By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The jaws of many establishment Canadian economists dropped this morning when a new Statistics Canada report revealed that this country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) struggled to rise barely 0.1 percent in July.
The establishment politicians and economists – led by Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney – and the corporate mass media had been expecting a rise of at least 0.5 percent as they continued to issue tawdry public assurances that – for Canada, at least – the recession is over.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
But to recognize and acknowledge the economic reality would mean admitting that the guiding principles of capitalist economic theory are patently false.
Around the world, governments have committed scores of trillions of dollars to save the corporate capitalist financial system and bail out the billionaires and mega-millionaires whose greed, incompetence, corruption and criminality has almost bankrupted the world. Added to those many tens of trillions have been several trillion more in so-called “stimulus” spending. And still, the global economy remains mired in chaos.
What the NeoLiberal/NeoConservative politicians and economists and the corporate mass media cannot admit and accept is that it is the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the top five percent of westerners and the unconscionable gap between rich and poor that have crippled the masses – the poor and the middle class – and bankrupted the “mass” market.
No amount of quick-fix “stimulus” spending will alter that fact. No amount of corporate and financial-institution bailouts will alter that fact either.
But to recognize and accept – and act upon that fact – would require admitting that the basic tenets of corporate capitalism are fatally flawed. It would mean accepting and implementing a massived redistribution of income from the top five percent of westerners (North Americans and Europeans) to the bottom 60 percent.
It would mean accepting that there must be limits to the accumulation of private wealth; that there must be limits to executive compensation; that there must be limits to the share of the economic pie that can be owned by the top five percent; that there must be very significant dwonward redistribution of wealth from the “Haves” to the “Have-Nots”, not only within countries but also amongst countries; and that there must be limits to the gap between rich and poor.
For months now, the NeoLiberal and NeoConservative politicans and economists and the corporate mass media have been whistling in the wind with their prognostications of new economic growth in the short term.
But it is all an illusion. Any short-term growth realized will be nothing more than the economic blips of the government stimulus spending and such gimmicks as the American “cash for clunkers” program.
Yes, big-time investors are recovering quite nicely, thank you. But until our governments, our establisment economists and our corporate mass media accept that reality and start telling the truth, there will be no recovery for the masses.