An economic system is evaluated, historically, according to how well or not it serves the
society in which the economic system functions. In other words, how well does an economy produce
goods and services on the one hand and then distribute them to the people in the society
on the other. And what we're looking here to see is how the organization of production
and distribution (producing goods and services and distributing them), and how does it take
care of a population's basic economic needs: to be healthy, to be safe, to have enough food, clothing
and shelter and transport to lead a decent, happy life. How well is the economy performing, in that
sense. Okay, let's take a look then at the United States particularly, which is our interest and
let's talk about it. Well, we have a big GDP. We produce a lot,
but our growth over the last 30, 40, 50 years has been very...How shall I say? Modest.
The growth of goods and services production has gone up on the average two percent,
one and a half, two percent per year. Now, compare that with the People's Republic of China.
It's been going up six to nine percent a year. That's why China has become the great other of
the United States economically speaking right now. And many other countries fall in various places
between the absolutely remarkable economic growth of GDP in China relative to the modest growth
here in the United States. Distribution? There is a dramatic change. Before 1970, the United States
was less unequal than most of the countries of Europe. That is, we distributed goods and services
less unequally. We didn't give a huge share of our output to a tiny minority
at the top the way most European countries did. That was in back in 1970. Today, all of that is
different. We have outrun Europe. We are now the most unequally-distributed, advanced,
capitalist country compared to the Europeans. We have for most of the last half century
distributed the overwhelming bulk of output growth to a tiny fraction of our people, which is why we
have mega billionaires (a thousand of them, of people in this country who are now or nearly
a thousand billionaires), some with hundreds of billions of dollars. And how has a society
with modest economic production and really awful, unequal distribution, how has it done on that
measuring rod I mentioned about public health, safety, food, clothing, shelter and so forth?
Well, the record of the United States is not good. There's no other way to describe it.
We were as a society unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. The reality was that the distribution
meant we didn't distribute goods and services in order to have tests, and ventilators, and masks
in vast quantities located in secure, healthy warehouses all over this country to be available
for the public to be safe in the event of a virus. We knew what viruses were. We had a horrible,
viral pandemic a hundred years ago. We know that SARS and MERS have been here in recent years. We
know what you have to do to contain a viral pandemic. We knew what we had to know, but we so
badly distributed what we're capable of producing that the companies that could have produced the
ventilators, the masks, and so on didn't do so. They went and did something they found to be more
profitable. We didn't manage our health and safety really well. The record of the United States
measured for example in COVID deaths is one of the worst in the world. A rich country
produces a lot, but this is not a successful economic system. We then had a depression
in 2020 and 2021. More than half of the labor force in this country was unemployed, some
for only a few weeks, some for the whole time. But half or more of your working class of your
labor force unemployed is an economic disaster we are not yet near feeling all the effects of.
That's not a successful performance either. And now the last one, affecting us now
after two years of a horrible pandemic and a horrible depression, we are slapped in the
face as a people with an inflation running out of control, costing all of us. It's too much,
but it's most importantly a sign of a system that isn't doing well.
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