Austerity Kills. And Then Some.
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Otto Dix The Triumph of Death 1934 Yes, austerity really kills real people, and it kills the societies they live in. Let’s try and explain this
[See the full post at: Austerity Kills. And Then Some.]The best metaphor I can think of is: Austerity is like bloodletting in the Middle Ages, only with a lower success rate.
Who should operate the knife/printing press?
I find that the printing press is bleeding me to death.
Yes… but, governments don’t actually create money in our current monetary system. The private banks create money when they make loans. So the “financial warfare and colonisation” is not directly between states.
So, until we have a sovereign money system where governments truly create money (rather than having to borrow it on the financial markets), states can’t actually print money and inflate themselves out of trouble, they can only shift the growing mountain of debt around until it falls on the weakest.
Or have I missed something?
It can. but why try the hard road? A central bank can just say: from tomorrow 7am, our Zwops is worth 20% less against the USD. Done.
The thing is, nobody cares. Nobody who is anybody anyway.. Even the nobody ‘liberals’ who fill ‘liberal’ web sites like Salon, Slate, Hullabaloo,they don’t care. Of course the ‘mainstream’ doesn’t care, and the ‘conservatives’, well goes without saying, they don’t care.
I hate to have to use the ironic quote marks, but how can one not?
Still, a good operational definition of austerity, for states and nations, is the availability of credit, money. Following the story of AE even part way down to it’s logical and stated conclusion the Greek story is a teeny tiny sliver of what is to come for billions of people.
Another version of the same story:
So, all of the smart money is pointing out in each, it’s own vernacular that the beast is now feeding on itself. So, F\/CKING what? What is your point?
Kathy McMahon pointed out many years ago that there is no solution, mitigation maybe, but we ain’t getting out of this whole. McPherson is banging a buck like a fuck for nothing more than banging a buck. Where does that leave us?
Let me offer an alternative. THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS ARE PERSONAL. In my vernacular, be searching like a mad dog for an escape pod. 90+% dieoff does not spell good odds for anybody, least of all us poor people.
Nobody, I’m guessing, needs any more descriptions, anymore convincing, anymore evidence of the imminent massive entropy event.
What they, the few possible survivors, the genetic survivors, the potential wild genes, need is a road sign that directs them to the wilderness.
FIRE!
still crazy…
With all due respect, if you look at the history of economics austerity was defined as a policy where the government cut spending and lowered taxes so that people would have more disposable income to spend. What you are calling austerity is purely and simply wealth transfer from the plebs to the banks. Similarly when government work together with corporations for their mutual self benefit, it’s not capitalism or crony capitalism, it’s fascism. Things would be helped immensely if you writers would call a spade a spade!
*All* economic policies are delusional. No point adding qualifiers like “European” or any other. The inherent incentives fatally flaw the system (which is also why the chances of a successful “PERSONAL” solution are slim, toktomi).
@SteveB I don’t totally agree. For me the goal is the free market (i.e. where 1. people and groups freely exchange goods and services for the mutual self benefit; 2. People and groups assume responsibility for the goods and services they sell on the market instead of it being “insured” by the public) and direct democracy (where each individual has the ability to decide how their money is used through either the election of officials or via binding referendums as in Switzerland). Economic policies that promote this benefit everyone.
@thurstjo63 Except that such policies have never existed at enough levels of the economic ‘sphere’ of the time (city-state, nation, region, and now globe) to make such a dream come true, and there’s no reason to believe that the incentives that have always enabled barriers to such policies will go away in the future via wishful thinking or any other mechanism short of mass choice to disable them.
Virtually everyone doesn’t “totally agree”. That’s because we’ve all been more than adequately indoctrinated into the system (or game, if you prefer) to the point of being incapable of seeing it for what it is at its root. It’s a belief system, and if one believes, one invariably denies/rejects/ignores/dismisses/ridicules/demonizes non-belief or anything that looks like it. The ‘reasonable’ stance is one like yours, inherent flaws overlooked and unrealistic (because they overlook the inherent flaws) outcomes presented as certainty.
@thurstjo63 You mean it wasn’t true in isolated cases for a decade (in the second example)? It’s unclear from the first piece how long Moresnet/Amikejo lasted. A century? I gather you’d conclude that the sun doesn’t set because it was in the sky yesterday. :-/
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