Written by Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the urgent Need for Social Change

photo	notes
real wages for nonsupervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels. Meanwhile, spectacular gains have gone into the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of I percent.
> Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15. > They believe that “undeserving people” who do not " follow the rules" are being moved in front of them by federal government programs they erroneously see as designed to beneft African Americans, immigrants, and others they often regard with contempt. > I once met a house painter in Boston who had turned bitterly against he “evil” government after a Washington bureaucrat who knew nothing about painting organized a meeting of painting contractors to inform them that they could no longer use lead paint - “the only kind that works” as they all knew, but the suit didn’t understand. That destroyed his small business, compelling him to paint houses on his own with substandard stuff forced on him by government elite. > … because for him, the EPA means some ignorant guy who tells him he can’t fish, but does nothing about the chemical plants
> The Democratic Party abandoned any real concern for working people by the 1970s > One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs the corporate sector designs
The immediate reaction of the business world reveals that Big Pharma, Wall Street, the military industry, energy industries, and other such wonderful institutions expecta very bright future.
That might possibly lead to European efforts to defuse the tensions, and perhaps even efforts to move toward something like Mikhail Gorbachev’s vision of an integrated Eurasian security system without military alliances, rejected by the US in favor of NATO expansion, a vision revived recently.by Putin, whether seriously or not, we do not know, since the gesture was dismissed.
Returning to Pax Americana, American decline is real, in state power, while US ownership of the world economy is overwhelming. These changes in the nature of world order, commonly overlooked, are of no slight significance,
> Yes, there is evidence of CIA involvement in a virtual coup that overturned the Whitlam Labor government in Australia in 1975, when it was feared that Whitlam might interfere with Washington’s military and intelligence bases in Australia > At the time, the European communist parties were moving toward independence of action with pluralistic and democratic tendencies Eurocommunism), a development that in fact pleased neither Washington nor Moscow. > If by American-style democracy, we mean a political system with regular elections but no serious challenge to business rule, then US policymakers doubtless yearn to see it established throughout the world
> Through 1948, Secretary of State Marshall and others publicly emphasized that if communists were voted into power, US aid would be terminated. > The CIA reconstituted the Mafia for these purposes, in one of its early operations. The quid pro quo was restoration of the heroin trade. The US government connection to the drug boom continued for many decades.
> The Vatican announced that anyone who voted for the communists in the 1948 election would be denied sacraments, and backed the conservative Christian Democrats > A year later, Pope Pius excommunicated all Italian communists.
Furthermore, US labor history is unusually violent. Hundreds of US workers were being killed by private and state security forces in strike actions, practices unknown in similar countries.
> As a result, US society is, to an unusual extent, business-run, with a highly class-conscious business community > Infant mortality, for example, is higher in the US than in Cuba, Greece, and the EU generally, according to CIA figures.
Another anomalous feature of the US system is the law banning the government from negotiating drug prices, which leads to highly inflated prices in the US compared with other countries.
The stock market boomed right after the election, led by the financial companies that Trump denounced during his campaign, particularly the leading demon of his rhetoric, Goldman Sachs
Second to Flynn in the national security apparatus is Secretary of Defense Gen. James “Mad Dog Mattis, considered a relative moderate. Mad Dog has explained that “it’s fun to shoot some people.' He achieved his fame by leading the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, one of the most vicious crimes of the Iraq invasion. A man who is “just great,” according to the president-elect: “the closest thing we have to Gen. George Patton”.
> Ackerman focuses on one severe flaw in the US system: the dominance of organizations that are not genuine political parties with public participation, but rather elite-run candidate-selection institutions often described, not unrealistically, as the two factions of the single business party that dominates the political system. > most of the population is effectively unrepresented
Investigation has shown, she adds, that a CEO’s investment in changing laws to decrease corporate tax rates yields a vastly greater return than investment in reducing cost of production.
Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers, but those happy days were disappearing under the attack of the great majority
> In a very revealing inquiry, economist Mark Weisbrot reviews the reports of the regular IMF consultations with member governments of the European Union. He discovered “a remarkably consistent and disturbing pattern.") The financial crisis was exploited as an opportunity to lock in the neoliberal reforms: spending cuts in the public sector rather than tax increases, reduced benefits and public services, cuts in health care, undermining of collective bargaining, and in general, moves to create a society “with less bargaining power for labor and lower wages, more inequality and poverty, a smaller government and social safety nets, and measures that reduce growth and employment." > Putin seems to have been genuinely popular throughout his tenure. Crimeans, it appears, support the takeover by Russia.
Even those realistic enough to dismiss this act at least see someone who is standing up to the “foreign devils” who have been “robbing us,” and in particular, the cultural elites that regard them and their values with contempt, just “deplorables”.
public subsidy, private profit
As previously noted, in Europe, anyone can see that basic decisions are made by the unelected Troika, in Brussels, with the northern banks peering over their shoulders.
> In 2006, Palestinians committed a grave crime: they ran the first free election in the Arab world, and made the “wrong” choice, handing power to Hamas. Israel reacted by escalating violence and a brutal siege. > AfD hired a Texas media firm (Harris Media) known for support of right-wing nationalist candidates (Trump, Le Pen, Netanyahu).
Consider perhaps the most-respected and “moderate” member of the ‘Trump team, former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, kicked out because he was too soft-hearted. We now know that ExxonMobil scientists were in the lead in the 1970s in recognizing the dire threat of global warming.
ignoring the fact that while Iran has been adhering to the agreement, the US has been violating it all along by acting to block Iran’s reintegration into the global economy, particularly the global financial system
“In 2013 the top 1 percent of families nationally made 25.3 times as much as the bottom 99 percent.”
A 2015 paper by two prominent economists found that productivity declines in markets with rapidly expanding financial sectors, impacting mostly the sector most critical for long-term growth and better jobs: advanced manufacturing.
> A small financial transaction tax would sharply reduce the rapid trading that is a net loss to the society while benefiting a privileged few, and would also provide a progressive government with revenue for constructive purposes. > Private affluence, public squalor
A few years ago, after the crash, Obama virtually nationalized a large part of the auto industry, then returned it to private ownership.
> apathetic and marginalized parts of the population – “the great majority” – began to try to enter the political arena to pursue their interests. > “moderation in democracy” a return to passivity and obedience
“pluto-populism,” a doctrine that imposes “policies that benefit plutocrats, justified by populist rhetoric.”
In terms of focusing on activities where job creation is strong, let’s consider two important sets of economic sectors. First, spending $1 million on education will generate a total of about twenty-six jobs within the US economy, more than double the eleven jobs that would be created by spending the same $1 million on the US military. Similarly, spending $1 million on investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency will create over sixteen jobs within the US, while spending the same $1 million on our existing fossil fuel infrastructure will generate about 5.3 jobs- i.e., building a green economy in the US generates roughly three times more jobs per dollar than maintaining our fossil fuel dependency. So full employment policies should focus on accelerating economic growth and on changing our priorities for growth. We should expand educational opportunities across the board and build a green economy, while contracting the military and the fossil fuel economy.
> unregulated financial markets have persistently produced instability and crises > All kinds of fancy papers were written demonstrating” that the big players on Wall Street are very smart people who know what’s best for themselves and everyone else-and therefore, didn’t need government regulators telling them what they could or could not do,
What is notable is that, despite its lower degree of globalization… this period is when capitalism has done the best: the fastest growth, the lowest degree of inequality, the highest degree of financial stability, and – in the case of the advanced capitalist economies – the lowest level of unemployment in the 250-year history of capitalism. This is why the period is often called “the Golden Age of Capitalism”.