- An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton
Friedman died. A torrent of eulogies followed. The Wall Street Journal
mourned his loss with the same tribute he credulously used when Ronald
Reagan died saying "few people in human history have contributed more
to the achievement of human freedom." Economist and former Treasury
Secretary Lawrence Summers called him a hero and "The Great Liberator"
in a New York Times op-ed; the UK Financial Times called him "the
last of the great economists;" Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada's
National Post, mourned the "free markets" loss of "their
last lion;" and Business Week magazine noted the "Death of a
Giant" and praised his doctrine that "the best thing government
can do is supply the economy with the money it needs and stand aside."
-
- Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving
in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere. He believed
government's sole function is "to protect our freedom both from (outside)
enemies....and from our fellow-citizens." It's to "preserve law
and order (as well as) enforce private contracts, (safeguard private property
and) foster competitive markets." Everything else in public hands
is socialism that for free-wheeling market fundamentalists like Friedman
is blasphemy. He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations,
onerous taxes, trade barriers, "entrenched interests" and human
interference, and the best government is practically none at all as anything
it can do private business does better. Democracy and a government of,
by and for the people? Forget it.
-
- He preached public wealth should be in private hands,
accumulation of profits unrestrained, corporate taxes abolished, and social
services curtailed or ended. He believed "economic freedom is an end
to itself....and an indispensable means toward (achieving) political freedom."
He thought state laws requiring certain occupations be licensed (like doctors)
a restriction of freedom. He opposed foreign aid, subsidies, import quotas
and tariffs as well as drug laws he called a subsidy to organized crime
(which it is as well as to CIA and money laundering international banks
earning billions from it) and added "we have no right to use force....to
prevent (someone) from committing suicide....drinking alcohol or taking
drugs," while saying nothing about major banks and CIA partnering
for profit with drug lords.
-
- He favored a constitutional amendment requiring Congress
balance the budget because deficits "encourage political irresponsibility."
He claimed taxes were onerous and was "in favor of cutting (them)
under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever possible...."
and make corporations entirely exempt from them. He opposed the minimum
wage, supported a flat tax favoring the rich, and believed everyone should
have to buy his or her own medical insurance like any other product or
service. Can't afford it? Too bad. Get sick? Let the market heal you.
-
- He opposed public education, supported school vouchers
for privately-run ones, and believed marketplace competition improves performance
even though voucher amounts are inadequate and mostly go to schools emphasizing
religious education or training. Further, evidence shows teaching quality
suffers in for-profit schools except in elitist ones. Most others stress
cost-cutting and fewer services for bigger returns on investment.
-
- He ignored the fact that Christian fundamentalist schools
harm democracy and violate the constitutional separation of church and
state. They also threaten public education's future that's been the bedrock
of primary and secondary schooling throughout our history until Friedman
first proposed vouchers in the 1980s as one of his core free choice objectives.
-
- He was a vocal opponent of trade unions, claimed they
were "of little importance (historically in advancing) worker (rights
and gains) in the United States," and ignored clear evidence to the
contrary in spite of corrupted union officials who could and should have
done more for their rank and file and still don't. He also claimed "the
gains that strong unions win for their members are primarily at the expense
of other workers (and believing otherwise) is a fundamental source of misunderstanding."
It all came down to supply and demand for him - "the higher the price
of anything, the less....people will....buy."
-
- Sounds reasonable up to the examples he gave: "Make
labor of any kind more expensive and the number of jobs of that kind will
be fewer. Make carpenters more expensive, and fewer houses....will be built
(and the ones that are will) use materials and methods requiring less carpentry.
Raise the wages of airline pilots (and) there will be fewer jobs for them
(because) air travel will (cost more and) fewer people will fly."
-
- Bottom line for Friedman - high union wages harm everyone,
including union members. They make consumer products and services more
expensive, he believed, notwithstanding the fundamental law of pricing
every marketing executive knows but Friedman ignored. It's to charge what
the market will bear, no more or less so, costs aside, prices reflect what
buyers will pay, no more.
-
- Friedman also opposed government-run Social Security
that he called "The Biggest Ponzi Scheme on Earth" in an article
with that title. He described the current system as "an unholy combination
of two items: a flat-rate tax on earnings up to a maximum with no exemption
and a benefit program that awards subsidies that have....no relation to
need (forgetting it's our most successful poverty-reducing program) but
are based on (criteria like) marital status, longevity and recent earnings."
-
- He wanted it privatized, abhorred the "tyranny of
the status quo," and agreed with Barry Goldwater that it be voluntary
which, of course, would kill it. He added it's "hard to justify requiring
100% of the people to adopt a government-prescribed straitjacket to avoid
encouraging a few (many millions, in fact) 'lower-income individuals to
make no provision for their old age deliberately (even though most cannot),
knowing they would receive the means-tested amount.' " Addressing
only eligible retirees, he ignored millions of others getting Social Security
benefits. They include disabled workers and spouses and children of deceased,
retired or disabled workers. They comprise around 37% of all recipients,
are left out of Friedman's calculation, and would get nothing under a privatized
system.
-
- For Friedman, we're on our own, "free to choose,"
but unequally matched against corporate giants and the privileged with
their advantages. The rest of us are unequally endowed and governed by
the principle, "To each according to what he and the instruments he
owns produces," in a savage world where economic freedom trumps all
other kinds. This was right from Friedman's 1962 laissez-faire manifesto,
"Capitalism and Freedom," that's long on free market triumphalism
and void on its effects on real people.
-
- He opposed social or any market-interfering democracy,
an egalitarian society, government providing essential services, workers
free from bosses, citizens from dictatorship and countries from colonialism.
Instead, he perversely promoted economic freedom as a be-all-and-end-all,
limited government, and profit-making as the essence of democracy. He supported
unfettered free markets with political debate confined to minor issues
unrelated to the distribution of goods and services he wanted left to the
free-wheeling marketplace.
-
- This was Friedman's best of all possible worlds with
people in it no different than disposable commodities and government not
obligated to fulfill its minimum constitutionally-mandated function as
stated in the Preamble and Article I, Section 8. It's that "The Congress
shall have power to....provide....for (the) general welfare of the United
States" - the so-called welfare clause Friedman believed conflicted
with "capitalism and freedom" and our "freedom to choose"
that ranked above the law of the land for him.
-
- The School of Thought in the University of Chicago's
Economics Department
-
- Friedman grew up in New York, got his BA at Rutgers,
an MA at the University of Chicago, and his doctorate at Columbia. Surprisingly,
he was a Keynesian early on, but Friedrich Hayek's teachings changed him
into a free market fundamentalist who'd become what the Economist called
"the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century
(and) possibly all of it." He returned to the University of Chicago
Economics Department in 1946 and became its charismatic leader on a mission
to revolutionize his profession and the world.
-
- The doctrine was simple at its core - unfettered free
market pure capitalism works best, and Friedman and his colleagues set
out to prove it scientifically in a set of mathematical equations and computer
models they developed. They promised that left on their own, markets are
magical. They produce the right amount of products and services, at the
right prices, by the right number of workers earning the right amount of
wages to buy what's produced. In short, a win-win for everyone....paradise.
There was only one problem. It's voodoo science, sounds good mathematically
and doesn't work. Friedman and his "Chicago Boys, however, believed
it did but needed a real life "Chicago School state" to prove
it.
-
- He got many, called them models of free market magic,
and justified repression believing ends justify means and free choice offered
"more room for individual initiative....a private sphere of life (and
a greater) chance (authoritarian regimes he supported would in the end
make it possible) to return to a democratic society." He countered
his critics claiming "economic freedom is an essential requisite for
political freedom" and that transitional pain was worth it for the
free market paradise he promised would emerge. He and his mentor, Friedrich
Hayek, called social democracy, collectivism, socialism and welfare state
economics the "road to serfdom" producing "bondage and misery"
and "coercion rather than freedom."
-
- It was pure baloney, but who could argue in the face
of huge corporate backing, heavy funding and the dominant media in tow
calling market fundamentalism the new orthodoxy and repression freedom.
On the ground, it was different. The record of Chicago School fundamentalism
is in the human wreckage it left everywhere.
-
- The Human Toll of Chicago School Fundamentalism
-
- Every nation Friedman's ideology touched took pain, but
it wasn't the well-off who suffered, just ordinary working people targeted
for profit in pursuit of "economic freedom." Early on, his dogma
was considered quirky, on the margins of mainstream economics, and out
of step with the Keynesian post-war golden age of capitalism. It lasted
until the 1970s when recession, stagflation and high unemployment changed
everything. Keynesian economics was unfairly blamed, and Friedman got his
chance to prove government intervention is the problem and unfettered free
markets the solution. It was pure nonsense and about as scientific as alchemy,
but long ago people thought that worked until they finally understood they
couldn't make gold out of lesser metals.
-
- The First Test Case in Chile
-
- Chile under Augusto Pinochet became Friedman's first
test case to prove what we now know is flimflam. The results were disastrous
and Chileans to this day haven't recovered from the September 11, 1973
coup d'etat and aftermath that ended the most vibrant democracy in the
Americas and ushered in Friedman's magic.
-
- The playbook promised paradise but delivered the junta's
"Caravan of Death," hyperinflation, the economy contracting 15%,
wages cut, unemployment at 20%, labor unionism destroyed, social services
gutted, severe poverty, ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure, out-of-control
corruption and cronyism, a massive transfer of public resources to private
hands, and a repressive military and secret police targeting dissenters
with detention, torture and death. It was hell for Chileans but nirvana
for the privileged and foreign investors reaping big profits from the masses
they took it from. It was just the beginning with Friedman-style "shock
treatment" on to the next target.
-
- One of many was Bolivia with predictable results and
Friedman unrepentant. Food subsidies were ended, social services gutted,
price controls lifted, wages frozen, oil prices hiked 300%, deep government
spending cuts imposed, unrestricted imports allowed, and state-owned companies
downsized costing hundreds of thousands of jobs before privatizing them.
-
- There was more. Real wages dropped 40%, poverty soared,
but a privileged elite got rich. Public anger grew with repression the
antidote. Tanks rolled in the streets against striking workers, and police
targeted dissenters in union halls, a university and factories. "Freedom"
for Friedman was hell for Bolivians. It would soon get worse.
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- The Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia
-
- The Berlin Wall's fall should have been a triumph but
instead was tragic for Russia's people. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power
in March, 1985 with political and social change in mind but wasn't around
long enough to lead it. He liberalized the country, introduced elections,
and favored a Scandinavian-style social democracy combining free market
capitalism with strong social safety net protections. He envisioned "a
socialist beacon for all mankind," an egalitarian society, but never
got the chance to build it.
-
- When the Soviet Union dissolved, he was out, Boris Yeltsin
became Russia's president, he supported a corporatist state and adopted
Chicago School fundamentalist "shock therapy" masquerading as
"reform." Its former apparatchiks cashed in big along with a
new class of "nouveaux billionaires" (called "the oligarchs")
who strip-mined the country's wealth and shipped it to offshore tax havens.
For the Russian people, it was another story. They didn't know what hit
them in what was one of the greatest ever crimes by a government against
its own people who still today are crushed by it. The toll was devastating
and pandemic:
-
- -- 80% of Russian farmers bankrupt;
-
- -- about 70,000 state factories closed causing an epidemic
of unemployment;
-
- -- 74 million Russians (half the population) impoverished;
for 37 million of them conditions were desperate, and the country's underclass
remains permanent;
-
- -- alcohol, painkilling and hard drug used soared, and
HIV/AIDS threatens to become epidemic with a 20-fold increase in infections
since 1995; suicides also rose and violent crime as well more than fourfold;
and
-
- -- Russia's population is declining by around 700,000
a year; unfettered capitalism has already killed off 10% of it; it's a
startling condemnation of Chicago School orthodoxy and the man who triumphantly
spread it in the name of freedom that's fake, ferocious and fatal.
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- The Curse of Predatory Capitalism in South Africa
-
- As in Russia, opportunity for progressive change became
tragedy under neoliberal Washington Consensus policies far worse than apartheid
repression. Nelson Mandela pledged to support black economic empowerment
and seemed poised to lead it when ANC candidates swept the 1994 elections
and he became president. Instead, political power came at the expense of
economic surrender. The former white supremacist government and industrialists
secured their wealth and privilege by keeping unfettered capitalism unchanged
under harsh shock medicine rules.
-
- It was unforgivable from a man like Mandela with charisma
and political capital enough to have prevented it. Instead, he chose not
to and brushed off later criticism saying "....for this country, privatization
is the fundamental policy." The toll on his people was horrific:
-
- -- double the number of people living in desperate poverty
on less than $1 a day from two to four million;
-
- -- the unemployment rate doubling to 48% from 1991 -
2002;
-
- -- two million South Africans losing their homes while
the government built only 1.8 million others;
-
- -- nearly one million South Africans evicted from farms
in the first decade of ANC rule; as a result, shack dweller population
grew by 50%, and in 2006, 25% of South Africans lived in them with no running
water or electricity;
-
- -- the HIV/AIDS infection rate at about 20%, and the
ANC government denies its severity and does little to alleviate it; it's
a major reason why average life expectancy in the country declined 13 years
since 1990;
-
- -- 40% of schools with no electricity;
-
- -- 25% of people with no access to clean water and most
with it can't afford the cost;
-
- -- 60% of people with inadequate sanitation, and 40%
no telephones.
-
- Freedom for black South Africans came at a high price
with political empowerment traded for economic apartheid and no relief
in sight for the millions affected. It's more evidence of Chicago School
economics failure and the human wreckage it leaves everywhere.
-
- Free Market Repression in Haiti
-
- Haitians enjoyed a brief interregnum of freedom in the
1990s up to 2004 under Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval in his first
term. Haitians were only once earlier free when the first ever independent
black republic was established January 1, 1804, but it didn't last.
-
- Freedom again was lost for one of the longest ever oppressed
people anywhere. It ended February 29, 2004 when US Marines abducted Aristide,
in a shocking middle of the night coup d'etat, and flew him against his
will to the Central African Republic. Haiti is small, around three times
the size of Los Angeles, with a population around eight million. It has
some oil, natural gas and other mineral wealth, but it's main value is
its human resource that corporate giants want as an offshore cheap labor
paradise for Wal-Mart's "Always Low Prices."
-
- Under President Aristide and Preval in his first term
in office, impressive social gains were achieved, but they're are now lost
in the wake of the 2004 coup. Haiti is once again a free market paradise
with freedom sacrificed (despite an elected president) and real reforms
gutted for the poorest people in the hemisphere:
-
- -- thousands of public sector workers were fired;
-
- -- many more thousands killed, jailed, disappeared or
forced into hiding;
-
- -- many thousands of small businesses burned and destroyed
as well as homes for large numbers of the poor;
-
- -- unemployment and underemployment rampant with up to
two-thirds of workers without reliable jobs; destruction of the country's
rural economy an enormous problem with displaced poor people migrating
to urban areas but finding no work;
-
- -- the lowest public sector employment in the region
at less than .7%;
-
- -- education and health care greatly deteriorated and
mostly provided by NGOs, including church-based ones;
-
- -- life expectancy at only 53 years; the death and infant
mortality rates the highest in the western hemisphere;
-
- -- the World Bank places the country in its bottom rankings
with its deficient sanitation systems, poor nutrition, high malnutrition,
and inadequate health services;
-
- -- the country is the poorest in the hemisphere with
80% of its population living below the poverty line; it's also the least
developed with lack of infrastructure, severe deforestation and heavy soil
erosion;
-
- -- half its population is "food insecure" and
half of all children undersized from malnutrition;
-
- -- less than half the population with access to clean
drinking water;
-
- -- the country ranks last in the hemisphere in health
care spending with only 25 doctors and 11 nurses per 100,000 population
and most rural areas having no access to health care;
-
- -- the highest HIV/AIDS incidence outside Africa;
-
- -- the World Bank estimates Haiti's per capita income
at under $450; the prevailing sweatshop wage is around 11 - 12 cents an
hour; the official minimum wage is about $1.70 a day (with most Haitians
getting less) with no benefits and inadequate help from weak unions;
-
- -- restructuring and privatizations, like what's intended
for the state-owned telecommunication company, Teleco, cost thousands of
jobs from downsizings;
-
- -- human rights repression is severe under a UN paramilitary
MINUSTAH occupation masquerading as peacekeepers; they were illegally sent
for the first time ever to support and enforce a coup d'etat against a
democratically elected president; political killings, kidnappings, disappearances,
torture and unlawful arrests and incarcerations are common forms of repression
so real Haitian democracy can't emerge under its elected president, Rene
Preval, in his second term; he's impotent against the power of US-orchestrated
plunder under Chicago School fundamentalist rules. Another Friedman legacy
of failure, this one close to home.
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- Free Market Fundamentalist Destruction in Afghanistan
-
- September 11 erased the familiar world, created mass
disorientation and regression, and made anything possible under collective
shock that didn't take long to unfold. The "war on terror" was
launched in a climate of fear with Afghanistan first targeted. It inaugurated
a brave new post-9/11 world. Its horror continues. War rages, its ferocity
intense, and no end is in sight for a people and nation journalist John
Pilger describes as having been "abused and suffered more (with less
help than any other) in living memory."
-
- War and conquest were planned well in advance with 9/11
the pretext to launch it. It was part of a grand strategic plan to control
Central Asia's vast oil and gas reserves, then on to the grand prize in
the Middle East with Iraq its epicenter. It began October 7, 2001, continues,
and has now intensified at an enormous cost to the Afghan people who've
been torn by endless war and internal turmoil for over two decades. The
toll is horrific and rising:
-
- -- half the population unemployed with no improvement
in sight nor is any planned under fundamentalist market rules;
-
- -- half the population earning around $200 a year with
those in the booming opium trade doing marginally better;
-
- -- poverty soared post-invasion, one-fourth or more of
the population needs food aid, and regional famine risks remain;
-
- -- life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world
at 44.5 years;
-
- -- the infant mortality is the highest in the world at
161 per 1000 births;
-
- -- one-fifth of children die before age five;
-
- -- an Afghan woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes;
-
- -- an estimated 500,000 homeless are in Kabul alone including
people living in collapsed and unsafe buildings;
-
- -- only one-fourth of the population has access to safe
drinking water and adequate sanitation;
-
- -- only one doctor is available per 6000 people and one
nurse per 2500 people;
-
- -- 100 or more people are killed or wounded by unexploded
ordnance each month and rising violence kills many more;
-
- -- children are kidnapped, sold into slavery or murdered
for their organs bringing high prices in the "free market" where
everything is for sale including body parts;
-
- -- less than 6% of Afghans have electricity only available
sporadically;
-
- -- women's literacy rate is about 19%, conditions for
them are very harsh, they're forced to beg on the streets or turn to prostitution
to survive; many must remain veiled;
-
- -- schools are burned and teachers beheaded in front
of their students;
-
- -- basic services don't exist and essential ones like
schools, health clinics and hospitals are in deplorable condition with
no aid provided to improve them as all of it goes for profit;
-
- -- as in Iraq, occupying forces operate outside the law
with impunity that includes the use of indiscriminate force, arbitrary
arrests, indefinite detentions and free use of the harshest types of torture
unreported in the mainstream;
-
- -- under military occupation, democracy in the country
is pure fantasy; the puppet president is a caricature of a man and willing
US stooge with no support or mandate outside Kabul;
-
- -- lawlessness is rampant, war raging, violence increasing,
the drug harvest and trafficking uncontrolled, corruption massive, Sharia
law reinstated, and life overall intolerable in this free market fundamentalist
paradise.
-
- The Epicenter of the "War on Terror" in Iraq
for Market Fundamentalist "Freedom"
-
- Iraq has the misfortune of lying at the heart of the
oil rich MIddle East where two-thirds of proved reserves are located and
the greatest potential amount of them untapped for lack of development.
Its potential remained frozen in time the result of intervening wars since
1980, economic sanctions until 2003, and now occupation and conflict for
the most sought after real estate on earth and a no-brainer why it was
targeted.
-
- At its core, the plan was simple - a bold new experiment
to erase a nation and create a new one by invasion, occupation and reconstruction
for pillage. It would transform the nation into a fully privatized free
market paradise with blank check public funds for profit but none for Iraqis
for essential needs, a sustainable economy or critical local infrastructure.
-
-
- The record of unfettered capitalism is consistent. It
leaves mass human wreckage everywhere. In Iraq, it turned a bold new experiment
into a horrific disaster:
-
- -- an inferno of uncontrolled violence throughout the
country with new British O.R.B. independent polling data estimating over
1.2 million Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 on top of about 1.5 million
deaths from the Gulf war and economic sanctions in place until the current
war; the true toll may be even higher with huge uncounted numbers of daily
violent and non-violent deaths that one estimate by Gideon Polya places
at 3.9 million from 1990 to the present; no one knows for sure;
-
- -- the International Rescue Committee and UNHCR estimating
four million displaced Iraqis, including those internally displaced, with
40,000 additional Iraqis fleeing their homes each month; these figures
may be conservative with true numbers much higher;
-
- -- a near-total breakdown of essential services like
electricity, drinking water, sanitation, medical care, education, security
and food for many;
-
- -- mass unemployment and extreme poverty in what was
once "the cradle of civilization" now erased for profit;
-
- -- an overall humanitarian disaster of epic proportions
that continues to worsen with a July Oxfam International and NCCI network
of aid organizations report of other grim findings:
-
- -- eight million Iraqis needing emergency aid - one-third
of the population;
-
- -- four million without enough food;
-
- -- 70% of Iraqis with no adequate water supply;
-
- -- 80% lack adequate sanitation;
-
- -- 28% of children malnourished;
-
- -- underweight baby births tripled;
-
- -- 92% of Iraqi children with learning problems due to
fear; and
-
- -- a mass exodus of around 80% of doctors, nurses, teaching
staff at schools and hospitals and other vitally needed professionals.
-
- In addition, local Iraqi industry collapsed, kidnapping
for ransom is a growth industry, the country is a wasteland, its nation
creation project bankrupt, and Iraq today more closely resembles hell than
"the cradle of civilization."
-
- Iraq above all other nations today is a ghoulish testimony
to the myth of free market magic, but it's even worse than that. It proves
Friedmanomics a crime against humanity and the man who led it a Nobel prize-winning
fraud whose legacy is failure. His real time record is so horrific, it's
unrevealed in the mainstream to suppress it.
-
- It's endless foreign wars, mass killing and destruction,
detentions and torture, contempt for international law, and total disregard
for human rights and social justice everywhere. At home, it's just as bad
short of open warfare:
-
- -- democracy is a fantasy in a corporatist state placing
profits over people;
-
- -- the prison-industrial complex is a growth industry;
-
-
- -- social decay is increasing as well as real human need;
-
- -- social justice, civil liberties and human rights are
non-starters;
-
- -- an unprecedented wealth disparity exists in a rigid
class society with growing poverty in the richest country in the world
that's also the least caring;
-
- -- government is the most secret, intrusive and repressive
in our history;
-
- -- the rule of law is null and void;
-
- -- a cesspool of uncontrolled corruption prevails with
no accountability;
-
- -- a de facto one party state exists with no checks and
balances or separation of powers and a president claiming "unitary
executive" powers to do as he pleases and does with impunity;
-
- -- suppression of all dissenting ideas and thoughts;
-
- -- an out-of-control military-industrial complex bent
on world dominance; and
-
- -- a mainstream media serving as national thought control
police gatekeepers glorifying wars, defiling democracy and supporting imperial
conquest and repression.
-
- This is the legacy of the man The Economist called "the
most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century (and)
possibly all of it." Once anointed, well funded and nurtured, he could
never admit he was wrong or apologize to millions of victims who proved
his ideology was hokum. Never have so many suffered so much to reveal the
flimflam of one man and the movement he led until his death. That's the
dark side of "capitalism and freedom" unmasked that his torrent
of eulogies left out.
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