M2RB: Oingo Boingo
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don't try to make me feel guilty
I'm so tired of hearing you cry
There's nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I'll say it's just fine
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I'm so tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution
Bringin' down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don't try to make me feel guilty
I'm so tired of hearing you cry
There's nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I'll say it's just fine
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I'm so tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution
Bringin' down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!
The whole of the West is falling into the economic black hole of permanent no-growth.
By Janet Daley
Forget about that dead parrot of a question – should we join the eurozone? The
eurozone has officially joined us in a newly emerging international
organisation: we are all now members of the Permanent No-growth Club. And
the United States has just re-elected a president who seems determined to
sign up too. No government in what used to be called “the free world” seems
prepared to take the steps that can stop this inexorable decline. They are
all busily telling their electorates that austerity is for other people
(France), or that the piddling attempts they have made at it will solve the
problem (Britain), or that taxing “the rich” will make it unnecessary for
government to cut back its own spending (America).
So here we all are. Like us, the member nations of the European single currency have embarked on their very own double (or is it triple?) dip recession. This is the future: the long, meandering “zig-zag” recovery to which the politicians and heads of central banks allude is just a euphemism for the end of economic life as we have known it.
Now there are some people for whom this will not sound like bad news. Many on the Left will finally have got the economy of their dreams – or, rather, the one they have always believed in. At last, we will be living with that fixed, unchanging pie which must be divided up “fairly” if social justice is to be achieved. Instead of a dynamic, growing pot of wealth and ever-increasing resources, which can enable larger and larger proportions of the population to become prosperous without taking anything away from any other group, there will indeed be an absolute limit on the amount of capital circulating within the society.
The only decisions to be made will involve how that given, unalterable sum is to be shared out – and those judgments will, of course, have to be made by the state since there will be no dynamic economic force outside of government to enter the equation. Wealth distribution will be the principal – virtually the only – significant function of political life. Is this Left-wing heaven?
Well, not quite. The total absence of economic growth would mean that the
limitations on that distribution would be so severe as to require draconian
legal enforcement: rationing, limits on the amount of currency that can be
taken abroad, import restrictions and the kinds of penalties for economic
crimes (undercutting, or “black market” selling practices) which have been
unknown in the West since the end of the Second World War.
In this dystopian future there would have to be permanent austerity
programmes. This would not only mean cutting government spending, which is
what “austerity” means now, but the real kind: genuine falls in the standard
of living of most working people, caused not just by frozen wages and the
collapse in the value of savings (due to repeated bouts of money-printing),
but also by the shortages of goods that will result from lack of investment
and business expansion, not to mention the absence of cheaper goods from
abroad due to import controls.
And it is not just day-to-day life that would be affected by the absence of
growth in the economy. In the longer term, we can say good-bye to the
technological innovations which have been spurred by competitive
entrepreneurial activity, the medical advances funded by investment which an
expanding economy can afford, and most poignantly perhaps, the social
mobility that is made possible by increasing the reach of prosperity so that
it includes ever-growing numbers of people. In short, almost everything we
have come to understand as progress. Farewell to all that. But this is not
the end of it. When the economy of a country is dead, and its political life
is consumed by artificial mechanisms of forced distribution, its wealth does
not remain static: it actually contracts and diminishes in value. If capital
cannot grow – if there is no possibility of it growing – it becomes
worthless in international exchange. This is what happened to the currencies
of the Eastern bloc: they became phoney constructs with no value outside
their own closed, recycled system.
When Germany was reunified, the Western half, in an act of almost superhuman
political goodwill, arbitrarily declared the currency of the Eastern half to
be equal in value to that of its own hugely successful one. The exercise
nearly bankrupted the country, so great was the disparity between the vital,
expanding Deutschemark and the risibly meaningless Ostmark which, like the
Soviet ruble, had no economic legitimacy in the outside world.
At least then, there was a thriving West that could rescue the peoples of the
East from the endless poverty of economies that were forbidden to grow by
ideological edict. It remains to be seen what the consequences will be of
the whole of the West, America included, falling into the economic black
hole of permanent no-growth. Presumably, it will eventually have to move
towards precisely the social and political structures that the East
employed. As the fixed pot of national wealth loses ever more value, and
resources shrink, the measures to enforce “fair” distribution must become
more totalitarian: there will have to be confiscatory taxation on assets and
property, collectivisation of the production of goods, and directed labour.
Democratic socialism with its “soft redistribution” and exponential growth of
government spending will have paved the way for the hard redistribution of
diminished resources under economic dictatorship. You think this sounds
fanciful? It is just the logical conclusion of what will seem like
enlightened social policy in a zero-growth society where hardship will need
to be minimised by rigorously enforced equality. Then what? The rioting we
see now in Italy and Greece – countries that had to have their democratic
governments surgically removed in order to impose the uniform levels of
poverty that are made necessary by dead economies – will spread throughout
the West, and have to be contained by hard-fisted governments with or
without democratic mandates. Political parties of all complexions talk of
“balanced solutions”, which they think will sound more politically palatable
than drastic cuts in public spending: tax rises on “the better-off” (the
only people in a position to create real wealth) are put on the moral scale
alongside “welfare cuts” on the unproductive.
This is not even a recipe for standing still: tax rises prevent growth and job
creation, as well as reducing tax revenue. It is a formula for permanent
decline in the private sector and endless austerity in the public one. But
reduced government spending accompanied by tax cuts (particularly on
employment – what the Americans call “payroll taxes”) could stimulate the
growth of new wealth and begin a recovery.
Most politicians on the Right
understand this. They have about five minutes left to make the argument for
it.
Capitalism - Oingo Boingo
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with free enterprise
Don't try to make me feel guilty
I'm so tired of hearing you cry
There's nothing wrong with making some profit
If you ask me I'll say it's just fine
There's nothing wrong with wanting to live nice
I'm so tired of hearing you whine
About the revolution
Bringin' down the rich
When was the last time you dug a ditch, baby!
If it ain't one thing
Then it's the other
Any cause that crosses your path
Your heart bleeds for anyone's brother
I've got to tell you you're a pain in the ass
You criticize with plenty of vigor
You rationalize everything that you do
With catchy phrases and heavy quotations
And everybody is crazy but you
You're just a middle class, socialist brat
From a suburban family and you never really had to work
And you tell me that we've got to get back
To the struggling masses (whoever they are)
You talk, talk, talk about suffering and pain
Your mouth is bigger than your entire brain
What the hell do you know about suffering and pain . . .
(Repeat first verse)
(Repeat chorus)
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
There's nothing wrong with Capitalism
1 comment:
RWM...what ...no tune to read by..?
great read...your vision and thoughts are so well put together..
your's should be a daily...'must read'...thank you for sharing...g2m
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