{"id":8508,"date":"2015-05-27T05:54:59","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T10:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8508"},"modified":"2015-05-27T05:54:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T10:54:59","slug":"we-need-a-new-economic-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8508","title":{"rendered":"We need a new economic system"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.garalperovitz.com\/2015\/05\/need-new-economic-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">We need a new economic system<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>As the 2016 election begins to come into focus, economic populism appears to be the order of the day. The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/economy\/report\/2015\/01\/15\/104266\/report-of-the-commission-on-inclusive-prosperity\/\">Center for American Progress<\/a>, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/populism2015.org\/the-new-populist-agenda\/\">Campaign for America\u2019s Future and National People\u2019s Action<\/a>,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/msnbc\/hillary-clinton-goes-populist\">Hillary Clinton<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sanders.senate.gov\/agenda\/\">Bernie Sanders<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/progressiveagenda.us\/\">Bill de Blasio<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/rewritetherules.org\/\">Roosevelt Institute<\/a>\u00a0have all in the last few months released programmatic calls to action highlighting the need to tackle economic inequality. This is, of course, laudable \u2014 it\u2019s not every day that virtually the entire spectrum of Democratic Party insiders and outsiders concurs that our increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth is a central problem to be addressed. But are calls for reform and redistribution enough?<\/p>\n<p>I am opposed to very little of what is being presented in these various platforms and proposals. They are, for the most part, perfectly sensible ideas \u2014 such as financial transaction taxes, increases to the minimum wage and using government funds to build and repair infrastructure such as roads and railways \u2014 that would be, for the most part, noncontroversial if we were living in an era of sensible politics. But the fundamental fact is that we are not.<span id=\"more-1973\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Instead, we are living in the era in which the corporate institutions at the core of our politics, along with the radical financial inequalities our system now produces, have undermined the power relationships that once allowed for traditional reforms. The labor union \u2014 the fundamental institutional power base for tempering the excesses of a corporate economy \u2014 is regrettably in terminal decline, down to 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector. Long-term structural shifts in the political economy have rendered the program of regulation and reform more or less inoperative.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need a new economic system As the 2016 election begins to come into focus, economic populism appears to be the order of the day. The\u00a0Center for American Progress, the\u00a0Campaign for America\u2019s Future and National People\u2019s Action,Hillary Clinton,\u00a0Bernie Sanders,\u00a0Bill de Blasio\u00a0and the\u00a0Roosevelt Institute\u00a0have all in the last few months released programmatic calls to action highlighting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5733,171,5206,427,5732,5131,643,5731,783,1808],"class_list":["post-8508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-corporate-economy","tag-corporations","tag-economic-system","tag-infrastructure","tag-labor-unions","tag-political-economy","tag-power","tag-redistribution","tag-taxes","tag-wages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8509,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8508\/revisions\/8509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}