Economics

Economics is not something I have read a lot about but there seem to be some basics. I am putting this under the Pat’s World View category b/c I don’t think what I write here rises above the level of opinion.

heather McGee of Demos was interviewing Joseph Stiglitz, the economist and introduced the problem of student debt. She stated that conservatives were pointing to campus building booms as the reason for rising tuition costs. Demos looked into it and found that new construction was responsible for 6% and state-level funding cuts were responsible for 79%. What do conservatives do with this (BTW, the original conservatives knew they were lying through their teeth when they blamed construction, they just assumed Americans would be stupid enough to buy it)? They simply consider the source: Demos is made of Communists and Hate-America-First types and disgruntled minority race-hustlers like McGee, so they just fake everything, just like the so-called climate scientists who talk about global warming.

Ecomomic theory changes over time. However, the notion that the Economy, as a Supreme Being, will regulate or self-regulate is just a way of avoiding responsibility on the part of government. It is government’s job to engage in politics, i.e. the management of the society, the polis. It is up to the government to make sure that passing economic theories are not justifications for destructive behaviors. We don’t allow motorists to drive unsafe cars, they have to be minimally operable, and we don’t allow hucksters to peddle dangerous drugs. But those are Progressive ideas, shouted down by the money-makers who want to advertise snake-oil to take advantage of uninformed and unsuspecting customers. That’s what the housing market became a free-for-all that made billions for individuals and cost millions of Americans their homes and their dreams. The hucksters have total contempt for such people and promote a whole host of campaigns to convince average Americans, victims of their hucksterism, that those victims are stupid and lazy and don’t deserve our concern and they will never fall into those traps b/c they are “real Americans” and we don’t care about the others.
Now that government has turned us over to the hucksters, the question surely arises, what happened to our representatives in government who were supposed to be watching the store? They got bought off, that’s what happened, pure and simple, and I hope they feel the anguish they should. They betrayed the people who sent them to the state legislatures and to Congresss to represent OUR interests by rubber-stamping legislation letting big money off the hook for taxes and shifting the burden of government onto the middle class. They knew they were doing it and had the gall to declaim about big government and high taxes and people were stupid enough to fall for it and keep voting them in. The elites have captured the government everywhere and it will be interesting to see if we work our way out of this. The blue-prints are there but anyone carrying such blue-prints is labeled a socialist jihadi out to destroy America. I’m not hopeful.

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