How Right-Wing Billionaires and Business Propaganda Got Us into the Economic Mess of the Century

[marmar]

from AlterNet:




Editor's note: AlterNet is proud to present this excerpt from senior writer Joshua Holland's new book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America). Holland's research-rich but entertainingly written book slices and dices the latest talking points, explaining the issues with depth and nuance. The book tells an important story about the American economy that you won't read in the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal. It's one that is vitally important to understand as we grapple with some new economic realities. It's a story about how the corporate Right has obscured the ways in which they've rigged the “free market” so they always come out on top. Ultimately, it goes a long way toward explaining how so few Americans noticed as a new Gilded Age emerged under a haze of lies, half-truths and distortions.

*****

The Great Recession that began in 2008 wiped out $13 trillion in Americans' household wealth —in home values and stocks and bonds—stoking the kind of anger we’ve seen from pissed off progressives and from the Tea Partiers who dominated the news in the summer of 2009.

But although a lot of people threw around some angry rhetoric—and even invoked the specter of armed revolution—the reality is that when the economy nosedived, we basically took it. We didn’t riot; we took the bailouts, tolerated our stagnant wages, and accepted that Washington wasn’t about to give struggling families any real relief.

Yet the meltdown was global in nature, and it’s worth noting that citizens of other wealthy countries weren’t so complacent. As the Telegraph, a British tabloid, reported, “A depression triggered in America is being played out in Europe with increasing violence, and other forms of social unrest are spreading. In Iceland, a government has fallen. Workers have marched in Zaragoza, as Spanish unemployment heads toward 20 percent. There have been riots and bloodshed in Greece, protests in Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary and Bulgaria. The police have suppressed public discontent in Russia.” Another British paper, the Guardian, reported scenes of “Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows and more than a million striking workers” in France. French officials went so far as to delay the release of unemployment data, “apparently for fear of inflaming the protests.” .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/148194/how_right-wing_billionaires_and_business_propaganda_got_us_into_the_economic_mess_of_the_century/

[dkf]

1. Those countries went through government austerity measures

while our benefits got extended.

Why would our people riot?

Yes investment and housing values have dropped but that isnt the fault of the government.

[fasttense]

2. Those countries did not go through austerity.

Not the kind of austerity preached about here in the US.

They were gutting their social security by upping the retirement age from 60 to 62. To obtain full social security payout here in the US you have to be 70 years old.

The average citizen in Europe still gets free tuition to college, free medical benefits.

China even gives out free food to factory workers.

The French rioted when their government tried to increase their work week from 30 to 35 hours.

Germany kept people employed by subsidizing the cost of labor to businesses that kept workers.

And yet they still rioted in the streets and went on strike.

We Americans work harder and longer than most European nations and we seem to be the most docile sheep around.

[dkf]

4. People riot when things get taken away.

It has to do with expectations also. If they take away something you are dependent on that is when people riot.

[FormerDittoHead]

3. Great read for those thinking that things aren't being controlled by a few very rich people...

One point the author doesn't make (in this article, at least) is that in the course of creating all of these propaganda think tanks, THEY WRITE IT OFF THEIR TAXES as if it's some CHARITY.

This is one of the most perverted dimensions of the think tank scheme - they get to lower their taxes while financing political propaganda...