Economist Joseph Stiglitz speaks to the Wall Street Occupiers

As reported at Slate, economist Joseph Stiglitz spoke words of support to the Occupiers of Wall Street:

You are right to be indignant. The fact is the system is not working right. It is not right that we have so many people without jobs when we have so many needs that we have to fulfill. It’s not right that we are throwing people out of their houses when we have so many homeless people. Our financial markets have an important role to play. They’re supposed to allocate capital, manage risks. But they misallocated capital, and they created risk. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism; that’s not a market economy. That’s a distorted economy, and if we continue with that, we won’t succeed in growing, and we won't succeed in creating a just society.

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To spend or not to spend

According to this article at MSNBC, the failure of U.S. consumers to spend lots of money has screwed up the U.S. economy:

For the time being, it looks like American consumers are AWOL. And until they come back, don't expect to see any real recovery in economic growth and the job market. Consumer spending typically accounts for roughly 70 percent of the U.S. economy.
But here's another way of looking at things. Annie Leonard has made a good case that out-of-control consumer spending has been wrecking our society, as she explains in "The Story of Stuff." Leonard now offers a free school curriculum based on The Story of Stuff. It is called "Buy, Use, Toss?"

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Art and the subversion of money-values

I am extremely fortunate to be in a city (St. Louis) where a group of dedicated civic leaders arranged for the opening of a new public charter school for the arts opened last year. It is called Grand Center Arts Academy; it has three grade levels this year--sixth through eighth grades--and it will add one grade level each year, eventually including grades six through twelve. How unusual and wonderful that one can find such a publicly-funded arts oasis at a time when so many schools are cutting their arts classes in order to concentrate on "essentials." In the September/October 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, Jay Griffiths is tired of defending the arts. Why defend them any longer, when you can use the topic of public funding of the arts to slash at the deep rotten core of the belief that money is the measure of all things? Here's an excerpt from what Griffiths has to say in his excellent short article, titled "The Exile of the Arts" (This article does not appear to be available online at this time).

Disregarding art's transcendent value, modern states ask the arts to justify themselves in commercial terms, money the only measure to calculate a simile, to price the melody of a violin, and to calibrate the value of transformation. A phoenix must write its own cost-benefit analysis. While art tells multiple stories, knows the plural values of beauty, dream, and meaning, money tells a monstrosity. Money should never be the judge of art, but its servant: funding it, supporting it, aiding it. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hostility against the arts today is precisely that they are implacable witnesses against this terrible lie of our times: that money is the measure of all. Art refutes this lie, disentangles "money" from "values," and argues with its deepest authority that there is another sky, intimate and boundless, open to all, where the poet can tow a star across the liquid river of night, like a child with a toy boat on a string.

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