Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism talks about how corporations benefit from disasters, getting government funds to address widespread destruction, and then how they use their workers and lobbyists and machines to address the disaster but also to disrupt local social ties, local government power and gain great profit and to gain power which they then use to extract profits both in the short and long terms.
We see something of this today caused by COVID.
As COVID has - and is - causing one of the worst business recessions since the Great Depression, government have spent much money subsidizing businesses.
Then they look at their high debt loads and help businesses even more by privatizing public assets.
Alienating these for all time from public ownership and control and profit-taking.
And governments' ability to respond to COVID or other public disaster has already been weakened due to past privatizations and to governments not saving money during good times but instead spending when times are good, thus the cupboard is bare when the government needs funds to counter disasters and to use their own spending to counter recessions in what is called counter-cyclical spending.
We see this today when city council is debating selling off recreational facilities/services and parks, and provincially where the Kenny government is - or was - discussing selling off parks and has opened up part of the Eastern Slopes to private industrial development by an Australian multinational corporation.
These moves are caused by government using its slender resources to bail out corporations (in hopes of buoying up employment while not taking the steps to employ more by the governments themselves),
then selling off government services to suit short-term needs - although interest rates are at all-time lows so there is no immediate need to pay off debts quickly
and then merely copying the business trends by spending lots during good times and cutting back during bad times.
A wise government could look at the economy and set a target of say 4 percent employment and annual GDP of say $40,000/worker, about 80 percent of our present level.
if unemployment is higher than 4 percent, the government should employ people in education and healthcare front-line services where services are produced to serve people needs and employment per dollar invested is high.
if annual per capita GDP is higher than $40,000, government should slow down its spending and save for bad times.
Slowing our economy in its boom would be good for our environment and make the economy overall more sustainable.
Like that.
It is a bit pie in the sky but to have sustainable economy, low unemployment, quality social services in bad times as well as good - these are the kind of decision that must be made.
Otherwise we have snowballing booms followed by deep recessions,
low unemployment/mass population growth through immigration followed by high unemployment, exodus and wide poverty.
So it calls for a calm hand on the helm of this boat that is called society and government.
Thanks for reading.
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