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sooner or later some forms of economic planning are going to become necessary, whether at the local level in terms of micro-credit or at larger-scale (regional, state) levels. i don't see federal government planning as an option in the states as a function of the size and complexity of the country--but that only means that the old-school models have to be entirely rethought. it's pretty clear that the present anarchic system of neoliberal laissez-faire is not generating the conditions for coherent lives across class divisions. it's just not happening---you can see the radical expansion of the american prison-industrial system as an index of this incoherence, if you care to look.
and most conservative ideologues avoid thinking at a scope that extends too far beyond the end of their noses or maybe lawns.
this bill seems a basically necessary step that addresses problems of re-integration into the everyday world for a particular social group--but their problems are not isolated.
of course it's hard to know from statistical indices when you "deal with" structural unemployment by not counting it, when you "deal with" inflation by not counting prices fluctuations that cause inflation, etc. but everyone knows that there is a Problem. grand narrative number 1--the "transfer" of people from manufacturing jobs into "the service sector" across the reagan period and beyond--from well-paying jobs into less well=paying jobs--the expansion of debt as a device to keep pace with patterns of authorized consumer desire, etc etc etc.
increased economic planning is inevitable, it seems to me, even if at this point it's not on the table politically--the question will be how it's controlled, not whether it'll happen.
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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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