I AM NOT AN ECONOMIST ... BUT I CAN SPELL THE WORD "ECONOMIST"

I’ve been trying to work out how to approach this post – which is mostly the product of half-assed observations from someone who knows dick about economics. And several of you have already made smarter posts about it, so it’s not like I’d be telling you something you don’t know.

But hey, that’s never stopped me before.

Anyway, I was going to skip it. What changed my mind was this piece from Joseph Stiglitz on wealth inequality in the US, which covers a lot of what I was trying to say. And he’s actually an economist. With Nobel Prizes and everything.

Anyway, the gist is this:

( Gibbity gibbity gibbity narf narf narf ... )

But I think Stiglitz has a point. Capitalism works a lot better in the long run when self-interest functions in the interest of society as a whole – put bluntly, you can’t run a profitable, growing business if everyone’s too poor to afford what yr selling. As wealth inequality grows, and the govt becomes less reliable or even responsive to voters in favor of the lobbyists and CEOs who wield far more influence than the schmoes who turn up at town meetings, and as the Free Market becomes more and more irrational at the expense of the lower classes, it’s arguably a matter of when, not if, we reach the point where enough of the population looks at the latest election results and decides it’s got nothing to lose. 

Then you’ll see some shit.

Unless Dancing With The Stars is on. Because some things are just too important to give up. 

Up against the wall,

This is dF