What are you going to do?
Although neo-liberal economists missed the boat in forecasting the financial collapse, they still control the levers of world economies. This seems crazy, as it will prolong the economic disaster. Printing money and bailing out banks can’t possibly resurrect economies, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.
But it’s not so crazy once you understand what’s been, and is being, done to you.
In the first instance, rent-seekers stole from your wages and salaries. Since the peak of the Kondratieff Wave in 1972 (whether in Australia, the US, or elsewhere), they got into the ear of governments, demanding they wind back property and resource-based revenues .
We can only surmise why governments listened. They either naively believe it’s better to tax productive effort rather than land-speculating parasites, or else realise from whence real power stems, and have yielded to it, instead of representing their constituents. And you don’t want to offend political powerbrokers! Just look at the tens of millions Australian miners were prepared to spend in advertising in order to defeat Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed 40% mining profits rent!
Oh sure, these top few rent-seekers also pay income taxes, but as land-based revenues were reduced, they made such enormous capital gains on their real estate and mineral assets that it dwarfs whatever they’ve paid in taxation. Do you have this privilege also? (I doubt it!)
But now that they’ve driven economies into the ground by taxing doers and rewarding themselves, what do they do? They tell us it’s because we can’t compete with the cheap labour in China and India (not their lower land prices and taxes which, in reality, it is) and get their minions to pump-prime real estate markets with your (i.e. taxpayers’) money, because it would be ever so bad if real estate markets were allowed to correct to where they really ought to be!
And if banks were to collapse because of their abysmal risk management – as they shovelled more and more money into land price bubbles – that would be absolutely terrible for these leeches! The jig, as they say, would be up.
So we’re going through this period of economic crassness where privilege and those politicians in its pocket believe most people are idiots, stupid enough to go along with it. (What ever happened to “the free market”? This is socialism for the super-rich, pure and simple. You’re being done in the eye, folks!)
On the other hand, there are a number of heterodox economists (and one heterodox real estate valuer) who spoke out to say that real estate bubbles, such as this enormous one, must always lead to recession and depression.
Do you find yourself in the former or latter group? (Or neither; still under the influence of a ‘normalcy bias’ which makes you disbelieve what you’re seeing happening around you, perhaps?)
And – if you are alert to what’s happening – do you simply give up, or do you intend to speak up about it?
Some people are doing so:-
Why not think about it – then act? Too many people are still sitting around like stuffed dummies, copping it in the neck!
Cheers,
– BK