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It is hard to talk to a true believer like dismal. It is hard for them to separate what they think is happening from what they wish was happening. The major tenets of neoliberalism include the wish that the labor market was a true market where the supply and demand for labor set the wages. But it just has never worked out in practice, people aren't made that way. They like when their wages go up but they hate it when their wages go down. Therefore wages go up easily and don't go down at all.
Half right. It's very hard to push wages down, but when economic times are bad enough they do go down. Witness 2008. However, even if wages ratchet it doesn't change the fact that it does respond as a market. Yes, if wages can't go down you can't shift back along the curve--but you can still drop now-unproductive endeavors and thus lower your consumption of labor.
I am talking about a normally functioning economy, not one in a once in a lifetime depression caused by idiots who believed the impossible, that the financial sector had finally learned to regulate itself even though it never has happened before.
Or am I to assume that you believe that such depressions are suppose to be a regular feature of your ideal economy?
Yes, there is a labor market but it is a constrained market. And the constraint is embedded in human nature, workers don't accept decreases in their wages graciously. And they express their ingraciousness in often nasty ways, like riots, demonstrations, property damage, forming labor unions, staging strikes and electing people like Donald Trump.
But even after raising three generations under this heavy indoctrination they failed and human nature reasserted itself.
But you're trying to go against the basic laws of nature, also.
Ah, yes, the middle school playground taunt, "You do it too!!"
And surprise, there is no explanation, no example provided by you of where I am going against the "basic laws of nature." Am I violating Maxwell's Equations or Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation? I was just talking about human nature, things that we all understand because we are all human beings; love, greed, fear, hate, etc.
I am not the one who is suggesting that we change our current system of the mixed capitalistic economy. The system that has evolved over thousands of years of civilization. The system that is battle tested against human nature and experience. The system that developed the industrial revolution, the technology advancements that have gained us the tremendous economic surplus that we enjoy today.
And more specifically, the American school of economics, the vision of political economics that is enshrined in the purpose and the wording of the US Constitution. The American form of merchantilism that was first proposed by Alexander Hamilton, that a strong central government would combine;
- tariffs to protect American farms, industry and jobs,
- government investment in infrastructure, and later in a common education.
- government support for science, invention and industry with grants and subsidies.
- a strong central bank to discourage speculation and to encourage the more productive uses of credit.
- the use of a government issued fiat currency, i.e., easy money.
All to make sure that the US would become economically self-reliant. All of the above applied at different times with considerable controversy, but all well in place after the civil war. All of the above that made the US the largest and most dynamic economy in the world by 1900.
The American school of economics dominated in the US until it was replaced starting in the 1970's by your economics of free markets, free trade, a true labor market reducing labor to just another commodity, a weak government and the cross of gold. Your economics, the economics of the classical economists, von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Reagan.
You, Reagan, and Milton Friedman are making the same mistake that Marx made. You are proposing an economic system based on conjecture, on an unproven fantasy that is unsupported by history or even theory. Like Marx you are proposing to replace a large part of the regulation of society that government currently does with the regulation by the economic system, to subject large segments of society to the questionable "discipline" of competitive markets, including education, the national defense, health care and jurisprudence.
You deny that there are good reasons that government exists, that there are good reasons that the government regulates the economy. That to define and to regulate the economy is one of the two main reasons that government where created in the first place.
The only differences between Marxism and the neoliberal fantasy is that Marx was wrong thinking that capitalism wouldn't be able to adapt to the changes bought about by the industrial revolution, to provide a portion of the economic surplus generated to the workers, the 99% in today's understanding.
Your fantasy is that the adaptations that capitalism made were a mistake and that the 99% can be changed to accept your vision of an optimized capitalism. That markets can self-regulate and control much of what government does now. That rather than we using capitalism to improve our lives it would be better to let capitalism change us to improve capitalism. And like Marx, you are wrong.
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