As economic crises, declines and dislocations increasingly hurt or threaten people around the globe, they provoke questions. How are we to understand the forces that produced the 2008 crisis, the crisis itself, with its quick bailouts and stimulus programs, and now the debts, austerity policies and deepening economic inequalities that do not go away? Economies this troubled force people to think and react. Some resign themselves to "hard times" as if they were natural events. Some pursue individual strategies trying to escape the troubles. Some mobilize to fight whoever they blame for it all. Many are drawn to scapegoating, usually encouraged by politicians and parties seeking electoral advantages.…..
When it works, such politics sets one part of the population suffering from capitalist relocation, crisis and austerity policy against another part. This permits big banks, large corporations and the rich, who own and direct them - those with the most responsibility for causing the crisis - to escape paying for it. They escape in part because their wealth and power made sure that they benefited first and most from the government bailouts in 2008 to 2010. They also escape because scapegoat economics enables them and their political friends to shift the burden of paying for the crisis onto certain of its victims while "protecting" other victims from further victimization. Perhaps capitalism inherited scapegoat economics from prior economic systems, but capitalism's crises keep renewing that ugly injustice."Never let a good crisis go to waste." Along with "divide and conquer," "shift the blame," and "nice guys finish last."
Truthout | News Analysis
Scapegoat Economics 2015
Richard D. Wolff | Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City
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