On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:46:59 -0700 michael perelman
<michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> writes:
>
> Inducing the Madness of Crowds
> After losing a fortune speculating in the South Sea Bubble, Isaac
> Newton
> reportedly said that he could calculate the motions of heavenly
> bodies,
> but not those of the madness of crowds.
> Today, millionaires and billionaires are pretty much united in the
> proposition that even kind of social provision must wither in order
> that
> the state can afford to clean up the mess that the wealthy have
> created.
> In addition, raising their taxes is not only unfair, but
> destructive
> of health of the economy. Yves Smith's opinion piece in the Times,
>>
> More at
>
>
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/inducing-the-madness-of-c
rowds/
>
>
The Polish Marxist economist Michal Kalecki in his 1943 article, "Political Aspects of Full Employment," (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kalecki220510.html) long ago made the point that rentiers and capitalists would tend to be resistant to the use of Keynesian-style fiscal and monetary stimulus policies to reduce unemployment. In the case of the rentiers, such opposition would stem from the fact that the resulting dropping of interest rates from such policies would directly reduce their incomes. In the case of capitalists, the reasons were a bit more complex. Very often such policies, in Kalecki's view, would boost business profits, but they would also also make the working class more truculent, since they would now become less fearful of becoming unemployed. Kalecki believed that generally speaking capitalists were more fearful of the loss of political power and social status to the working class than they were of the loss of profits. Given the fact that since the 1970s, we have seen a radical reassertion of the power of rentiers, and given the loss of power of trade unions and industrial capital, the fact that most governments in the industrial nations have been responding to the current economic crisis with austerity policies should come as no surprise.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA
> 95929
>
> 530 898 5321
> fax 530 898 5901
> http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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