The Political Theology That Maintains State Power
Excellent piece!
“Economics
In 1994, Charlie Rose interviewed the British businessman James Goldsmith. Sir Goldsmith was campaigning in the European Union against the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a component of the WTO agreement. In 1995, 125 countries had signed onto the agreement, which included agricultural subsidies. Goldsmith warned in the interview that this would lead to massive emigration from third-world countries and that people in western society had come to serve an economic index that harms them.
He claimed that, if the GATT were adopted, we would be:
Creating mass immigration, which none of us could control. We would be destroying the towns, which are already largely destroyed. Look at Mexico; look at our own towns, and we’re doing this for economic dogma because we’ve got to get it done by the end of December. We can’t wait another year or two to see the results. Otherwise some political gimmick like Fast Track will go out of the way. What is this nonsense? Everything is based in our modern society on improving an economic index. How do we get greater economic growth? How do we grow the GNP? The result is, we are destroying the stability of our societies because we are worshiping the wrong god, economic index.
It is economic orthodoxy today that GDP must grow and that financial stimulus is one way of doing this. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States government issued stimulus checks from the low of $600 to a high of $1,400 per person. Assistant professor Christina Patterson of the University of Chicago suggested that when Congress pumped the money into the economy during COVID, the highest growth came from the individual household. Her suggestion: “Lawmakers should give the money to people who will spend most of it, rather than sock it away in savings.”
To suggest that the COVID stimulus grew the economy is preposterous. Some of the real effects of the “stimulus” are as follows: nearly 7,000 firms are considered “zombie firms” that are laden with debt, an increase of 30 percent over the last ten years; the average price inflation rate in 2022 was 8 percent, with a high of 9.1 percent in June 2022; grocery prices increased by 20 percent. The inflationary expansion of the money supply and adjustment of interest rates by the Federal Reserve during this time caused the increase in prices. The Federal Reserve propping up the stock market led to the rise of zombie firms because of malinvestment, but mainstream economists refuse to believe their orthodoxy is wrong.” https://www.zerohedge.com/political/political-theology-maintains-state-power