Teach kids Greenspan + God = higher profits?
Review of Age of Turbulence - Part 3 (of 3)

By Larochelle & L'Hirondelle -- Nov. 2007

"Lower taxes = higher revenues"
-- Lorne Gunter, National Post Monday, September 24, 2007

"Adam Smith's invisible hand still delivers the goods."
-- Alan Greenspan

"The invisible hand is God..."
--R.J. Kilcullen "Adam Smith: The Wealth Of Nations," 1996

"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits"
--Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate Economist,
New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970

In a relatively short span of time, the British author J.K. Rowling went from being relatively poor to being a billionaire by writing books than hundreds of millions of kids wanted to buy.

However, instead of following Rowling's leadership and producing products that hundred of millions of customers want to buy, "economic scientists" such as Alan Greenspan work hard writing words to prove that poverty is caused by the failure of individuals to behave according to the laws that economists invent.

In other words, one way to describe a free market economist is 'a malcontent who obviously can't take yes for an answer,' as in "yes, Dr. Greenspan if your book 'The Age of Turbulence' sold 350 million copies and it was turned into a movie that was a smash hit at the box office then you could be on Forbes' list of billionaires."

The ethical problem with "The Age of Turbulence" is that it's written from a 'God's Eye Point of View,' where economists such as Greenspan behave identical to Moses coming down from the mountain with "The Ten Commandments" in hand.

For example, in regard to the "Iron Law of Wages" on page 395 of "Turbulence" Greenspan writes, "Manufacturing jobs can no longer be highly paid, since it is consumers who at the end of day pay the wages of factory workers."  

("A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits" stated David Ricardo in 1817 in his "The Iron Law of Wages." However, this "Iron Law" was an invention to justify "starv[ing] the public body back to health", Linda McQuaig, "The Cult of Impotence", pg. 196.)

In other words, raising wages "equals" raising prices, thus canceling out workers' wage increase. Yet, Greenspan got a "whopping $8.5 million advance from Penguin" for "Turbulence" (June 3, 2007, New York Post). An internet search also reveals that Greenspan gets paid $100,000 to $150,000 a speech. This might be perfectly okay if he was letting the world know about "scientific laws" that the world's politicians could turn into constitutional law to end the murderous scourge of world poverty.

In regard to the staggering number of people living poverty, the supreme paradox of the "lasseiz-faire free market economic system" is that it is profoundly "undemocratic" in that children, their mothers, elderly women, the chronically ill, the permanently injured and differently-abled citizens would not give their democratic consent to laws that force them to compete with able-bodied adults in the free market's business games.

Therefore, the tragic farce of "economics as a science" is that Dr. Greenspan is "earning" millions of dollars for "working hard" blaming kids, moms, grandmas and the chronically ill, permanently injured and differently-abled citizens for causing their own poverty.

As a "lasseiz-faire free market economist," Greenspan gets paid to blame all of the world's economic problems on government interference in the free market. But Abraham Lincoln spoke of "government of the people, by the people for the people."

In reality, Greenspan gets paid to blame 'us' voters for world poverty, for not voting for politicians who will cut more taxes, and more spending, to create more billionaires. In other words, Greespan asserts his Supreme Authority, but wants to wash his hands of any blame for the world's "Age of Turbulence."

This article was first published in the Lower Island News Fall and Winter 2007

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