Monday, April 25, 2011

Sustainability

"Sustainability" is usually used as a word to describe preservation of the environment and to address the growing ecological crisis that could lead to the destruction of the planet. Yet, as I often argue in this blog, there is another kind of sustainability that must be addressed if we are not to say goodbye to democracy -- and that is the sustainability of popular sovereignty against the threats of neoliberalism, neoconservativism and emerging and solidifying plutocracies. A great article by Tax expert David Cay Johnston on April 13 (Portland The Week) provides solid evidence to support the claim that tax changes since the ascendancy of Reagan have accumulated predominantly at the top (at the individual and corporate level). How long can the current system be sustainable as inequality increases, the middle class is squeezed and the number of poor increases not only in the periphery and semi-periphery countries but in the Western core itself. We have already seen these tensions explode across Central and South America and in a more muted sense in America and Europe. But what will happen if predictions of a new "jobless economy" really come true? Will people continue to support a system that can't meet their minimal needs? Can ideology continue to function as the material and symbolic violence of poverty continue to increase? One could argue, as Polanyi did in the 50s, that the only logical responses to this reemerging crisis are fascism, communism or a New New Deal.

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