Pretty cool website with graphs and graphics on money

[R_P_A_S]

It really illustrates how money is used in our capitalist society... It puts things into perspective..

http://demonocracy.info/

[Lynx]

World GDP is around 63 trillion dollars, most of it not in ca$h :)

[TheGodlessUtopian]

World GDP is around 63 trillion dollars, most of it not in ca$h :)

Dept is still dept though, the money is used as a representation of the kind of effect capitalism has; one cannot show the average person how inefficient thing are when using digital numerals after all.

[Lynx]

63 trillion divided by 7 billion people equals 9000$ per person per year.

There have been debt jubilees in the past, and defaults, and hyper-inflation, yet life goes on...

[TheGodlessUtopian]

63 trillion divided by 7 billion people equals 9000$ per person per year.

There have been debt jubilees in the past, and defaults, and hyper-inflation, yet life goes on...

No one is saying that it is going to collapse; the graphs are for propaganda purposes in order to help better facilitate the spread of anti-capitalism.

[Arlekino]

I have difficulties to understand where the hell all paper money is gone? Went to space or somewhere. What are Magic.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I have difficulties to understand where the hell all paper money is gone? Went to space or somewhere. What are Magic.

Went to the capitalists.

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he graphs are for propaganda purposes in order to help better facilitate the spread of anti-capitalism.


Actually the information serves as propaganda to better facilitate the *stability* *of* capitalism -- it's the typical libertarian-nationalist emphasis on money supply, and makes no mention of *class* issues whatsoever.

What's of more significance from the perspective of money supply are the debt-to-GDP ratios, which the website admittedly *does* track.

But as anti-capitalists we should not forget that a successful internationalist proletarian uprising would make of all that economics *irrelevant* as workers seize productivity and dispense justice according to their / our own interests, without regard to bourgeois economic geopolitics.

[Lynx]

Fear of public debt is irrational, especially if you have little in the way of savings. Compared to the slow torture of austerity, a financial collapse would be welcome news.

If the debt-to-GDP ratio is important why hasn't Japan (200%) collapsed?

[Q]

Fear of public debt is irrational, especially if you have little in the way of savings. Compared to the slow torture of austerity, a financial collapse would be welcome news.

If the debt-to-GDP ratio is important why hasn't Japan (200%) collapsed?

Debt-to-GDP ratio is neoliberal rhetoric. What is important is the trust financial markets have in states. Core capitalist states can permit themselves a lot, given their position in the world hierarchy of states (where Japan is also quite high standing). States that are more on the periphery cannot permit such things, like we see with many third world countries and EU states like Greece. Of course the EU is a more complicated matter, given the Eurozone, where its crisis has a contagious effect of more solid countries like Italy and France.

So, it is the financial markets that rule the world state hierarchy. It is them who discipline the states along capitalist needs and, as such, the working class themselves. This is incidentally why national roads to socialism are utterly disastrous. Even Keynesian policies are completely impossible within our current context.

Given all this, it is hugely stupid to say that a financial crash would be "a good thing". If, for example, the Eurozone were to collapse (a not improbable scenario), this would mean huge economic, political and social catastrophe throughout Europe and indeed the world. A social catastrophe that immediately poses the question of barbarism or a positive alternative of transcending capitalism altogether. As the latter is not an option in the immediate sense (or, for that matter, in the coming years, given the dire state of working class political organisation right now), cheering for financial collapse is bordering reactionary politics in my view as it would possibly mean the disintegration of society, where people stop being economically active in a capitalist way and are thrown back to subsistence survival, thus disintegrating the working class as well. This is a process we already see happening in Greece.

The way forward is not to wait and cheer for the financial collapse, but organise on an international level against it, for a positive alternative. Trans-European organisation is an important step towards this. We should furthermore pick up on the battle for democracy: Expose the undemocratic nature of capitalism (where the undemocratic financial markets rule society), form the working class as a class-collective and pose a positive alternative for the future where humans, not money, rule society. Thus, we fight for universal human freedom and emancipation.

[Lynx]

A financial crash would achieve in the short term what austerity will achieve in the long term. The only alternative is the creation of another bubble, which will inevitably burst, triggering the need for even more massive bailouts.

There is no escape from this stupidity. Every so often the capitalist system must be reset. Like the Phoenix, capitalism can then rise from the ashes. When people believe, as they do now, that they are living beyond their means, then there is no hope. What is a systemic crisis is perceived as a personal, or government failure. They may even come to believe that the population must be culled in order to preserve a modest standard of living.

They believe this, not upon an evaluation of available resources in the real world, but because our finances are not in order.