Absent Wealth and Employment

[myturn@xxxxxxxx (John Gelles)]

	    IN  OUR  CURRENT  ERA  WEALTH  AND
	EMPLOYMENT  ARE  ABSENT  IN  NATIONS
	  WHERE  VISITORS  FROM  OUTER  SPACE
	          WOULD EXPECT TO FIND THEM

	Warren Mosler has pointed out that genius is at work
	estimating the future price of bonds that might in a
	more rational time work at curing cancer.

	The history of the immediate post W.W.II period, when
	a national strategy to produce what we needed was
	forsaken for one to produce what was profitable (and
	free from strong bias in favor of obvious needs), and
	when low interest was forsaken for higher interest,
	has also been on our collective mind.

	These two questions -- why waste genius on government
	bond price forecasting when government bonds are a
	mistake to begin with -- and why make interest rates a
	game within the necessary game of national rivalries when
	the latter game is already as complex as a game can be,
	-- these two questions, answered by wrong turns in
	history, are at the bottom of  missing wealth and
	employment.

	They are missing in nations who might have been conquered
	by German National Socialism and Imperial Japan.  But
	instead of being conquered and exploited, they did themselves
	conquer their enemies -- and now refuse to conquer their
	own bad habits.

	Can the love of money or the love of scholarship, assuming
	these are to a degree opposites, be blamed for our bad
	habits?

	Most of our bad habits persisted from 1940 through 1946.
	What was different was the respect we had for setting
	necessary objectives and reaching them.  Until some
	modern nation can do this successfully, over many decades
	and in time of peace, it is unlikely that we will get smart.

	But I will not be surprised if we are the nation to do it.
	We have the philosophy -- pragmatism.  We have the
	economics -- Keynesian.  We have all the ingredients.
	Visitors from outer space would be scratching their
	heads -- why can't they add 2 and 2?  Fold your
	thumb in the palm of your hand -- the fingers jutting
	out make it easy.

	
               John Gelles    http://www.myturn.org
                 mirrored at  http://www.rain.org/~jjgelles/
                 Economic Rights financed by Credit protected from
                    inflation by Automation and compulsory Saving.