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    Richard Wolff Explains Socialism and Class

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    When I was a conservative and took a great deal of free market economics courses, there were all sorts of know it all animations that explained how economics was governed by the Invisible Hand. From Milton Freidman to Freakonomics, it usually featured various right wing ideologues who condescendingly explained how capitalism was just the only way and anyone who disagreed was stupid and wanted a dictatorship. (Freidman's famous pencil speech and the various conservative animations about Social Security debt come to mind.)

    This is a really concise illustration of socialism and it effectively explains why things are as they are in the United States today, in much the same style that many of those conservative animations were made. Most Americans know very well that something is wrong and are having trouble comprehending it because the source of the problem is the same source that they think made their lives up until now so comfortable.

    This cartoon illustrates very well what happened in the last few decades and why, even though it may have looked initially like success for capitalism, it ended in the havoc that we have now. The growth of the 80s and 90s was not the result of a success in free market economics but of an inflated debt caused by millions of Americans using credit to get money that they didn't have to achieve the "American dream."

    Capitalism lasted a little longer in the United States than it did elsewhere, for all sorts of reasons, but that's clearly a pyramid that is crumbling fast.

    Comments

    Here is Milton Friedman' s Pencil talk.  Draw your own conclusion.  The whole premise is now very shallow because the free market that turned out to be not so free trade deal market. The corporations took the jobs to China.  I know because I just bought a couple of packs of pencils that were made in China. How healthy is this for the economy?  

     

    I wonder if that video was filmed while he was working as an advisor for Augusto Pinochet.


    I don't know.  It would have been about the same time when he was down there.  


    Good comments, guys.


    Dear God. I hate Milton Friedman!


    You provide an interesting contrast between Wolff and Friedman.

    What is missing from both explanations is the element of personal responsibility. A person has to agree to a debt. A person has to agree to the making of the pencil. In both cases, the presence of an informed public is of critical importance.

    Who is responsible for such knowledge? The people who would take advantage of ignorance or those who could inform themselves? 

    The either/or I propose is broad and probably misses the mark: But no more so than the one's provided by Wolff and Friedman.


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