Right wing economics is a lot like a primitive cult

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What is it they tell us? We must offer token sacrifices to the super-rich and corporations. They consider such people and entities to be like "Atlas" in Atlas Shrugged, and Atlas of course was a god - this comparison was not done for nothing. They consider these people to be gods. The sun shines, the rains fall, the harvest is bountiful because of the great work of these gods. Those gods however are jealous. They need to be acknowledged. They require sacrifices. We the primitive tribesmen must offer them a sacrifice of our meagre possessions and if we don't do that they will punish us and we will starve. So this is what the right wing says - more sacrifices to the super-rich and if we refuse they'll punish us. We must do this because they are responsible for all that's good and they can take it all away if sufficiently enraged.

Now we've been sacrificing more and more to these gods over the years. Now, we have a deep recession. What is the answer? We need to sacrifice some more, give more to these gods. The gods are angry at us, we must give them more and more, we must cut environmental regulations, we must cut all regulations, we must lower their taxes and we must squeeze more out of everyone else. If we don't sacrifice to them their punishments will be more horrible still.

No wonder this is known as Voodoo Economics.

I would have thought the whole "Give the rich tax cuts to help everyone else" argument should have been busted seeing how well it performed during the Bush years and ending with the greatest economic boom EVAR!...

Oh yeah it didn't end that way.
Jobs were lost.
Jobs were outsourced.
Wages remained stagnant.
Prices of commodities went up.
Small businesses disappeared.
Wages of the rich, went up.

Yeah, that plan worked out real well and still they harp on it as if repeating it enough times will make it work.
Trickle down economics is a myth folks.

Yes, I really felt the benefit of rich people having more money to keep to themselves and has made my life better.

These "gods" are sitting on trillions of dollars right now and the Right still says that the problem today is that they need more! They will only use that money, the Right says, if the rules are changed again to divvy things up more in their favour, to scrap regulations, to reduce their taxes, to make them take even more of the surplus.

Mort Zuckerman, who is a victim of a lack of regulation by the way as a Madoff casualty, says that the leadership is saying bad things about the gods and the gods are meting out punishment for that. More proof that this is like a primitive cult.

Careful, you're going to enrage the hardcore free-market fundies on here.

I completely agree with you. The so-called "masters of the universe" are usually selfish fat cats who don't give a s**t. No-one owes them anything other than a kick in the balls. Still, there are plenty of exceptions, true philanthropists who try to make a difference.

I don't like the right ( I am starting to see myself as a left libertarian but I think this whole post is a strawman. IMHO you would be able to fight the right much better once you actually understand what it is about and you attack the actual points they make instead of this vision of them you have.

Most of the free-market libertarian bloggers I read here in the UK aren't rich - most of them are working-class folk (some of whom have been homeless) who see social democracy as strangling the market and the potential of the people.

If I recall correctly, the term "voodoo economics" was coined by George H.W. Bush.

When the economy is bad, the answer is always tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the corporations, deregulation, end of environmental regulation - to bribe rich people into "investment" because "a poor man never gave anyone a job". In other words, re-write the social contract to give the rich and corporations more, offer them a bigger sacrifice from the rest of us, because these people are gods who provide everything that's good. If we criticise them then lightning bolts will be fired from on top of Mount Olympus and we will be punished. There's this endless talk of "investor confidence" and how the "electronic herd" will judge us if we are "profligate" towards the lesser people and fail to give it all to the gods...

They are wrong when they "see" this. The super-rich sit on trillions of dollars that they've got in endless giveaways and tax breaks and the like. We were told that if we gave it to them, they'd invest it in things that would bring work to people. Instead they hoard it or use it to gamble on Wall Street.

The logic of the free market fundamentalist is that of the primitive cult. The super-rich and corporations are Gods - like Atlas in Atlas Shrugged. We are always told of how we need them and they provide everything, but if we offend them they'll punish us horribly. Right now they're telling people that they are sitting on those trillions to punish the people for electing Obama and as soon as Republicans are elected and committed to more sacrifices to them, more tax cuts, more deregulation, that they'll release their money and bring back work to the masses.

The free market system strangles the potential of people by forcing large numbers of people to focus on survival at the exclusion of most else.

This whole crazy situation reminds me of the Xhosa cattle kill situation where a prophet told them that if they destroyed their cattle, their store of wealth, that this would allow them to defeat the British. By doing so they hastened their conquest by the British, which is why it is suspected that this prophet was working for the British!

Yeah, I don't feel confidence in your knowledge of economics, xenon13.

Now, you are right in as much as supply-side economics is to a good extent BS. I mean, George H W Bush did call it "voodoo economics" and really, decreasing the taxes on the upper classes can have all sorts of effects that we can't know what they are. (and a few that we can know that might not be so good)

The problem is that "right-wing economics" is a much squishier beast than just "supply-side economics". There are a lot of different people who are "right-wing". Heck, if you have taken a college-level macroeconomics course, it is very likely that your class used a book by a right-wing economist, as Greg Mankiw is both on the right, and the publisher of one of the most popular text-books in the field. Mankiw is also a neo-Keynesian, rather than a monetarist or an Austrian, and a professor at Harvard, an Ivy-League school. Maybe he is a member of some cult, but I kind of doubt it.

The same suspicion of a universal cult on the right holds for most of the right-wing economists I know. A lot of them seem intellectually vibrant. One of them, Tyler Cowen, was interviewed by Alex Plank because he wrote a book on the cognitive strengths of autism and other topics in a book called "Discover Your Own Economy". Another "right-wing economist" is actually autistic and a nobel laureate for developing a method for exploring the nature of the economy and promoting it in scholarship. This man is Vernon L. Smith. Somehow, I find myself rather skeptical of xenon. While, I think that most politics is a matter of primitive cults, it does not follow that the intelligentsia on any side of the matter is primitive or cult-like, and from my personal experience with economists on the right, both from reading blogs and meeting them in person, I don't see this kind of tendency at all with these individuals, even if they do have their own intellectual flaws.

Edit: I do agree with Vexcalibur that you can do a lot more if you can reduce this language into an economic framework, and explore it in that form. I mean, a lot of right-wingers aren't that good at economics and pretend their competence. (in fact, I remember one person who entered on this forum believing in their knowledge, but only knew a strawman of Keynesian economics. The problem is that even foolishnesses can be dealt with from an economist's perspective, I think.)

What you call Right Wing economics is the astounding principle that wealth has to be produced, extracted or created before it can be consumed or redistributed. So-called Right Wing Economic makes the Producer the star of the show, not the redistributor or the consumer.

ruveyn

In the end, those preaching right wing economic solutions in the media always end up saying the following...

1 - All good comes from the Rich and from Corporations
2 - The Rich and Corporations hold up society - we owe everything to them.
3 - If the Rich and Corporations are angry at us, they'll withhold their bounty or mete out punishment.

Therefore,,,

The first priority of all government is to keep the Rich and Corporations happy. To cater to them in every way. If they say Government do this thing, we do the thing... no matter what it may be. Governments that fail to do this are job killers.

Now there may be other types of right wing economists, like say the Distributionists or whatever, but they don't drive the policy debate. From the Right, in the mainstream media, the economic arguments are always the same. We owe it all to the Rich, we must give them everything they demand. In short it's the argument used to worship and serve a deity. Do so because we owe it all to the deity and it's only fair to thank it for doing this for little old us. Understand that failure to do that will bring forth Wrath from that deity.

One of those Hammer Draculas, "Scars of Dracula" I think had someone show up in the village below Dracula's castle to tell them plans to destroy Dracula. The villagers said no, you're just some academic busybody, we the peasants tell you begone, you will fail and Dracula will punish us all for helping you in any way. Sure enough that's what happens. The creation of the "champagne socialist" phenomenon turning the working class against socialists uses similar arguments - the big capitalist exploiter may be a horribly oppressive monster but if we offend them in any way they'll destroy us and the champagne socialists from the upper classes will be able to safely flee the fallout. Thus working class people are trained to vote for right wing politicians.

And who pray tell produces the wealth? Is it done... without workers? Who decides how the proceeds of production is divvied up? The bankers, the owners, the super-rich, and they as much as possible abide by Adam Smith's "vile maxim" of the masters, "All for us, nothing for everyone else".

Who decides by the way that there should be a 10% or more reserve army of labour? That's part of right wing economics by the way to have such a force supposedly as an inflation-fighting measure to keep everyone else's wages down and profits up. It makes working for a living something only for chumps - the real people make money on money. So millions of people can't work because the right wing economics implemented demand it.

Many take place in producing wealth. Farmers who grow food. Miners who extract minerals from the earth. Workers who fashion goods. Engineers and inventors who invent and design the tools workers use. Scholars, mathematicians and scientists who discover new principles to understand and make use of nature. Investors who lend money to entreprenuers to create now production facilities and undertake the production of new goods and services.

There is no monolithic group of workers or producers. Many participate in the process in various roles and waysl

Anyone whose efforts increases the stock of goods, services and techniques that add to our well being, prosperity and health are producers. In North Korea they have a monument with three objects; the sickle/plow of the farmer; the hammer of the worker and the pen of the scholar. They seem to have grasped the concept even if they do not practice it justly.

ruveyn

Hedge fund managers certainly do not contribute to production or prosperity yet they get a large amount of the loot... and they are considered by the right wing to be one of the gods who deserve additional sacrifices.

The right wing is also about strip mining the people. They act like an army of occupation, finding ways to squeeze the surplus in the most efficient way possible. Roger Douglas, the former Finance Minister of New Zealand whose "economic miracle" featured seven years of recession (yes, our media called it a miracle!) and doubled the suicide rate, he spoke to fellow right wing leaders about strategies that certainly sound like a war strategy against a population - a lightning war with the people as the enemy.

So these people push this primitive cult and plan for lightning war against the people - is it too much to describe these people as evil?

Right wing economics is a lot like a primitive cult

Is right wing economics a lot like a primitive cult? Yes.

Trickledown economics, trickleeven economics, trickleup economics hocus pocus...

Abandon all governmental oversight and let the corporations self-monitor themselves - the market will automatically adjust perfectly hocus pocus...

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