Nipawin - Thursday, January 31, 2002 - by: Mario deSantis

 






"John Maynard Keynes radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism"

--Robert B. Reich, economist

 
"War is the biggest business in America"
--Jim Garrison, prosecutor in the 1967 JFK assassination conspiracy trial
   

civil
society

We must believe in a civil society otherwise we build a divided society, that is a tyrannical society. Free marketeers, preaching privatization, tax cutting and deregulation all over the world, are hypocritical since these policies have further divided people and countries between the rich and the poor. Therefore, while the free marketeers proclaim to liberate the world from poverty and injustice, they have in fact participated in the gradual erosion of democracies, that is our civil societies.
   

defense
spending

It is a fact that President George Bush has stated that the war on terrorism includes tens of thousands of terrorists spread throughout the world. This war against international terrorism has prompted a reallocation of economic resources for the United States, and President Bush will propose a $48-billion increase in defense spending for the coming fiscal year, the largest increase in defense spending for the last twenty years.
   

2000
election
cost
$3 billion

It is another fact that corporations have usurped people in the running of democracies. At one time we had welfare for the poor and disenfranchised, but today people have become redundant and corporate welfare has become the main priority for free marketeers. We can understand the legislative influence of the big corporations and fortunate sons by referring to the $3 billion expenditures for the 2000 US election campaign along with the 'consulting' work of the many business lobbyists.
   

keynesian
economics

With the economic speculative crash of 1929 and the consequential depression of the thirties many countries adopted keynesian economic policies of public deficit spending to put people back to work. Now the world has changed all at once in accordance to President Bush. The corporations along with the complicity of their governments have made people subordinate to their greedy profits.
   

corporations
and
military

Now that we have reached the absurdity of a divided country and of a divided world between the rich and the poor, governments have decided to maintain this divided country and this divided world by force; by inventing the undeclared war against terrorism, by increasing military expenditures, and hopefully by 'successfully' coming out of this recession with a public deficit spending, not on behalf of common people but on behalf of the big corporations and the military industry.

 

 
-----------------References:
  John Maynard Keynes, an article by Robert B. Reich http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/keynes.html
   

 

The Mirage of Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, The American prospect, January 1 - 14 2002 http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/1/weisbrot-m.html
   
  Federal budget surplus dwindling, CNN, January 23, 2002. WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal budget surpluses will dwindle to $2.26 trillion over the next decade and annual deficits will be back for the next two years. http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/23/budget.ap/index.html