Category Archives: Economics

“The presence of massive unemployment in Europe (10 to 12 percent in many of the major European countries) entails deprivations that are not well reflected in income distribution statistics. These deprivations are often downpalyed on the grounds that the European system of social security (including unemployment insurance) tends to make up for the loss of income and unemployment. But the unemployment is not merely a deficiency of income that can be made up through transfers by the state…it is also a source of far-reaching debilitating effects on individual freedom, initiative, and skills. Among its manifold effects, unemployment contributes to the “social exclusion” of some groups, and it leads to losses of self-reliance, self-confidence and psychological and physical health. Indeed it is hard to escape a sense of manifold incongruity in contemporary European attempts to move to a more self-help social climate without devising adequate policies for reducing the massive and intolerable levels of unemployment that make such self-help extremely difficult” – very true! Taken from the development guru Amartya Sen in “Development as Freedom” page 21

“I [suspect] we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial services, into activities that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity. I suspect that the immense power of the computer is being harnessed to this ‘paper economy’, not to do the same transactions more economically but to balloon the quantity and variety of financial exchanges…I fear that, as Keynes saw even in his day, the advantages of liquidity and negotiability of financial instruments come at the cost of facilitating nth-degree speculation which is short sighted and inefficient” – James Tobin (1984)

This observation of Tobin was prescient and prophetic considering he wrote it in 1984! Personally I love this picture – it is so tongue-in-cheek. It highlights the absolute absurdity of our cycle of consumerism we are lead to believe is life. Study so you can get a good job, so you can earn a good salary, so you can buy lots of stuff and supposedly be happy. Then work harder to get a raise so you can have kids and send them to good schools, so that they too can earn a good salary and buy lots of stuff. Bleh. How is it that smart people can’t see straight through this? Often it is the smartest people that seem to be the most driven to succeed (as defined by our materialist culture).

I suspect the winds of change, they are a’blowing…