Let markets work, you say, so that capital and labor can rapidly reallocate to create new fields and jobs. Well, we’re three decades into an era of systemic deregulation and financialization. The result? Global recession, lingering structural unemployment, and an accumulation of capital at the top of the economic pyramid.
In this climate, capital has indeed “rapidly reallocated”… into hard-to-tax, hard-to-regulate asset classes like fine art. Small business loans are still crunched and austerity reigns while tens of billions in corporate profits sit in off-shore tax shelters.
From Alex Payne’s unmissable open letter to Marc Andreesen
The next wave on tumblr || Danger: Markets at work
This is not capitalism. Rather, it is deception, avarice and feasting on the Commons by those who can.
Lottery economy
I know something is very wrong when people like Dinesh D’Souza, a supposedly arch conservative and laissez faire fan, is more concerned about market inefficiency and structurally embedded unfairness for labor than economists at the University of California at Berkeley. D’Souza described the current situation, with no end in sight, as the lottery economy.
Due to a variety of factors, not solely political, the incentives required for a functional economy, and society, are vanishing. Specifically, it is no longer possible to work hard, save money, be responsible and thus afford a home, healthcare, support a family etc.
He isn’t complaining about taxes being too high, thus disincentivizing the “job creators” and innovators. He isn’t referring to taxes at all. No, he’s referring to the dismal prospects for most Americans without inherited wealth. He’s saying that it won’t make a difference how hard they work, that without privilege or accidentally blundering into something lucrative, the majority will remain an entrenched underclass.
(via dataanxiety)