Divide by Zero
The Living Force
We discuss Michael Hudson's book, J is for Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of Deception, with an emphasis on the degradation of economic vocabulary that hides the real state of the economy; language affects peoples' perception of reality; history of economic thought no longer taught; classical political economy focused on society's unearned income or rent; the rentier landlord financial class; fictitious capital; the real reforms of the progressive era; classical political economists expected capitalism to evolve into socialism; classical economic concepts of value, price and rent; productive versus extractive economic sectors; public financing of infrastructure a windfall for the private sector; effects of the tax deductibility of interest; monetary policy and the Federal Reserve; economics is political - politics has always been about who is going to get what; National Income Accounting; fiscal policy and Modern Monetary Theory; the three stages of debt leveraging.
Just listened to this earlier today and it reminds me of what horrors are happening in the USA and the EU, with these bankers that literally run BOTH political parties. After all, if they don't like someone, they can plunge the market to make them look bad, just like the bankers did during medieval times to control the King.
A key point that he mentions is the idea of "RENT". Rent is wealth that comes from just owning something. Banks charge rent to borrow, for example. They don't actually produce anything. However, since the 80s, this "rent" has been counted as growth- despite it being a parasite to people and the government.
Profit, on the other hand is from creating value in goods. Interest/rent exists without actually building anything. Unfortunately, the markets today count interest/rent as a part of profits.
Another interesting point is that SOCIALISM was what made capitalism more efficient. People who don't have to worry about going broke or homeless if they fail have more incentive to innovate. This is in stark contrast to what we have today, the doublespeak of socialism as some sort of thing that makes people lazy and "costs too much". Of course we know who pushed that idea, the group that themselves are lazy and produce nothing, yet want to reap the benefits- the banks/owner class. These are the same psychopathic scumbags that try to convince us that tax breaks will help the economy. It does help the market go up, but as we see to this day- companies still close down factories because they make more money on debt leverage than actual production.
Just listened to this earlier today and it reminds me of what horrors are happening in the USA and the EU, with these bankers that literally run BOTH political parties. After all, if they don't like someone, they can plunge the market to make them look bad, just like the bankers did during medieval times to control the King.
A key point that he mentions is the idea of "RENT". Rent is wealth that comes from just owning something. Banks charge rent to borrow, for example. They don't actually produce anything. However, since the 80s, this "rent" has been counted as growth- despite it being a parasite to people and the government.
Profit, on the other hand is from creating value in goods. Interest/rent exists without actually building anything. Unfortunately, the markets today count interest/rent as a part of profits.
Another interesting point is that SOCIALISM was what made capitalism more efficient. People who don't have to worry about going broke or homeless if they fail have more incentive to innovate. This is in stark contrast to what we have today, the doublespeak of socialism as some sort of thing that makes people lazy and "costs too much". Of course we know who pushed that idea, the group that themselves are lazy and produce nothing, yet want to reap the benefits- the banks/owner class. These are the same psychopathic scumbags that try to convince us that tax breaks will help the economy. It does help the market go up, but as we see to this day- companies still close down factories because they make more money on debt leverage than actual production.
