This Chris Hedges post inspired my listing below, but my own blunt, scruffy and ornery mood soon took over, so don’t blame him…
Neoliberalism’s Grand Achievement: 8 Families now own half of the Planet’s “wealth”
A concise, incomplete history of it’s ascendency:
- Sharing the wealth was invented to deal with uppity, but needed, unionized workers in the 20th century
- A phoney science called “economics” was born and nurtured
- They stumbled onto a flawed idea called “free” trade
- Corporations were soon made into “persons” with rights and the ability to live forever; that’s much longer than real persons live
- Those rights grew and grew as worker’s power shrank
- Human rights, such as clean water, became “commodities” – sold at a positively pornographic price in some places
- Market “freedom” inevitably led to privatization: fewer and richer Rich vs more and poorer Poor
- Entertainment and gadgetry kept the middle class distracted – a worthy crowd control project presented to government/corporate/labour think tanks in the 70’s
- Monopolies were made legal instead of criminal
- Unemployment Insurance was euphemized Employment Insurance in Canada
- Companies were allowed to use their employees’ pension savings, including the workers’ own contributions leaving just a bunch of promised numbers in the safe
- Banks were allowed play with insurance and sell mutual funds
- Crazy shit like derivatives became a way for the banks to get richer – until they didn’t
- Your taxes and mine went to bail out poorly managed banks and their overpaid executives
- Car companies were bailed out even though they broke their pension promises
- Private equity firm(s) gobbled up peoples’ houses at auctions as if they’d planned it.
- “Disaster Capitalism” took control of natural and organized disasters
- Little wealth was created, just redistributed upward
- The good freedoms of the many (association, speech…) were replaced by freedoms of the few (monopoly, price gauging, foreclosure…)
- Human beings are now just another “commodity” to those above eight families.
mightyturk 