"The Charter Of The Forest"
Wikipedia
Reclaiming Our Cultural Commons In The Age Of Commercialism
Our culture makes so much of the Magna Carta (1215 A.D.), but we hear nothing about its companion document, the Charter of the Forest (1217 A.D.).
While the Magna Carta protected the Church and barons from the King (think businessmen vs regulators), the Charter of the Forest protected everyone else with access to the "commons" pastures and forests vital for everyday survival (think Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food assistance, unemployment insurance, public schools and universities).
"How To Replace Neoliberalism With a Caring Economy"
We must do more than resist Trumpism; we must resist neoliberal capitalism with a vision for how democratic ownership of common goods can build a nurturing society.
"Alan Greenspan has proclaimed himself 'shocked' that 'the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders equity' proved to be an illusion... The Reagan-Thatcher model, which favored finance over domestic manufacturing, has collapsed. ... The mutually reinforcing rise of financialization and globalization broke the bond between American capitalism and America's interests. ...we should take a cue from Scandinavia's social capitalism, which is less manufacturing-centered than the German model. The Scandinavians have upgraded the skills and wages of their workers in the retail and service sectors -- the sectors that employ the majority of our own workforce. In consequence, fully employed impoverished workers, of which there are millions in the United States, do not exist in Scandinavia." - Harold Meyerson, "Building a Better Capitalism", The Washington Post, March 12, 2009.
"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them." - William Jennings Bryan, 1896. Now, French economist Thomas Piketty shows "trickle down" is a con, and the only way capitalism works is "bottom up".
-- M. B. Hardy
No comments:
Post a Comment