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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEuthanasia of the Rentier
Keynes explains that the major mistake people make about economics is the idea that capital is scarce, and must be rewarded heavily to encourage investment in job-creating projects. Keynesian theory says that this view is utterly wrong. Keynes says that the amount of capital needed to operate an economy at full employment is limited, and once achieved, the marginal return to capital will drop to the point that it merely covers depreciation, obsolescence, and a small return for risk and for managerial skill and judgment.
Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital.
Savor that thought for a minute.
Chapter 24 begins with the statement that the twin problems of capitalism are its failure to provide for full employment, and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. The hyper-rich conservatives who dominate our political/economic lives regard those as features, not bugs, and have spent their money to make sure that workers and voters dont understand that these are real and fixable problems. Practically all economists have lost any sense that Keynes is right, and instead teach us that we have to have a pool of unemployed to make sure that wage demands dont push up inflation. See, e.g. Mulligan, Casey.
Keynes wrote in 1935.
http://firedoglake.com/2013/02/10/euthanasia-of-the-rentier/
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)People, even people that are interested and try to inform themselves in economics, just don't seem to be able to understand that their personal financial lives have practically nothing in common with macroeconomics and finance.
How many times have you read, "I can only spend what I take in, so why shouldn't the government live by the same rules?"
& R
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)How to get people interested in being educated, or continuing to learn.
Not too many people interested in learning. How anyone can stand having no curiosity and no interest in thinking is beyond me.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Most of the educational research literature says people start curious, interested, wanting to continue...until they go to school. That pretty much ends that for most of them.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)From elementary school on, I went from insatiably curious to dropping out the day it was legally permitted. I spent most of a decade building my first business and concentrating on making money, then I went back to college and rediscovered actual learning and absolutely thrived.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)consequences of the politicization of public education. It's one of the hardest thing I find about supporting teachers and the public education systems, what is being done to them is atrocious, but what it has been is horrific.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Who's a self professed Ayn Rand fan, and is really too smart to be so deluded.
By the way...
Hi fresh!
freshwest
(53,661 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Never! Never do I NOT needs me sum lolkittoons!
freshwest
(53,661 posts)yaakov.eban
(4 posts)While the problem of unemployment can be remedied, you won't find any answers among even the most sound apologists like Keynes. The reality of several hundred years of capitalist experimentation seems to prove that as long as the employer-employee relationship, a separation of people into either repositories of capital or labour power, exists there can be no freedom for workers to benefit from and receive the full value of their efforts. If an economy were to experience full employment then the dominant position presently held by capital over labour would be severely minimized and it is unlikely that this system of 'workplace fascism' would survive for very long. Capitalism can't provide full employment, State Socialism can't provide full employment; only a system of worker self-management can produce full or nearly-full employment.