Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Polarizing the economy and rolling back the Enlightenment: the new feudalism

I've talked about the threat of a new feudalism to anyone who'll listen for the last ten years or so. I'm "glad" to see my thoughts echoed here by a former Wall Street economist.
What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model has been a great success from the vantage point of the top of the economic pyramid looking down? The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy.
You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions.
So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage.

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