The World Is Revolting Against the US Economic and Business Model: A Call to Action

[marmar]

Published on Monday, November 7, 2011 by Share The World's Resource (STWR)

The World Is Revolting Against the US Economic and Business Model: A Call to Action
The current economic system has created a massive and widening gap between a wealthy minority and the many people living in abject poverty

by Kamran Mofid and Jamshid Damooei and Steve Szeghi


Hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, employed and unemployed, black and white, men and women, have come together in a continuing and lasting global unity, partaking in a dialogue of civilisations and peoples in consideration for the common good. This global movement has risen in a thousand cities, in 82 countries on six continents, from Zuccotti Park in New York to Oakland, California; Wall Street to St. Paul’s in London; Frankfurt to Madrid, Rome to Athens, Chicago to Sydney and more, rejecting neo-liberalism as depicted in the US’s economics and business model, demanding a better, kinder and more humane world. The crises of ecological devastation and glaring social and economic inequality are pushing the planet to the brink of catastrophe. Perhaps this revolt against the US Economic and Business model is occurring just in the nick of time.

Given the context of the times, we invite you to reflect on the two very important points highlighted below:

1 - On October 13th 2011, The Economist in its ninth ranking of international MBA Programmes, ranks the world’s top 30 programmes, and identifies the top 20 to be from the US.

2 - The first Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1969. Between that year and 2011, 42 Nobel Prizes in Economics have been awarded. Out of these prizes 26 have been awarded outright to US citizens (62%) and a further 9 have been awarded to US citizens jointly with other nationalities.

At this point the pertinent Question is: if 20 of the 30 top MBAs and Business Schools are in the US, and 62% of the Nobel Laureates in Economics have been awarded to US Citizens then why is it that the US business, economic, social, environmental, healthcare, education, banking and finance, politics and international relations, Wall Street,..., and much more are all so discredited? Why is it that the policies, thoughts, and values that shape and guide the US economic system and Business school model are so unable to explain either the scope or severity of the crises we face, so ill-equipped, out of touch with, and unable to explain the revolt which is permeating the globe? ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/07-8

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. About time the world stood up against the perverse economic model here nt

[progressoid]

2. You said it, they stink on ice.

The people are revolting.

You said it, they stink on ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYpYs9GBXwY


Sorry, I always think of Mel Brooks when I see someone is revolting.

[LongTomH]

3. I particularly like this paragraph:

We should recall the wisdom of Adam Smith, “father of modern economics”, who was a great moral philosopher first and foremost. In 1759, sixteen years before his famous Wealth of Nations, he published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which explored the self-interested nature of man and his ability nevertheless to make moral decisions based on factors other than selfishness. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith laid the early groundwork for economic analysis, but he embedded it in a broader discussion of social justice and the role of government. Today we mainly know only of his analogy of the ‘invisible hand’ and refer to him as defending free markets; whilst ignoring his insight that the pursuit of wealth should not take precedence over social and moral obligations, and his belief that a ‘Divine Being’ gives us ‘the greatest quantity of happiness’. We are taught that the free market as a ‘way of life’ appealed to Adam Smith but not that he thought the morality of the market could not be a substitute for the morality for society at large. He neither envisioned nor prescribed a capitalist society, but rather a ‘capitalist economy within society, a society held together by communities of non-capitalist and non-market morality’. As it has been noted, morality for Smith included neighbourly love, an obligation to practice justice, a norm of financial support for the government ‘in proportion to revenue’, and a tendency in human nature to derive pleasure from the good fortune and happiness of other people.

[xchrom]

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