No one can earn
a million dollars honestly.
William
Jennings
Bryan, 1860 – 1925,
an
American lawyer, statesman, and politician, three times the Democratic
Party nominee for President of the United States.
The decadent
international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found
ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not
beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the
goods.
-----
Capitalism is the
astounding belief that the most wickedest [sic] of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of
everyone.
John Maynard
Keynes, 1883 – 1946,
a British
economist whose ideas, called Keynesian economics, had a
major impact
on modern economic and political theory, as well as on
many
governments’ fiscal policies.
So far, we have noted many deficiencies in the
capitalism which we practice. The
purpose behind such a look is to encourage thought and
action about how to make capitalism work better.
So we look at more deficiencies.
Capitalism wants to keep growing, to keep generating
wealth, because more and more people are living long and spending much time
in retirement. In other words,
retirees do not generate wealth, so somebody else has to do so that there be
money to care for them. There is
another reason for capitalism to keep growing:
many of those among us who are driven to be businessmen and
businesswomen want to keep enlarging their businesses.
Also, consider: if we
built items which were durable, there would be less manufacturing work, so
we need to build items which are throw-away or whose life is shorter than
ours, so that we keep people employed as we go shopping for replacements.
Unfortunately, this comes at a time when we are
depleting non-renewable resources, driving flora and fauna to extinction,
and bringing down the quality of life for humankind.
And the problem exists not just in the industrialized world.
People in developing countries want to catch up with us as quickly as
possible, and that means doing so in the cheapest way possible, which means
that the depletion of non-renewable resources will increase.
It is interesting to note the following and consider
how the ideas might apply to the
United States
.
Japan
’s Aging Population Problem -
Alternative Solution
December 14, 2007, by Nick Ramsay
Japan
is facing a crisis. The population is
aging and by 2050, one in three people will be past retirement age.
Meanwhile, the birth rate is currently at 1.25 babies per woman, much lower
than the 2.1 needed to keep the population stable.
The result is a
workforce too small to support the huge number of retirees. Who will do all
the work? Will there be enough tax money to pay for pensions? What about the
cost of health care?
How to solve
Japan
’s aging population problem
Plan A would be
to increase the number of workers, and you could do that by:
1. Having more
babies
Some companies
are offering financial incentives to their employees to have more children.
…
2. Upping the age
of retirement
This might have
already been put into action, and I’m sure everyone is thrilled about it
(sarcasm). …
3. Increasing the
number of foreign workers
Easing
immigration laws to allow hundreds of thousands of foreigners to live, work
and apparently terrorize the natives is not likely to happen. I think most
Japanese would rather forfeit their pensions or have robots do the work
instead.
An alternative
solution - decrease the number of elderly people!
...According to
my [Japanese] students, a hundred years ago, elderly parents would ask their
children to take them into the mountains and leave them there. While this is
shocking to hear nowadays, it was considered honorable in the past. We
can’t expect and wouldn’t wish to hear such a request from our current
generation of pensioners, although putting them in a nursing home might be
considered the modern equivalent! ...
Plan B: If you
wanted to secretly reduce the lifespan of millions of people in a few short
years, the best way to do it would be to hit them in the wallet. If people
don’t have enough money, they can’t take care of themselves. Necessities
such as medicine, food, accommodation, heating, transportation, etc. could
all be subject to price increases. ...
To end on a
lighter note, one of my students suggested that inheritance tax would cover
everybody’s pension because there would be so much of it! Let’s hope
he’s right, because that’s much easier to stomach than my alternative
solution!