On Economic Madness
Against the Current
Europeans who think the current crisis is unique forget that between 1845 and 1848, 1.5 to 2 million Irish fled their famine-blackened land (while another million or more starved to death) in large part due to the same kind of economics Europe is currently trying to force on countries like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus. Today, the migrants are from Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, but the policies are the same.
Five books by neoliberal authors extolling glories that never were, the essayist eviscerates a state of mind that flatters a cosmopolitan liberal tolerance that has been more at home with nationalism, imperialism and even racism and a worldview that presupposes a chasm between civilized whites and uncivilized nonwhites. even accusing leftists of enabling racism by such affronts as squashing alleged dissimilar people together on buses, trains and subway cars.
It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch? Today global capitalism is in a period of long-term stagnation following the global financial crisis. The newer protests represent a far broader disenchantment with capitalism than the protests of the 2000s. The building blocks of an alternative economic model are there - sustainable development, de-growth, and de-globalization.
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