Juan Cole names the 1% as the neoliberal regimes and the people behind them, and he views the Occupy movement as essentially a reaction to economic neoliberalism and policy based on it.
While neoliberals are trying to paint the Occupy movement as anti-capitalist, the reality is that it is against crony capitalism and the economic propaganda that serves it.
Protest Planet: How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism by Juan Cole at TomDispatch.com
What function do derivatives and credit commitments serve to the 99% ?
ReplyDeleteDoes it really help the stock market which supposedly helps companies finance themselves ?
where is the connection to the people ?
or are they just skimming cuts off of other people's bread without no benefit to the 99 % ?
Could we see derivatives as a hidden tax which goes from the 99% directly to the 1% aristocracy ?
That is a reverse spin on taxation - a hidden private proprietary tax that steals from the 99% and gives to the 1% but all under the guise which hides the 1% aristocracy as the recipients.
We are being taxed by the government to pay for this mess supposedly, but we are primarily being taxed by the 1% regardless of which points we are in the economic cycle.
So we can take up a reverse "neoliberal" perspective to this easily - no new taxes, no old taxes, and NO HIDDEN TAXES that benefit the 1% only by way of derivatives, credit markets, and "printing for banks only"
Just like Mike Norman has repeatedly shown for years that we are taxed by austerity more, we are taxed by the speculators because their markets suck money away from the core of the REAL economy ( main street and our neigborhoods ) .
ReplyDeleteIf we can show that this is a form of taxation, then maybe a couple of tea partiers might come along for the MMT ride and abandone neoliberal "i wanna be the 1%" dreaming
Rents are like taxes the difference is they syphon off wealth/money-demand to the wealthy.
ReplyDeleteNot so much a crumby trickle treacley down as a hoovering up.
What we need is a welling up of wealth/money-demand from the bottom/grass roots up, and that means globally as much as locally.
WillORNG :
ReplyDeleteOK you agree it is sort of like an aristocratic "tax" which allows them to access to capital markets via Fed system and Wall Street so they can skim out huge profits
while imperiling everyone else ?