CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM

ERIC ZUESSE—This is the way that wealth in the U.S. has come to be so extremely narrowly held, so that, for example, a January 2018 study done for Deutsche Bank, “US Income and Wealth Inequality”, reported (p. 9) that “US: Top 0.1% owns as many assets as the bottom 90%”, and (p. 11) that, out of all the 34 OECD nations, America has the most unequal incomes — the most extreme inequality, of them all.

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—The supermarket cashier, someone who has never shown any sort of political thinking the many times I chatted with her over the years, summed it up best the other day. Out of seemingly nowhere, she volunteered the info about her store: ” 90% of our cashiers are part time. I have been full time since I started working here years ago. Some of these people have to work anywhere from two to three part time jobs to stay above water. That’s the reality in our country now.”

“As the environmental crisis worsens, thinking of war as a tool with which to address it, treating refugees as akin to military enemies, threatens us with the ultimate vicious cycle. Declaring that climate change causes wars misses the reality that we human beings cause war, and that unless we learn to address crises nonviolently we will only make them worse.” — Martin Sheen

DIANA JOHNSTONE—For historic reasons, most French people do not share the ardent faith of British and Americans in the benevolence of the invisible hand of the market.  There is a national leaning toward a mixed economy, where the State plays a strong determining role.  The French do not easily believe that privatization is better, least of all when they can see it doing worse.

Macron is an ardent devotee of the invisible hand. He seems to expect that by draining French savings into an international investment giant such as Black Rock, Black Rock will reciprocate by pumping investment into French technological and industrial progress.

RAINER SHEA—Marxism is presented [by Animal Farm] as a theory of naive idealism, which in practice leads to cynical tyranny. The main tenet of Animal Farm, though, seems to be that humans are no better than animals; that ‘human nature’ decides all. Some people are born to rule and others to be taken advantage of; all efforts to change the system will only lead to something worse, so we should be grateful for what we have. Unfortunately for Orwell, there is a blindingly obvious flaw in the plan. He uses different species to represent the different classes, but while it may be true that some animals are cleverer, quicker, stronger than others, and naturally inclined to prey on those that are weaker, the class structure of our society is a reflection of no such natural difference. Mankind is one species.