Replacing Bad Concepts with better ones II
Kevin Phillips writes in his book "Wealth and Democracy" in chapter 7.1 that there are 12 shared characteristics of "Capitalist Heyday" periods. There is also a thirteenth characteristic, these eras are always followed by crashes.
The twelve:
1. Conservativ politics and ideology, with mostly Republican Presidents, [but even the Democrats dominated by conservatives], but even Democratic Presidents in those eras -- Grover Cleveland, Bill Clinton -- tend to be economic conservative.
2. Skepticism of Government -- from laissez-faire to program cuts and dereglation and emphasis on markets and the private sector.
3. Exaltation of business, entrepeneuralism, and the achievement of free enterprise.
4. Replacement of public interest politics with private interest politics, with high levels of corruption.
5. Aspects of survival of the fittest thinking -- from Social Darwinism to welfare reform and globalization.
6. Labor Unionweakness and/or membership decline
7. Major economic and corporate restructuring -- repeated merger waves and the rise of trusts, holding companies, leveraged buy-outs, spin offs [interlocking directorates] et al.
8. Obstruction, reduction or elimination of taxes, especially on corporations, personal incomes, or inheritance.
9. Pursuit of disinflation -- supportive of creditors -- in response to prior inflation (from the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam era).
10 A two tier economy with stronger prosperity along the coasts and in the great lakes area, and greatest weakness in the commodity producing interior.
11. Concentration of wealth, economic polarization, and rising levels of inequality.
12. Bull markets and rising, increasing percarious levels of speculation, leverage and debt.
This describes the previous era. Which is over. Things have happened exactly as Ravi Batra, Kevin Philips and other dissident economists predicted.
Now each of these either represents the application of certain concepts, or represents the consequences of the application of those concepts.
When somebody is attached to Bad concept they will respond to bad results with recommendations for more of the same. A bad concept is like a poison that everybody believes is a medicine.
Most concepts are medicines when actually used right, but poison when used improperly. They are only "bad concepts" when they are applied wrongly.
Chris
Posted by cholte at September 6, 2008 02:51 PM
Reading this, it occurs to me that neo-liberalism
seeks to repeal dukkha. If we only had a statist ststem of heavily graduated taxation {we do} and welfare, then existence would no longer be dukkha.
One thing, the bottom 50% pay only 3% of federal incomer taxes, down from 4 % in 1999. The top 1% pay almost 40%. The top 1% Pay a Greater Dollar Amount in Income Taxes to the Federal Government than the Bottom 90%
This becomes more or less meaningful if we look at inequity of income distribution, but it shows progressivity.
Democrats ought to look at income disparity.
Raising taxes on those who already pay of the most of the taxes will reduce that disparity. But will it raise the incomes of everyone else?
And if you can't eliminate suffering there's no point in reducing it?!! What absurd lengths some people will twist logic to put forward the neo-con agenda at every turn. If the top 1% payin 40% of the bill bothers you just remember they have at least half the wealth and a ten percent savings is quite a bit of money up in that rarified group who could certainly pay more and hardly miss it. But if there is one thing truly sacred in the U.S. it's the owner class and their inalienable right to exploit workers and keep the profits for themselves.
You can't "repeal Dhukka;" that is a nonsense argument.
You can mitigate it. You can transform human hearts and minds so that they transform miserable hunger into ambition for enlightenment, fear of each other, into fear of being a miserable human being, delusional anger into a sense of justice. Without focusing on the principle of Ichinen Sanzen, which is the heart of Tendai Buddhism and Nichirenism, you'll never get the concept of transforming delusional lands into the pure land of illuminating light. That is the work of Bodhisattvas of the earth.
If the people are wise, the sages pure and wise, and their followers free from impurity, the traditional notion was that the land would be free from impurity too. Of course that is abstract, but in reality we can see that when societies provide freedom and opportunity for ordinary people and don't con them out of their chances at happiness -- everyone does better.
When folks embrace darwinism, elitism, favoritism, and myths; the natural result is disaster.
I must assume by "darwinism" you mean "social darwinism" and not the theory of natural selection for which Darwin is known and which is a pillar of modern biology.