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In substantial measures
the food crisis plaguing
much of the south
and the financial crisis of the north
have come in routes,
namely the shift towards neo-liberalism since the 1970s.
That brought to an end the post war --
post second world war Bretton Woods system
that was instituted by the United States and Britain right after World War II.
It had two architects,
John Maynard Keynes of Britian
and Harry Dexter White in the United States,
and they anticipated
that its core principles
uh... which included
capital controls and regulated currencies would lead to
relatively balanced economic growth
and would also free governments
to institute
the social democratic programs, welfare state programs, that
had enormous public support around the world
and to a large extent they were vindicated
on both counts.
In fact many economists called
the years that followed until the 1970s
"The Golden Age of Capitalism"
Now that golden age
led not only to
unprecedented and
relatively egalitarian growth
but also the introduction of
welfare state measures.
Keynes and White were perfectly well aware
that free capital movement
uh... and speculation
inhibit these options.
Professional economics literature
points out,
should be obvious, that the free flow of capital
creates what are
sometimes called a virtual senate of
lenders and investors
who carry out a moment-by-moment
referendum on government policies
and if they find that they're irrational,
meaning they help people instead of profits,
then they vote against it
By capital flight,
by attacks on the country, and so on.
In the 1950s
in the United States it was called "The Golden Age of Capitalism".
And there was a certain amount of output. So there was this much
output per capita in the economy.
And then 40 years later there was double that,
almost exactly just coincidentally,
double the amount of output per capita.
So if you think about it you realize that
if in 1995
people work half as long as they work in 1950
right and from 1955
um then the output per person will be the same
as it was in nineteen fifty... in "The Golden Age of Capitalism"
So you sort of ask yourself well why aren't we working one month on and one month off?
Or why aren't we working a three and a half hour a week? After all that technological
innovation has created the condition in which we can do that and
we'd be as well as of as in the golden age of capitalism.
So why don't we do it? And the answer is because markets don't let us.
It's not that
that everybody got together and decided we'd rather work twice as long
as we could. And in fact people work longer than they worked in 1955.
People didn't decide I want to do that.
I mean even the rich lawyers didn't decide I want to do that.
Rather, market competition
compels it. Coerces it. Because if you don't do it you get out competed.
So there's this drive to accumulate. This drive
to work ourselves to death in essence.
Now it's also true that that extra..
well where did the extra product go?
Right? Where did double the output go? Well, it partly goes to military stuff to protect
the system. It partly goes to police stuff to protect the system. It partly
goes to cleaning up the ecological messes that the system produces.
And it partly goes to the rich. And so the normal person is marginally better
off. And in fact from 1970 to the present the normal person doesn't get better off at all.