Archive for the ‘Economics’ tag
Buy Nothing Day 2008!!!
Well, November 28th has finally rolled around, which means my favorite international holiday can officially begin (in North America, at least, for you Brits and Aussies, etc., will just have to wait until tomorrow). That’s right, kiddies! Today is ‘Buy Nothing Day’ (insert cheers and applause)!!! Your one chance every year to refuse the perpetuation of crass consumerism, and to promote more ecological and sustainable economics.
Come on, dude! Everybody’s NOT doing it! Even the right Rev. Billy is playing his part with his Union Square Dance Your Debt Away party up in New York City! So get yer little bum out there and start NOT buying things!!!
Buy Nothing Day, Links:
UPDATE:
Clearly these Wal-Mart shoppers in NY state could use a little Buy Nothing Day. Just stunning…
The Empire Has No Clothes
This so-called ‘economic meltdown’ in my own beloved United States is, in my opinion, nothing more than a carefully-crafted misnomer designed to camouflage the much more comprehensive villainy of American capitalism. You can’t ‘meltdown’ a global system that has been gradually tearing away at economic sustainability for years! Everything that we’re experiencing now is the entirely predictable outcome of numerous erosive, bipartisan, neoliberal policy decisions dating back to the 1980s; policy decisions that privileged unregulated money markets and corporate interests over the needs of the state and its people.
Honestly, this was inevitable. We could see it coming from a long way off. Sunset, if you will, has finally fallen on Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’.
For details on we how got here I refer you to the writing of journalist David Sirota, author of The Uprising, who has recently provided us with a summary bibliography of key texts, and in only one sentence. From the Huffington Post, he says:
“As I note, this week we will see Thomas Frank’s wrecking crew using Naomi Klein’s shock doctrine to justify a bigger free lunch than David Cay Johnston ever imagined.”
For the life of me, I simply cannot understand how anyone could continue to espouse, or even attempt to justify, the philosophies of ‘free-market’ neoliberalism. The great, green capitalist machine has not righted itself, and now we’re expected to burn 700 billion US dollars (OMFG!!!) to cushion the fall of those who passionately claimed the market would save us. Ultimately, this massive and unprecedented bailout of the financial sector amounts to a soft landing for the least deserving and most hypocritical among us.
Politically, both the republicans and the democrats have apparently converged to reform the fascist party, an orgy of wealth, exclusivity, and corruption. With rare exception (thank you Mr. Kucinich), there is no dissent, no opposition in Washington. There’s the money, and then there’s us. The US is officially a capitalist wasteland where gains are privatized and losses socialized, and the working poor always, always foot the bill.
If ever the phrase ‘the emperor has no clothes’ was relevant to our national discourse, it would be now. And like many of my countrymen and women, I’m just sick of it. Disgust prods me awake at night, like a wiry, old finger jabbing me in the ribcage. I can’t get that ethereal Dorthea Lange photograph out of my head: a furrowed brow and three kids, the world in black-n-white, to have and to have not.
In all probability it won’t be as bad as my night frights suggest. And I hate that fear can grip me so. But then again, what do I know? I’m not a money-man… I’m just one of the millions who have to pay for it when the money-men fuck up!
Argh!!!
