[p2p-research] It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid! | OurFuture.org

[Paul D. Fernhout]

"It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!"
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009073020/its-economic-paradigm-stupid
"""
   The economy is terrible. There aren't enough jobs. Most of the jobs that 
are still there are not paying enough for people to keep up, and people are 
afraid they could lose them tomorrow. So we all have too much debt. We have 
too little health care. We have too much stress. And in the bigger picture 
we have too little power to do anything about it. ...
   In a June interview on the Lehrer News Hour, Treasury Secretary Geithner 
said that they are doing what they need to do to "get growth back on track."
   Back on track? Does he mean we will fish out the remaining fish? Cut the 
rest of the trees? Drain the rest of the aquifers? Take the tops off the 
rest of the mountains? Does he mean that we will run up the rest of the 
credit cards? Will we cover the rest of the land with even bigger houses and 
subdivisions and strip malls? Will we export all the rest of the jobs? Will 
we hand the rest of the nation's income and wealth over to an elite few?
   I don't think they are going to get things back "on track" by applying 
more of the same "solutions" that got us to where we are today. Will they 
bail out more companies, making them even too bigger to fail? None of the 
fixes will work if the problem is that we have reached the limits of 
sustainability of the economic model we have been following for decades.
   So what can we do to change the system itself?  How do we restructure the 
model - the economic paradigm - in ways that let We, The People enjoy and 
share the benefits of our economy? There are a number of clues that I will 
be writing about in my work with Campaign for America's Future.
   http://www.ourfuture.org/
Maybe we can follow the clues and find answers. ...
   When a company replaces a worker with a machine, the company pockets the 
wages that would have gone to the worker and the worker is discarded. But 
now we are learning that eventually enough workers are discarded that there 
is no one to purchase what those workers replaced by machines were making. 
So the company and the economy lose, too. This just doesn't work. ...
"""

cited here:

"Mike Elk: GE Promotes Manufacturing Jobs in US, Then Ships 'em Overseas"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/ge-promotes-manufacturing_b_241944.html

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/