Electing Canada as President
by Marc Batko
Ours is a brave new world where countries don’t need dollars as in the past. Maybe the unparalleled life-and-death crisis from endless wars and the melting dollar will lead us to accept partnership and exchanging roles as we accepted the total and absolute market and corporate beneficence.
ELECTING CANADA AS PRESIDENT: RADICAL SOLUTION FOR SYSTEM DYSTOPIA
By Marc Batko, Portland, OR mbatko [at] lycos.com
The anti-social offensive, the capital offensive, is based on the worship of profit, the myth of the self-healing market, the myth of beneficent corporations, the myth of nature as a free good, external and sink and the normalization of speculation, making more money out of money as the most noble and top-paid pursuit.
The trickle down myth is a reconfiguration of John Kenneth Galbraith’s horse-sparrow theory. According to the theory, the horses must be fed so the sparrows can live. Higher profits were to lead to greater investments and more jobs. In truth in Germany and the US, profits soar, investments fall and wages stagnate.
Corporations repress weak purchasing power and the weak domestic economy through takeovers, mergers and currency speculation. The state refuses to intrude since campaigns depend on corporate contributions. Universities have lost their critical independent nature since they have been downsized in the age of military Keynesianism and also depend on corporate financing.
Language and community fall into crisis when offense and defense, surplus and deficit, public and private, real and imaginary and ultimate and penultimate are confused. The church, unions, universities and the media are independent greatnesses that have gradually lost their independence.
As Noam Chomsky explains, 90% of US investment is speculative and 10% productive. Investing in education, technology and the infrastructure is crucial, along with repealing the trillion-dollar tax cuts to the super-rich. [more]