Requiem for a Dream – Noam Chomsky

Requiem for a dream Noam Chomsky

==========

Requiem for a dream – Noam Chomsky

In a democracy public opinion is going to have some influence on policy and then the government carries out actions determined by the population, that’s what democracy means.

Privileged and wealthy sectors have never liked democracy because:

Democracy puts power into the hands of general population and takes it away from them.

It’s a kind of concentration of wealth and power.

The 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power:

1 Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power. Particularly costs of elections which skyrockets political parties into the pocket of major corporations. This political power quickly translates in legislation and increases concentration of wealth.

We have that kind of vicious cycle in progress; it was described by Adam Smith in 1776 in his book THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, he says in England the principal architects of policy are the people who own the society, merchants and manufacturers. They make sure their own interests are very well cared for however the impacts of people are.

Nowadays it’s financial institutions and multinational corporations the people who Adam Smith called “masters of mankind” with the principle of all for them and nothing for the people.

Principle 1, James Madison, one of the fathers of USA told the power has to be in hands of the wealthy, because wealthy elders more responsibly settlement and therefore the structure of the formal constitutional system place the most power in hands of the senate, remember the senate was not elected in those days, it was elected from the wealthy.

Madison said the major concern of the society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. Everyone has a vote freely, He said the majority of the poor can get together and organize to take away the property of the rich, he said that would be unjust, so therefore the constitutional system has to be set up to prevent democracy.

Aristoteles wrote the first book about politics, he said democracy is the best of all the systems, for the same problem he proposed a different solution what’s called a wealthy state trying to reduce inequality, so same problem opposite solution, one is reduce inequality the other is reduce democracy.

1960’s was a period of a good democratization, people made activism and fought for their rights

Principle 2, shape ideology, establishment backlash started in the 70’s, the Powell memorandum http://www.mientrastanto.org/boletin-107/documentos/el-memorando-confidencial-de-lewis-f-powell-1971-o-del-acta-de-nacimiento-del he said business is losing control against the society and something has to be done to change this.

Principle 3, But the major backlash was a redesign of the economy, since the 1960’s there has been a concertize effort of the masters of mankind to shift the economy in two crucial aspects one, to increase the role of the financial institutions; banks, investment firms, insurance companies… by 2007 they had 40% of corporate profits far beyond anything of the past.

Back in the 1950’s USA economy was based on production; USA was the most manufactured centre of the world, financial institutions used to be a very small part of the economy, 28% manufacturing VS 11% finance, and their task was to distribute unused assets like bank savings to productive activity. Regulatory system was established banks were regulated commercial investment banks were separated, there wasn’t any financial crisis in the period of regulation, by the 1970’s that changed.

Deregulations and in 2010 manufacturing represented 11% and finance 21%. The business of the country is not production. The prior business in USA today is business. A CEO of a major corporate back in the 50’s and the 60’s was an engineer nowadays they come from business schools. By the 1970’s a company like General Electric could make more profit playing games with money than you could by producing in the US. Nowadays is a financial institution. They move money all around the world and is very unclear that they are doing anything productive for the economy.

There is one phenomenon called Financialization of the economy going alone with that is the offshoring production, the trade system was reconstructed with a very explicit design of putting working people in competition with one another all over the world, it was reflected in a reduction of the income of the people worldwide. Meanwhile highly paid professionals are high protected.

Financialization and offshoring are part of what lead of concentration of wealth and power.

Anti-American, Marxists are some of the terms that we use for…

Principle 4, Shift the Burden, the American dream was partly symbolic but partly real, so in the 1950’s and 60’s there was the biggest growth period in the American economy history, The golden age, there was pretty equalitarian growth, there were some wealth ware state measures which improved life of most of the population, it was for example possible for a black worker to get a decent car, to his children go to school, etc. When the USA was primarily a manufacturing centre it had to be concerned with t’s own consumers, Ford raised salaries of his workers to be able to buy cars, when you are moving into a international plutonomy(small percentage of the world’s population that’s gathering increasing wealth), what happens to American consumers is that most of the products are going to be consumed anywhere, based on maximum profit benefits based on financial manipulations, high salaries, high bonus, produce for the wealthy class.

The rest is called precariat workers, during the wealthy period (golden age), taxes for rich people were higher,

There is a pretext which is lower taxes for the rich people increases investment and create new jobs, but there isn’t any evidence for that, if you want to increase the investment give money to the working and poor people, that stimulates production.

The major American corporations shift the burden of sustaining the society onto the rest of the population.

Principle 5, attack solidarity, is quite dangerous from the point of view of the masters you are supposed to care about yourself.

Adam Smith based is whole approach to the