Capitalism at a Crossroads | Money and the Church | Meeting Of The Closed Minds

APRIL 24, 2019  /   SUBSCRIBE
 
 
 

 

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

– John Maynard Keynes

 
 
 

 

To The Richer Go The Spoils: At first blush Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) seems an unlikely sidekick for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Khanna has deep ties to Silicon Valley’s tech industry where he represents and fundraises from tech billionaires. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a democratic socialist who garnered national attention by railing against “the handful of billionaires” who “control the economic and political life of this nation.” But Khanna also represents people who are not tech giants — seniors, teachers, and blue collar workers being left behind amidst stagnant wages and rising costs of living.

For decades America’s innovators and business elites were hailed as the country’s salvation. It was believed the endless series of products their companies produced would keep the US economy churning and its gross domestic product climbing, while their philanthropic efforts would fix some of the country’s most vexing problems. Government’s role was to stay out of the way and just let the capitalists do what they did best.

Now Khanna is seeing that consensus being shattered. For the first time capitalism’s future is a source of growing angst for America’s business elite. The 2008 financial crisis may have revealed the weaknesses of American capitalism, but it was Donald Trump’s election and the pent-up anger it exposed that left the billionaire class fearful for capitalism’s future. Distress is being felt in some of the most rarefied circles, including Harvard Business School, where last fall a highly influential billionaire investor delivered what he described as a “plaintive wail” to the business community to fix capitalism before it was too late.

Nationalistic and anti-immigrant sentiments permeate the country’s divisiveness, of course, but Khanna sees the divisions primarily through the prism of capitalism’s shortcomings and economic inequality. In Sanders, Khanna found a candidate who shared his diagnosis of America’s most intractable problems, those stemming from the failures of unrestrained capitalism. He’s signed on as Sanders campaign co-chair. “We can quibble over his plans to solve this issue or that issue,” Khanna says. “But I have no doubt that if Bernie Sanders was in the White House, he’d wake up every day thinking, ‘How do I solve structural inequality in America?’’’

 
 
 

 

This Greenhouse Grows Inequality: A peer-reviewed paper by two Stanford professors, an economist and a climate scientist, showing how climate change creates winners and losers among nations around the globe, was published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Global temperatures have risen nearly 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the industrial age. The study aimed at quantifying what effect that increase has had on national economies and the global wealth gap. The study found that while rich countries, especially those that have produced a lot of emissions over the past 50 years, have benefitted from global warming, poor countries have lost out. It’s estimated that the gap in per capita income in the richest and poorest countries is 25 percentage points larger than it would have been without climate change.

One of the largest countries hit the hardest was India. Considering the years 1961 to 2000, India would have been 30 percent richer had there been no global warming. One of the authors explained that this study quantified the “dual benefits” that rich countries, particularly industrialized ones in the cooler latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, had enjoyed—first being able to consume fossil fuels to grow their economies, then reaping the benefits of warmer temperatures. “Other countries have not had either of those,” he said. (NYT)

Meeting Of The Closed Minds: North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin are set to meet for the first time this week on an island in Russia’s far east. Kim is expected to seek Putin’s support in his stalled sanctions-relief talks with the West, while Putin will be hoping to polish his international negotiations credentials. Pyongyang may also seek investment or humanitarian aid from Moscow. Russia is opposed to North Korea further developing its nuclear program, but is also critical of Washington’s use of sanctions against Pyongyang. The meeting will signal publicly that North Korea is not isolated. (Guardian)

 
 
 

 

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Big Pharma’s Addiction Delivery Service: In simple terms, corporate greed is responsible for the opioid crisis in the US. There are the drug manufacturers like Purdue Pharma, the doctors who ran pill mills, and the rogue pharmacists who churned out opioid orders by the thousands. But the underlying financial muscle that has driven the spread of prescription opioids comes from distributors — companies that act as middle men, trucking medications of all kinds from huge warehouses to hospitals, clinics and drugstores. The industry’s giants — Cardinal Health, McKesson and Amerisource Bergen — are all among the 15 largest companies by revenue. Together they distribute more than 90 percent of the nation’s drugs and medical supplies.

New civil suits from attorneys general in New York, Vermont and Washington State accuse distributors of brazenly devising systems to evade regulators, including advance warnings to pharmacies at risk of being reported to the DEA. Washington’s attorney general recently said at a news conference: “How do the CEOs of these companies sleep at night?” Fortunately, the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the DEA are wrapping up an investigation that will likely result in the first criminal case being brought against a major opioid distributor, Rochester Drug Cooperative. (NYT)

 
 
 

 

Thou Shalt Not Scuff My Yeezys, Capitalism and the Church: The 29-year-old graduate student lives in Texas, works in technology, and tithes to his church. He’s also behind the unsettling Instagram page showing preachers in expensive sneakers, which first appeared about a month ago. He happened to be watching videos one day of Christian musicians performing on YouTube and noticed one of them wearing a $700 pair of Yeezy Boost 750s. Looking a little further he found more prominent pastors and worship musicians in expensive sneakers, and started the account. Subsequent commentary critical of the preachers exposed what has long been a tender subject — money flowing into churches and how it’s spent — like some ministries buying mansions for their pastors, or spending $65 million on a Gulfstream jet. But underneath those extravagances is the subject of materialism itself, causing many young Christians to wrestle with how they present themselves to the world and how that squares with the faith’s teachings. The founder of a non-profit that helps people struggling with addiction and depression says: “I don’t think it lines up with who Jesus was.” About one particular pastor who was wearing Gucci, the founder said: “That is a status symbol. That is vanity.” (NYT) Additional read: The Church of Living Dangerously: How One of America’s Biggest Pastors Became a Drug Runner for a Mexican Cartel (Vanity Fair)

 
 
 

LAST MORSELS

 

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

– Adam Smith

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