It’s a common enough cry currently, we must radically change the economy from what we had before. The big question being, well, umm, why?
What, actually, is it that we would like from the economy?
Well, people generally like getting richer. It is a normal human desire for our children to have it better than we do. So, a world with economic growth, where things are getting better, is one thing we would like.
We would like, on moral grounds, that poverty is abolished. That was happening.
Absolute poverty afflicted some 40 per cent of humanity only 50 years ago; last year, the number slipped under 10 per cent.
We really could see that number becoming, if not zero, at least within a rounding error of it by 2030. We were on the right track.
We can even look at inequality, something that some worry about and others do not — I do not.
Global inequality was falling, and swiftly too. For the poorer countries were growing markedly faster than the richer ones. Meaning that the gap between them must, mathematically, be falling.
Before all this kicked off, we had the bare essentials of what we desired from that international economy: rising standards of living, falling inequality and absolute poverty declining towards extinction.
Why wouldn’t we want that economic system back?
The overwhelming majority of people on the planet would like the old system back as it works for most people, especially those 1.1 billion who have been lifted out of extreme poverty over the last three decades. Unfortunately, there is a sizable minority of people who hate the system that has proven to be so effective and would prefer to replace it with a system that has failed time an time again and has been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions. These people do not give a fig about poverty and most are already rich so are not concerned about their children’s futures.
Thank you DocBud.
Doc Bud calls it.
He leaves out that we need this minority to receive the same fate they plan for us plebs: Death.
What DocBud said- this isn’t about economics or trying to maintain the staus quo, the so-called ‘elites’ are enamoured with an ideology that sees us as a cancer on the face of the Earth and wants to dismantle industrial society- see this Spectator USA article for where we are headed:
https://spectator.us/topic/ready-climate-lockdowns-environment/
BTW, off-topic but has anyone else see this Time article?
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
They’re not even hiding it anymore.
DocBud, true enough of a segment, but I think there are a variety of useful idiots involved here as well as those who just want power. Greens who have fallen for the idea that we’re killing the planet, college students who haven’t been taught how this system actually works and have been miseducated about the one we had, etc.
Even among well off adults who seemed to be rational and informed I run across those who will talk about how things keep getting tougher. Ask a few questions – they live in a house 2-3 times the size of their parents, have nicer, newer, better cars, eat better, take fancier vacations, etc. But things are getting tougher, aren’t they?
It’s an idiotic slogan. The coronavirus is not the Luftwaffe.
Esteban. Things are tougher in those areas where the left hold power. Housing isn’t built so costs are high. It’s probably tougher for a young person to buy a house in these areas today than it was when I did over 30 years ago in an era of double digit mortgage rates. As industry leave these regions it gets tougher to find a job. Crime is increasing in some areas after lull that lasted a generation. On the other hand, where the lunatics are kept at bay, it is better.
“BTW, off-topic but has anyone else see this Time article?”
No, because the article extends off the bottom of the page and there’s no bloody scroll bar!!!!
I’m finding more and more website like this. Ok, if you want to make it impossible for people to read your content, go ahead. Even worse than those morons who make it impossible to telephone them by being incapable of writing their own damn phone number down correctly.