Keeping The Poors Poor

One more variation on earlier posts: The neoliberal/privatizing/austerity regime yields virtually identical outcomes wherever it's implemented. Specifically, you can't really repair the damage done by an authoritarian political system such South Africa's in the era of apartheid, for instance, if you don't replace the economics of apartheid with more equitable fiscal policy that allows the millions of poor blah people to claw back some of the wealth that was stolen from them over the decades, and use the money to provide better housing, education, heath care, etc. for them. Because if you don't, nothing will substantively change. Sure, they've got the right to vote now, and a blah President and a blah legislature, but it's all kind of a fake freedom since all of the money needed to build a more civil society has been parked overseas in private accounts, or used to construct walled compounds for the rich white people. This probably helps to explain why South Africa is still a very poor country, twenty years after apartheid, despite sitting on a mountain of natural wealth. Martin King was right---you can't really have true political justice without economic justice as well.

---Baron V