the rationing systems set up in countries that took part in World War I, suggests we examine how past societies coped successfully with scarcity. In an age of scarcity it would be imperative to set up new, more egalitarian models of distribution, he says. Clinging to the old neoclassical model could, he argues, erode and perhaps destroy social cohesion and require the state to engage in greater forms of coercion.

“The basic conventions of public discourse are those of the Enlightenment, in which the use of reason [enabled] us to achieve human objectives,” Offer said as we sat amid piles of books in his cluttered office. “Reason should be tempered by reality, by the facts. So underlining this is a notion of science that confronts reality and is revised by reference to reality. This is the model for how we talk. It is the model for the things we assume. But the reality that has emerged around us has not come out of this process. So our basic conventions only serve to justify existing relationships, structures and hierarchies. Plausible arguments are made for principles that are incompatible with each other.”

[malaise]

1. The worst thing about the model is the view of its perpetrators that there is no alternative

This too will pass and it won't be long.

[woo me with science]

2. And. It. Is. Deliberate.

Barack Obama, advocating SS cuts and globalization in 2006: "This is not a bloodless process."

Our politics have been purchased. Republicans and Democrats are in collusion.

They know it causes widespread suffering and pain. They. Don't. Care.

[xchrom]

3. austerity, inequality, too big to fail, etc -- are all choices

made for us by our 'betters'.

[woo me with science]

4. Rulers with the gall to pretend that they are representatives.

This is nothing less than the transformation of representative government to fascism.

[Dragonfli]

8. Deliberate and continuing unabated, even applauded by the so called "left" party in the US

President Obama signs $8.7 billion food stamp cut into law

The food stamp cuts are one component of a massive omnibus bill which also includes billions of dollars in crop insurance and various other programs and subsidies involving American agriculture. Before he signed the legislation, President Obama praised it as an example of bipartisan problem-solving that would help create jobs and move the American economy forward.
“Congress passed a bipartisan Farm Bill that is going to make a big difference in communities across the country,” said the president.
...
In fact, the benefits reduction would eliminate the state-level “Heat and Eat” policies currently employed in 15 states and Washington, D.C. Left-wing opponents of the Farm Bill, including Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., expect the burden of the cuts to fall disproportionately on the elderly and disabled.

“Poor people are getting screwed by this Republican majority [in the House] and Democrats in my opinion aren’t doing enough to push back,” he said. “I wish there had been more of a fight from the White House and others.”

Obama is correct, it is going to make a big difference in communities across America, especially poor communities; his neo-liberal economic philosophy would appear to inform him this is somehow a good thing to be applauded.

[woo me with science]

5. Kick

[jsr]

6. A perverse model where the torturers portray themselves as victims

[woo me with science]

7. Vicious.

[RobertEarl]

9. It is being tested in Venezuela

They have lots of oil and the last leader tried to make sure it' richness shared with everyone. Now that the great Chavez has passed, the hoarders are out of control and are economically hurting the masses.

[woo me with science]

10. kick

[FarCenter]

11. The 20th Century was the anomaly

WW I&II resulted in the destruction of the upper classes of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese Empires. War expenditures had also consumed much of the capital of the British and French Empires. British colonialism followed by the war of independence had dispossessed the Maharajas of India.

So by mid 20th Century an unprecedented degree of equality had been reached globally, except for the United States, which was the big winner, and Latin America, which had been relatively untouched as governments shifted back and forth between dictatorship and oligarchy.

Reversion to the mean would indicate that the 21st Century will be more normal.