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once again, the same problem---conservatives/neoliberals speak a private language when it comes to economic questions.
they do not and seemingly cannot defend their positions.
and they confuse repetition with defense.
repeating the same old tired shit is not debating.
and the conservative/neoliberal crowd puts the rest of us in the position of having to also repeat the same old tired shit as well, because there is NO engagement with positions that do not a priori align with their own.
instead, you get potted responses, cliches, memes.
so let's try a new parlor game.
host's op is built around a couple of obvious premises.
one of them has to do with the fact of the radically uneven distribution of wealth in the united states. the second has to do with meanings and problems that are associated with this distribution of wealth.
so far there has been nothing approaching a debate about this, so maybe one can happen if we try this...
WHY is the current distribution of wealth not a problem for the neoliberal/conservative folk here?
do you think that the destribution of wealth can be read as an index of wider economic and social and politcal features of the present order or not?
if not, why not?
it seems to me that a fundamental problem is that neoliberalism almost never moves out of trafficking in ideal types. "the market" or "the free market" is an ideal type, more ideal than most in the sense of platonic ideal (it is a pure form, a fiction)...most left oriented political economists start with DESCRIPTIONS OF ACTUALLY EXISTING CONDITIONS which they then move to read as system features--and it is in this move that political factors tend to enter the picture--and these political factors surface most obviously as normative judgments about the directions or meanings of these structural features.
the bizarre result of this (well, one of them) is that descriptive analyses tend to be associated with "socialism" and ideal-typical ones with conservatives.
it's a pretty facile state of affairs, folks.
seems to me that this is mostly abotu enabling conservatives to not have to think too hard, particularly if that thinking involves breaking with their individualist-oriented "common sense" viewpoint--this despite the simple fact that ANY social analysis, even a stupid one, *starts* with the analyst having to do some work to move out of a naive "common sense" position.
so please dont bother responding with yet another round of retro-bromides about the fact that you personally dont like taxes.
it isnt saying anything.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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