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The new Progressive Economics

- Severing the link between big money & politics
Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File
Dickson C. Igwe

Neo Liberalism is the idea that markets are self-correcting. For forty years the belief that free markets allocate resources efficiently ruled.

Jack the tycoon was king, and whatever was good for Jack was good tor Tom the Consumer and the Average Guy. This was termed market fundamentalism.

Another term was Trickle Down.

Production was a top down affair. The rich and wealthy ruled, and what was good for the families at the top – the .001% that owned the means of global production, was good for everyone else.

Market fundamentalism drove politics. Free Market Supremacy offered Margaret H. Thatcher and Ronald W. Reagan a vision and strategy to rule the world.

Privatisation and liberalisation was the road to El Dorado.

The role of Central banks was inflation control. As long as inflation was under control the economy could be left alone to decide how resources were to be allocated.

There was a problem with the rule of the market, however.

Political and economic power became concentrated at the top of the pyramid.

Jack the billionaire investment banker and tycoon became best friends with [Gaius] Julius Caesar the politician. Soon both engaged in a symbiotic relationship that became unhealthy.

What was good for Jack became the task of Caesar to ensure.

Political party politics was driven by Jack’s billions.

Soon enough, the .001% controlled government policy to the detriment of the 90%.

This ultimately generated public rage.

Economists believed that this rage would drive a return to communist and socialist type politics.

Paradoxically, wealth and power inequality went the other direction.

The rise of a new fascism termed populism saw the entrance into democratic politics of wannabe dictators and populist megalomaniacs such as Donald J. Trump and Nigel P. Farage in the west.

Populism saw the rise of a toxic street politics and the resurgence of Racism and Nazism.

The return to the pre Second World War World threatened to reverse the Post World War political order that generated peace and prosperity in the west for nearly 80 years.

Joseph E. Stiglitz et al, as a result of the preceding, believe a healthy separation from the political infrastructure by corporations must be legislated to allow for a more equitable politics.

This separation is a pillar of the new proposed Progressive Capitalism.

Governments must be able to operate without the overwhelming influence of big business. 

To be continued.

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