From Brexit to the Future
Stiglitz speaks. You listen.
Most people initially assumed that the EU would not “cut off its nose to spite its face”: after all, an amicable divorce seems to be in everyone’s interest. But the divorce – as many do – could become messy.
The benefits of trade and economic integration between the UK and EU are mutual, and if the EU took seriously its belief that closer economic integration is better, its leaders would seek to ensure the closest ties possible under the circumstances. But Jean-Claude Juncker, the architect of Luxembourg’s massive corporate tax avoidance schemes and now President of the European Commission, is taking a hard line: “Out means out,” he says.
Ok. The handpicked sockpuppet of the global elite says "Out means out."
That position ignores a lesson seen in both the Brexit vote and America’s Republican Party primary: large portions of the population have not been doing well. The neoliberal agenda of the last four decades may have been good for the top 1%, but not for the rest. I had long predicted that this stagnation would eventually have political consequences. That day is now upon us.
The day of reckoning?
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor. The burden of refugees, no surprise, falls on those least able to bear it.
So what else is new?
Politicians who promised change, moreover, didn’t deliver what was expected. Ordinary citizens knew that the system was unfair, but they came to see it as even more rigged than they had imagined, losing what little trust they had left in establishment politicians’ capacity or will to correct it. That, too, is understandable: the new politicians shared the outlook of those who had promised that globalization would benefit all.
Same old story. The rich get richer and the poor go to jail.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/brexit-future-of-advanced-e...
Comments
Another econogeek!
Sorry, you tweaked my pleasure center with this.
Trying to break through the layers of misinformation and just plain, old, bullshit on this topic is as hard to do as it is vital that it be done.
I thought this video was plain enough to get through, but I'm told there is still too much jargon and inside baseball. You might like it:
If I understand Blyth correctly
his underlying assumption is that the elites need to do better. Not that the elites should disappear as elites to make way for the people.
The entire Brexit thing applies to the US, to our political system, to Hillary's notion of "meritocracy" to the elites who own the democratic party and who own most of everything else--precisely because there is a conflict between the "people" of Britain--whose views are now exposed through their Brexit votes--and the sovereign government of GB, namely the Parliament. This conflict exactly mirrors ours on this side of the Atlantic, where the political elites, allied with the economic elites, rule everyone else, and everyone else is getting to the end of their rope. Blyth sees that the elites have been managing 60% (he says--I think it's more) of "the people" for a long time now. Perhaps since the country was founded. He correctly asserts that the bottom 30% have been "managed" via the most brutal methods of enclosure and policing. But his conclusion is that we can't do away with the elites. The elites have to do a better job. In other words, we have to have an elite class to "manage" us all, keep us propagandized, divided against one another, in prison, and so on. To shut down and possibility of changing the system. So the question that most links the US and the UK at the present is "how much do the elites, the ones in control, have to listen to the voice of the people?" In Hillary's case, it's clear that she doesn't have to listen to "the people" at all--that's the central point of Clintonian "meritocracy," that the ones who $ucceed deserve to hold power, and everyone else deserves only "the opportunity" to succeed, which is mere rhetoric. In the UK vs EU parlaying regarding the Brexit vote the Cameron government is faced with the choice to disregard the referendum. That is, the Pariiament is the sovereign entity, not the people. The Parliament is charged with using its "better judgment" etc. to guide the people onto the "right paths." It's the government that is sovereign, not the people. This is a characteristic of liberal states on both sides of the Atlantic. Witness the sequence of Greek referendum, followed by the Syriza government's ignoring of the referendum results--that played out about a year ago. The EU is currently telling Britain that it will negotiate with the sovereign parliament, not with the referendum results, the people.
Our state was built out of the European Enlightenment. The people are not sovereign in the US. The US government, like the state in Britain and in Greece, is alone sovereign. Seen from this perspective it's no wonder that those who own the government look down upon the voice of the people--the people appear to be trying to usurp government power, which rightly, legally, traditionally, adheres with the elites who inhabit the government's institutions. That's called "representative" democracy--it's not democracy.
By the way, in the state where I live referenda like the one just held in the UK, called "advisory referenda", are not permitted (except in the case of constitutional amendments, I believe).
Here again is a link to a very good BBC radio show that I linked to in an earlier comment. The discussions of "people" versus "government" are very enlightening. A woman from Dublin named Rosalind Fuller has the greatest ideas on state legitimacy and what is coming on line that I've hears so far!
Looks like actual democracy
Looks like actual democracy needs to happen - everywhere - while there are still people surviving to make it happen...
So the bit about government of, by and for the people, with equal rights, treatment and opportunity for all, with powers delegated to government by the people was in reality just verbiage and the people of democracies were supposed to be controlled by their betters-because-richer? A lot of people take the concept seriously, though - and I'll bet it could happen. We certainly won't otherwise survive.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I like it a lot!
A banking system on the verge of collapse is the definition of Crisis Capitalism.
Please save us mighty bankers! Save us from the crisis you created!
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Paul Ryan really said that?
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn