We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Is Thomas Piketty Right About the Causes of Inequality?

Click here if you wish to access the original post (with transcript) from Real News featuring an interview with economist Michael Hudson in which he discusses a popular French economist's book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century that is widely circulating among our masters in the One Percent. 
[Interviewer]: So, Michael, this week we're going to be talking about the very popular book by French economist Thomas Piketty. It's a 700-page book that takes on the topic of income inequality. Why do you think so many people are talking about this book? What's in it that has people buzzing?



You might also be interested in Howard Kunstler's take on this book posted on World News Trust in which he writes:
Energy and technology are not substitutable with each other. If you run out of the former, you can’t replace it with the latter (and by “run out” I mean get it at a return of energy investment that makes sense). The techno-narcissist Jeremy Rifkins and Ray Kurzweils among us propound magical something-for-nothing workarounds for our predicament, but they are just blowing smoke up the collective fundament of a credulous ruling plutocracy. 
In fact, we’re faced with an unprecedented contraction of wealth, and a shocking loss of ability to produce new wealth. That‘s the real “game-changer,” not the delusions about shale oil and the robotic “industrial renaissance” and all the related fantasies circulating among a leadership that checked its brains at the Microsoft window.
However, Kunstler's vision of the future is unimaginative and uninspiring--humanity can do better.
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