Interesting NYT Editorial on the ConDem coalition

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09fri1.html?th&emc=th

"To see ourselves as others see us ..."?

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

1. Good article!

[miscsoc]

2. i agree

i'm frustrated by the way austerity fetishism has become the conventional wisdom across much of europe recently, even though it has little basis in actual economic research.

[fedsron2us]

4. Plenty of people such as the Australian economist Steve Keen

know that it is little more than self serving mumbo jumbo designed to protect the ruling financial classes.

It no longer even comes with the fig leaf of 'lower taxes' which at least Thatcherites such as Nigel Lawson could cover their activities.

Now all classes of society except a small elite are forced to pay massive sums in taxation to prop up a tiny Bourbon elite who have run the British economy into the ground. Eventually even the dopiest sans-cullottes are going to rumble the theft.

We all know what will happen then

[fedsron2us]

3. NYT nail the issue when they use the word ideology

In fact it is the right not the left who are now the most ideologically driven sector in politics.

You only have to read some of the policy suggestion being floated to realise that act some of their thinking has an almost Stalinist tone. For example the idea that pensioners from the South in Council property might be transported to the North and their properties given to young unemployed Northerners who would be compelled to do low paid jobs in the Home Counties sounds not a million miles from cuddly Uncle Joes forced relocations of groups such as the Don Cossacks.

History makes for strange bed fellows.

[miscsoc]

5. The comparison makes some sense.

It's hard to imagine now, but in the 30s many people believed in orthodox leninist economic theories just as much as many of us now believe in the economic certainties of Cameron. In fact, the word "Stalinist" is very, very apt here.