The KRuddster is playing Santa Claus this year with big handouts to pensioners and low income families before Xmas. Pensioners will get $1400 for singles and $2100 for couples while lower income families will get $1000 per kid.
Archive for the 'economy' Category
I have just presented a short talk on Australian ABC Radio National entitled “Should the financial crisis prompt another look at social ownership?”. Here is the podcast and transcript.
The ownership I am referring to relates to the means of production, the physical assets of businesses. A system where such a form of ownership dominates ought I think be called socialism, although this does require wresting the word back from the right and pseudo left for whom it means government meddling with capitalism. There are two main take home messages from the talk.
The first is that the conditions of advanced capitalism in places like Australia, USA and western Europe are vastly more conducive to the success of socialism than the backward conditions that prevailed in places where it had previously been attempted and failed. Transforming Czarist Russia, Manchu China and agrarian fascist eastern Europe into socialist societies was a big ask.
You cannot avoid being allied with right wingers. It is just a matter of who and when. The people we describe as pseudo-left are in alliance with Pat Buchanan, The Cato Institute and The Independent Institute in opposing the US liberation of Iraq. On that matter we side with Bush and the neo-cons. We have written a lot on the question both here and at our parent site. We see it as a switch in US foreign policy from supporting “stability” in the region to supporting democracy and “draining the swamp” in which all sorts of creepy things fester.
Many pseudos in the US would side with Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter on trade protection. We would ally with Cato and support free trade. Both we and the pseudos would side with The Cato and The Independent Institutes on a range of civil liberties issues and on ending the embargo on Cuba.
But we must ‘fess up. We are doing more than our share of fraternizing and endorsing.
Strange times are becoming interesting.
I don’t think I’ll make any wild predictions about the current financial crisis being the precursor of an economic meltdown. I wouldn’t have a clue. Nor can I provide a rigorous and convincing case for the claim that crises are inevitable under capitalism.
What I can say is that people like the US Treasury Secretary sure look frazzled and there is no consensus among pundits on whether the $700 billion bail out will do the trick.
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