The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
The redistribution of wealth is key to stability
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The redistribution of wealth is key to stabilityPadilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “Yanis Varoufakis,” Ch. 5.3.1, p. 228] SPark So if banks are the new rulers of the capitalist system and have governmental support as a result of the neoliberal policies launched by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, the collapse of the welfare state is perfectly explicable. Varoufakis argues that the welfare state ‘civilized’ and ‘stabilized’ capitalism in those years, so the neoliberal wild capitalism prevailing again in current times must once more be put under state control, especially if the working class is no longer socially insured and their wages stagnated since the introduction of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’. Consequently, to solve the current crisis (aggravated by the pandemic of 2020/21) the neoliberal narrative that maintains that wealth is created by the private sector must be discarded because, in fact, wealth is created by society (taxpayers who finance research and development) and appropriated by the owners of capital. This is demonstrated by simple facts: the internet is the result of research financed by the state but was appropriated by Google or Microsoft, the components of cellular phones and computers are also the result of state-financed research appropriated by Apple, the vaccines developed with public funding are appropriated by pharmaceutical corporations, and so on. Hence, Varoufakis affirms that the best way to stabilize and ‘civilize’ the system again would be the establishment of a universal basic income that could also help to solve the problem of the huge unemployment created by the pandemic crisis and prevent the same problem in the foreseeable future, when joblessness will increase due to automatization and robotization. Thus the need for a social safety net is not just a matter of social justice but of keeping the economy afloat by subsidizing demand. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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