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In the choice of the lesser evil amongst the leading pro-population-growth pro-big-business Democratic Party contenders, I had accepted the judgement that Obama was the right candidate on the grounds that he had, at least, opposed the Iraq war at the outset whilst Hillary Clinton had voted for it. However, Obama since appears to have moved closer to acceptance of the continuation of the U.S.'s involvement in the conflict, so the difference in this regard is no longer as pronounced as it once was.

However, an article by Naomi Klein written shortly after Clinton conceded to Obama, I learnt that Obama had employed Chicago School trained Friedmanite economists and had proclaimed: "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." (See Obama's Chicago Boys of 13 June 2008). That Obama would do this after the catastrophic consequences of the Bush administration's embrace of economic neo-liberalism does not sit well with his claim to represent a decisive break from the past. In contrast Hillary Clinton's article No Crisis Is Immune From Exploitation Under Bush of 6 Aug 08, which I found linked to from Naomi Klein's web site, does demonstrate that Hillary at least still pays lip service to the traditional Keynesian Government interventionist policies that had once been the policies of the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony." Obama's love of markets and his desire for "change" are not inherently incompatible. "The market has gotten out of balance," he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.

This post has been moved into the new forum entitled "Anti-colonial struggles justified in spite of Mugabe's record".

As I demonstrated in the article Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests, also linked to above, the ABC has concealed from the Australian public how the property lobby brought about the current housing unaffordabilty crisis in the first place. I agree with the author and with Dave that for them to now turn around and blame one group for this human tragedy is contemptible.

Nevertheless, I think it does need to be acknowledged that some baby boomers have been able to gain massively from housing hyper-inflation at the expense of their fellow Australians, including, it should be also be acknowledged, other baby boomers. As result of economic growth and, more so, population growth, properties brought on the North Coast of NSW for example, for as little as hundreds of dollars back in the 60's and 70's and 80's are now worth millions.

In general, I consider any relationship where someone owns a dwelling that someone else needs to live in to be exploitative. Of course, this is a simplification as I know of landlords, who have worked hard to buy properties that others are able to rent from them comparatively cheaply. Nevertheless, notwithstanding these exceptions and the fact that many elderly people are now dependent upon rental properties for their retirement income, as the author has pointed out, I still think this situation should be actively discouraged, if not altogether outlawed by the Australian government.

A good start to ending this exploitative situation would be to remove the negative gearing concession granted to property investors, or, alternatively, to extend that concession to owner occupiers.

We have to find means other than property investment to provide for elderly people.

Thanks for your comment, Andrew. Back in October 2006, on the occasion of the launch of the 3G network, Sol Trujillo, the imported lavishly-paid Telstra CEO had the effrontery to make the claim that as a result of the 3G wireless network (meaning thanks to him personally) Australia was now a world leader in telecommunications, rather than a 'follower'.

In fact, Australia had been a world leader in telecommunications since at least the 1940's. In the 1970's they had adopted a plan to give every Australian access to fibre optic broadband before the turn of the century. That lead has been largely lost thanks to government imperatives, beginning at least with the Hawke and Keating Labor governments to turn telecommunications into a milk cow for corporations, investment bankers and CEO's such as Trujillo, rather than as a service to the Australian public.

For molr information, see citizensagainstsellingtelstra.com

Subject was: steady state economics - JS

This is good news. HOWEVER, I wonder if any of the authors of this statement remotely understand what enormous change this would entail. I have to say I had no understanding of it until recently myself, but to change from a growth economy to a steady state one means forgiving all debts, because a growth economy is a debt economy. If the economy does not grow, then interest on debts incurred to finance this growth cannot be repaid.

At this stage, one has two choices: bankrupt everyone (which is more or less what happened to most of the poor in the Great Depression), or forgive all the debts and start with a blank slate, my preferred option.

This last option is in any case the only possible outcome of the collapse of the financial sector which is currently unraveling. We can either do this in a civilised manner, OR do the usual, fight wars over all of the remaining scraps.

Time will tell which way we as a civilisation decide to go, but there is no doubt we all live in interesting times!

Take the crash course at www.chrismartenson.com while we're at it... better have a strong cuppa in your hands!

Mike.

A pessimist is a well informed optimist

Whilst the stupidity of the policies of the Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Government's policy of making us all dependent upon the private motor vehicle is all too obvious to deny, I don't agree with congestion tax as a solution. I consider it regressive and hurts the poor the hardest and I can't see how it is fundamentally different from road tolls.

In any case the voters of London have recently voted Ken Livingstone out in favor of the Conservative Party candidate Boris Johnson. At the time it was reported in the news principle reason for Boris Johnson's victory was the rejection by Londoners of the congestion tax.

So, Ken Livingstone's confidence that opposition to the congestion tax would diminish over time has been shown to have been misplaced.

I think we have to advocate polices which remove any need for a congestion tax. These would include, obviously more public transport, and greater decentralisation so that the need for regular travel into Brisbane's CBD would be removed. The most critical change of all, of course, would be to end the reckless encouragement of population growth by all three levels of Government in Brisbane. Whatever gains are to be made from such a regressive charge will only be negated as they surely would have been in London by population growth (see How mass migration has devastated the social fabric of Britain of 7 Jul 08).

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