Klein and Greenspan

This is a response to the Democracy Now piece featuring Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) and Alan Greenspan (The Age of Turbulence) September 24, 2007.

Greenspan said that capitalism is the only or best option for the world now that communism/socialism have demonstrably failed. My take on this is that we should not look to ideologies as an institutional framework but rather to mixed economies in which democratic societies select various institutional arrangements, which will vary according to technological dictates, and change them as needed. Capitalist institutions can do some things very well but are not appropriate as models to serve as a criterion of judgment; the same could be said of socialistic institutions.

Greenspan blamed income disparities on the failure of American schools to prepare citizens for information technology work, causing a shortage of skilled workers in the computer field. To me such disparities as these can hardly be called a problem, not to mention the fact that worldwide there is probably not a shortage of such workers. The problem actually is very different from this, involving largely the current practice of corporations to set exorbitant salaries for management.

Greenspan said he had approved the Bush administration's budget deficits on the ground that the economy should preserve deficits so that investors will have the option of buying Treasury bonds. Also that Social Security as presently arranged will be the problem and should be privatized and/or cut. As for the deficits, my memory is that he continued to support the Bush budget deficits long after they became much larger than necessary and desirable. As for Social Security, the best estimates at this time, as well as when Greenspan made these comments during his tenure as Fed chairman, is that the Social Security so-called trust fund will be sufficient to fund retirees' pensions until 2042 or 2052, or even until about 2075.

Greenspan's data on how successful the current global system has been in lessening world poverty need another look.

That's all for now. If other comments occur to me I'll be back with more.

I'M BACK

Hello! I'm back, after a long absence following a Google update followed by a Google refusal to let me back on. I finally got help from my daughter.

I'm not sure just where I'm going right now with my blogs, maybe mostly books I'm reading and what I'm thinking. Latest book to mention, just from reviews and interviews, is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Can't wait to get it.

As to where I am in my life, I'm still happy at Holly Creek, which was definitely the right move for me, loving living independently. This is one of the best times in my life, although I'm sort of embarrassed to say it, inasmuch as having kids takes the top in many ways. The trouble with that was that I was too busy and too exhausted to enjoy it as much as would have been the case otherwise, and should have been the case, darn it. That doesn't seem quite fair. Just today I heard it said that having kids lets you see life all over again through a child's eyes. That sure hit me as true. And wonderful. I'm very happy to have been born female so that I was able to experience that. Men really do miss out in that department, and it shows.

Lets see. What I'm trying to do in my life right now is to read all of my husband Fagg's stuff that is available, both writings and lectures, to get ready to be a discussant on an AFEE (Association for Evolutionary Economics) panel meeting in New Orleans in January. I'm also thinking about a new endeavor, a new framework or paradigm for where we are in this world--which may well take me the rest of my life, and which, of course, I may never get together. But what could be more fun than working on it. That's what I love most about my life: I have the rest of my life to keep on learning. Again: what could be more fun! How lucky I am!

I'M BACK