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Tuesday, December 2, 2008 12:00 AM

Uncle Sam needs to go shopping. Not us

You want that discounted flat-screen TV. You want to help boost the economy. But I've got news for you.

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  • Tuesday, December 2, 2008 07:48 AM

    There's a fourth reason

    There's a fourth reason that follows implicitly from the third. The "shop now" propaganda is based on a myth: consumer spending is the driving force of the economy(s). Rather, this is a capitalist crisis, one involving artificially cheap credit gone haywire (turnover of capital), speculation with fictitious capital blown up, overproduction in some markets, and ultimately the collapse of the financial system, cuts in production of capital goods, and hence consumer ones. But to admit all this would be to expose the way capitalism and capitalists actually work. Thus, the demagogic propaganda from the capitalist press/media that lays the solution - and implicitly the continuing cause - at the feet of the mass of consumers.

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