Episode 13: Everything Sucks Because No One Knows What They Are Doing

For 50 years, governments have been doing exactly what conservatives wantThe reason the economy and the world are so incredibly messed up, and that people are so angry, and divided and desperate, and that nothing seems to change no matter who gets elected is not because governments haven’t listened to neoclassical rules, it’s because they have.The idea that the problem with the economy is the government’s fault for spending too much ignores the fact that for 50 f*****g years, politicians havebeen doing exactly what businesses, and conservative voters have been asking them to do.Governments have cut taxes.Governments have cut spending.Governments have reduced investments in infrastructure.Governments have eliminated regulations and laws.Governments have privatized and sold off government owned businesses, services.Governments have enacted austerity and laid off government workers.Economic decisions have been handed off to the private sector at the request of the private sector.Most governments did abandon Keynesian economics. Instead of having elected governments run deficits to stimulate the economy, independent central banks were supposed to manage the economy with interest rates instead.The same people who clamour for freedom of expression and decry government overreach have called for, and succeeded, in having Keynesian economics outlawed.Laws punishing politicians who don’t balance budgets have been passed. Constitutional balanced budget amendments have been proposed. In the Maastricht Treaty that created EU, Keynesian economics are outlawed. How libertarian! What freedom!The promise - the explicit promise - of economic propagandists like Milton Friedman - was that this would result in greater freedom and prosperity for all. Instead, we have the worst inequality and greatest concentration of wealth in history.There are housing and cost-of-living crises around the world. The majority people are making the same as they were years or decades ago, and people are everywhere deep, deep in debt.We are not working and investing for growth or to build savings. We are working and investing to finance the continually growing debt that underpins the entire economy.Every single one of these measures has driven greater and greater concentrations of wealth and income, mergers and acquisitions and less competition, and have fuelled an affordability crisis in real estate around the world.Because if we treat the last 50 years as a big economic and political experiment where Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas and some other Chicago Boys all convinced us to try doing it their way, that is what has been happening for the last 50 years.That is why we’re where we all are, right now.Here are some of the linksSNL: Theodoric of York, Medieval Barberhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edIi6hYpUoQ Get full access to Dougald Lamont’s Substack at dougaldlamont.substack.com/subscribe