UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Anarchism - Often confused (by idiots) with Nihilism. Anarchism is a form of political philosophy that rejects top down government control of society. Community centred communism (not totalitarian communism like Stalinism or Maoism) and small-state neoliberal capitalism are two distinct forms of political anarchism from either side of the political spectrum.
Anti-intellectualism - Anti-intellectuals are people that are not only proud to be ignorant, they also show disdain, open contempt or even violent tendencies towards individuals that actually chose to engage their brain or demonstrate their knowledge. Anti-intellectualism can be fostered for use as a useful political and economic tool to be used alongside a policy of stupification. The more prevelant anti-intellectualist attitudes and dumbed down media become in a society the more malleable and complient the general population become, through general ignorance and the fear of ridicule preventing dissenters from speaking out against transparently illogical or immoral establishment activities. The media can be used to desseminate anti-intellectual sentiments along with dumbed down content in order to create a population so lacking in thinking skills that they will act or vote against their own best interests if they are instructed to, this propaganda technique has been described by Chomsky as "manufacturing consent".
Assumption - An assumption is a lazy piece of reasoning where the individual takes a proposition for granted. Popular and economically destructive assumptions include "house prices can only ever go up", "the smaller the state, the more prosperous the economy" and "greed is good".
Audit - An evaluation performed to ascertain the validity and reliability of information; also to provide an assessment of a system's internal controls. In the world of finance the main auditing firms are known as the big four (Deloitte, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG) who form a global oligopoly on accountancy and professional services for publically traded companies and other large corporations. Up until 2002 the leading accountancy firms were known as the big five, but Arthur Andersen collapsed after being indicted for obstruction of justice for shredding documents related to their glowing audit of Enron prior to it's bankruptcy in 2001. The big four accountancy firms have been criticised for conflicts of interest on many occasions. A notable example of conflicted practice is when an accountancy firm takse on the roll of company administrator to a struggling institution but then prospective ignores rescue deals in favour of raking in huge fees for the breaking up of the company.
Austerity - A 21st Century political buzzword to obfuscate the miliatant neoliberal agenda of forcing ordinary working taxpayers to pay off the enormous reckless gambling debts and protect the interests of a tiny financial sector economic elite, through the deflation of wages, pensions, savings and property values and the destruction of state operated welfare services.
Bailouts - (Euphemistically referred to as "Interventions" by economists) Cash borrowed by government or just magically conjoured out of thin air by central banks through quantitative easing in order to buy toxic assets from reckless financial institutions in order to prevent them from going bankrupt. Taking the UK as an example, the government has built up a sovereign debt of 876 billion (58% of GDP) in order to provide all kinds of useful services (hospitals, schools, military facilities and equipment, pensions, welfare, roads, local services, libraries, courts, the police, jails, government subsidies, science & research, charitable funding, foreign aid, EU contibutions and even a few senseless foreign invasions and occupations). Between 2008 and 2010 the UK government borrowed an additional £1,376 billion (91% of GDP) in order to nationalise bankrupt financial institutions and buy up hundreds of billions of toxic debts from other stricken financial institutions. The commonly accepted methodology for paying off the interest and written off toxic assets is referred to as "austerity".
Banker - A pejorative term used to describe virtually anyone that works in the financial services industry. The huge majority of people that worked in the high street banks had little to do with the creation of the Neoliberal Economic Crisis but they often get tarred with the same brush as the super rich economic elite of the financial services industry that demanded that governments neoliberalise banking regulation to facilitate their selfish and amoral activities, then demanded that governments cover their losses in the form of (bailouts and quantitative easing) when their reckless gambling crashed the global financial system.
Big Lie - A propaganda technique described by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as "when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it" and that "if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it". A classic example of the "Big Lie" in action is the Great Neoliberal Lie.
Budget Deficit - The technical term for the amount by which governments spending exceeds government income. The Budget Deficit is often confused with Sovereign Debt, which is the total amount of government debt at the end of a fiscal period, rather that the government overspend during the fiscal period (the increase in the government debt). A budget deficit can be increased in many distinct ways, by excessive growth in the state sector, by reduced government income (tax take) due to recession or through inefficiency in state sector organisations .
Buy-to-Let landlord - Also known as something for nothing slumlord buy-to-let landlords are a breed of human parasite peculiar to the United Kingdom. Instead of investing in savings schemes or private pensions like normal people, Buy-to-Let leechers use their cash to take out mortgages on poor quality housing which they then rent out to people who are unable to get onto the housing ladder due to the fact that value of affordable housing has inflated above their means by buy-to-let profiteering. The aim of the buy-to-let game is borrow recklessly under the assumption that house prices will always go up, then get some other poor sod to pay off the debt, while they sit on their hands and let the "free money" roll in. Buy-to-Let is an investment that effectively has no productive economic output and contributes to unsustainable house price inflation. House price inflation and reckless lending by specialist buy-to-let lenders were two of the main causal factors in the credit crunch in Britain.
Capital flight - Occurs when assets or money rapidly flow out of a country. Capital flight often intensifies in the buildup to economic crises as assets and money are withdrawn out of fear of currency devaluation. Under normal economic circumstances neoliberal economic reforms such as privatisation can intensify capital flight as profits that would have flowed directly back into state funds are siphoned out of the country in the profits of foreign multinational corporations. The shifting of personal or corporate wealth into tax havens in order to avoid tax is another major contributor to capital flight. Monetary unions can also intensify capital flight, an example of this can be seen in the Argentine 1:1 defacto monetary union between the Peso and the US$, allowing the easy transfer of wealth out of the country in the leadup to the Argentine Economic Crisis.
Capitalism -An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated to create profit for the owners.There are many variants of capitalism ranging from Free-Market (Lassez-Faire) Capitalism, where private enterprises are allowed to operate as they like without state intervention, to the mixed economy, where capitalism remains the basis of the economy but the state takes control of economically vital industries (utilities) and regulates the capitalist market to prevent corruption, excessive exploitation of labour, environmental damage and the creation of speculative bubbles.
Cartel - A cartel is an agreement by supposedly competing corporate entities in which they set minimum prices, in effect creating a defacto monopoly.
Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) - Put simply CDOs are Neoliberal Economic diarrhea that virtually destroyed the global economy. A virtually unregulated economic system stuffing itself on mortgage backed securities shat out loans to millions of uncreditworthy borrowers, these reckless loans were packaged up into financial instruments that were sold as assets with AAA ratings from the Credit Ratings Agencies. Reckless banks invested hundreds of $billions on buying CDOs without even bothering to understand what they were buying, when they eventually realised that they had been sold toxic liabilities dressed up as AAA rated assets they became paralysed with fear, refused to lend any more money and and froze up the global financial sector triggering the Neoliberal Economic Crisis.
Commodification - The objective of the neoliberal political agenda is to commodify all aspects of society and the state. The endgame is to create a society in which nothing is protected from corporatist profiteering. Having commodified tangible utilities like water, electricity, gas, housing, communications and transport, militant neoliberal states such as the UK and the US are turning their attention to the privatisation and corporate commodification of justice, education, welfare, policing & defence.
Communism - Probably the most misunderstood political philosophy in modern times. When people think of communism they often think of Stalin's Siberian gulags, the East German Stasi and brutal authoritarian repression of public dissent, however these things are consequences of state totalitarianism, not of communist ideology. Some of the key principles of communism are workers' revolution against the establishment oppressors, egalitarianism and the abolition of capitalist oppression. China is a perfect modern day example of a supposedly communist state utterly abandoning any pretence at adhering to core communist principles (through their enthusiastic embrace of western capitalism) whilst retaining their oppressive and totalitarian tendencies of pseudo-communist states.
Competition - In neoclassical ecomomics competition is the feature of private sector enterprise that supposedly makes it more efficient than state sector enterprise. This claim often relies on an ignorance of the concepts of imperfect and perfect competition. Without strong regulation to prevent markets from drifting towards imperfect conditions such as monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, corruption, monopsonies or information asymmetry, the concept of competition is badly undermined. (See also - The myth of private sector efficiancy).
Conflict of Interest - A conflict of interest occurs when an person or organisation is involved in multiple interests, one of which could corrupt the motivation for an act in the other. A classic example is the government minister that sells off (privatises) large chunks of state infrastructure that they are responsible for, then goes on to work for the corporate entities that directly benefitted from the selloff.
Consumer Confidence - Consumer confidence is an outdated methodology for providing post hoc explanations for changes in market activity. When the activities of speculators in the vast unregualted derivatives market push global stock values down, the reactionary economics commentator will point to the resulting public disinclination to spend their limited disposable income in harsh economic conditions, then cite it as a causal factor in the economic downturn, effectively switching cause and effect in order to blame the general public for the failings of the financial sector.
Corporatisation - The neoliberal political strategy of introducing corporate influence and control into every aspect of the state. This is achieved through the selling off of state infrastructure to corporate entities, a process called privatisation.
Credit Crunch - The American name for the Neoliberal Economic Crisis.
Credit Rating Agencies - Credit Ratings Agencies are corporate entities which are supposedly meant to provide impartial credit ratings by determining the level of potential investment risks for financial industry traders that are too lazy to bother properly investigating what they are buying. In fact what the Credit Ratings Agencies do is provide an extremely expensive service in which they are paid by to give good credit ratings to financial products by the creators of the products. The classic example is the AAA ratings given on Collateralised Debt Obligations, which were toxic debts packaged up and sold as assets.the fact that the creators of the CDOs paid the Credit Rating Agencies for glowing recommendations on these toxic debt legacies demonstrate clear conflicts of interest. It is also claimed that the Credit Ratings Agencies are often complicit in insider trading, information on which financial instruments are about to be downgraded is extremely valuable to financial traders like short sellers.
Cronyism - The practice of appointing long standing friends or social peers to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications for the role. Cronyism is often encountered in establishment institutions and is contrary to the principle of meritocracy.
Dead Peasant Insurance (Corporate-owned life insurance) - A life insurance policy taken out by a corporate entity on one of their employees, with the company being the only beneficiary if the employee dies. The employee often doesn't even know about the existence of the insurance policy on his own life and these policies have been used as tax evasion vehicles.
Default - Failure to satisfy the terms of a loan obligation. The term default is commonly used to describe the situation in which a national government becomes unable to finance external debt repayments and begins the process of renegotiating the value of government bonds. The biggest sovereign default in economic history was the 2001 Argentine default, which was caused by a combination of factors (hardline neoliberal political reforms based on IMF dogma, extensive corruption, lack of fiscal autonomy & large scale capital flight).
Democracy - The ancient Greek concept of democracy is political self determination and palitical participation. Modern Orthodox Democracies bear very little relation to the Greek concept relying on anachronistic ballots (usually 4-7 years), creating a sequence of elected dictatorships that behave as an establishment elite while maintaining the illusion of political participation.
Democratic Deficit -A democratic deficit occurs when an ostensibly democratic organisation or institution falls short of fulfilling the principles of a democracy. Probably the most high profile example of an organisation suffering democratic deficit is the European Union, since the President, the legislature and the European central bank are all entirely unelected. The European Union can also be criticised for the fact that it simply ignores inconvenient results in national referenda and passes the same (rebranded) legislation without putting it to the people a second time. Other institutions that have been accused of suffering democratic deficit include the United Nations (Security Council veto, many unelected posts and positions), the United Kingdom (Entirely unelected upper house, anachronistic balloting system for the lower house, unelected head of state) and the United States (the democratic unaccountability of the US Central Bank; the Federal Reserve).
Deregulation - One of the key policies of economic neoliberals, deregulation is the removal of regulations that constrain the operation of market forces. While productivity can be increased by a reduction in the amount of "red tape" (excessive Bureaucracy) that businesses have to comply with, deregulation can also lead to economic meltdown as financial institutions are no longer prevented from taking excessive risks in order to boost short term profits. Deregulation of the financial sector can be seen as one of the most significant causal factors in the Neoliberal Economic Crisis.
Derivitives - Complex speculative financial instruments which are used to gamble on the changing values of variables such as stock prices, exchange rates or interest rates. At an estimated $1.2 quadrillion ($1,200 trillion) derivitives markets dwarf all of the "real economies" of the world and thanks to the neoliberal policy of financial sector deregulation, derivitives are virtually unregulated, meaning that the activities of unregulated derivitives traders can cause massive repercussions in the "real economy", given that the derivitives market is twenty times the size of World GDP, sixteen times the size of the real estate value of the world, twelve times the value of all of the stocks and bonds in the global financial system and represent $190,000 per man, woman and child on the planet. Investments in dodgy derivitives like Collateralised Debt Obligations caused the Neoliberal Economic Crisis, but it was not as if there were not plenty of forewarnings, the rogue trader Nick Leeson bankrupter Barings bank in 1995 with a huge derivitives bet on the Japanese Nikkei market and Enron used derivitives to hide their massive debts before their bankruptcy in 2000.
Disposable Income - In strict economic language disposable income is the total personal income minus personal current taxes. In mainstream usage it refers to personal income after subtracting taxes and normal expenses (such as rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, medical, transportation, property maintenance, child support & food) what economists call "discretionary income". Disposable/Discretionary income is absolutely vital to economic prosperity. If the individual has no disposable income, they become choiceless consumers, spending only on what is neccessary. if they do not even have enough income to cover their taxes and normal expenses the individual must either borrow to make up the shortfall or become financially insolvent. For most people their disposable/discretionary income creates their incentive to work. Without the prospect of rewards such as a nice holiday, some modern consumer goods, an evening out with the spouse, a refreshing bottle of beer or some toys for the kids, most people would consider working to be a pretty futile activity. Disposable/Discretionary income also plays a vital role in the economy, government measures that deliberately reduce the disposable income of the masses (such as "austerity" or regressive taxation) will undermine many sectors of the wider economy (the tourism industry, consumer goods industry, restaurants & entertainment, alcohol and luxury foods, etc.).
Dissent - One of the most important factors in a functional state. The way dissent is controlled is one of the measures of totalitarianist control within a society. If a state does not allow educated specialists or radical thinkers the ability to express their concerns and agitate for change it will almost certainly remain stuck in a defunct dogmatic paradigm.
Dogma - An established belief or doctrine which is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from by the practitioners or believers. Dogmatic principles are most commonly found in religious contexts, however they also appear in many non-religious organisations. Neoliberalism is the contemporary orthodox economic dogma, which relies on uncriticised assumptions such as deregulation always increases productivity, the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector, the trickle down theory and the simplistic Homo Economicus theory. When systems built upon these neoliberal assumptions collapse the IMF and other neoliberal organisations always ready to come up with post hoc and revisionist explanations to assuage the doubters.
Dumbing down - See Stupification.
Economic Alchemy - See PFI
Egalitarianism - The political philosophy that advocates that all people should have the same equality of opportunity despite race, religion, ethnicity, sex, sexual preference, gender expression, political affiliation, economic status, social status, and/or cultural heritage. The concept of equal justice relies on the concept of egalitarianism, as do the political ideologies of socialism and communism.
Establishment (the) - A term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority. Members of the establishment are most often selected through nepotism, inheritance, shared privilege, personal wealth or cronyism rather than through meritocracy or democratic election. Establishment institutions are easily identifiable by the propensity of priviliged and wealthy individuals, people with shared social backgroungs (Tony Blair & Lord Falconer, The Eton Mafia), people unqualified for their roles and people in purely inherited positions (Royal families). Establishment institutions are notoriously conservative and often actively oppose democratisation or meritocratic institutional reforms.
False Economies -A short-termist action to save money that ends up costing more money in the long term. As an example, if a government sacks 100 tax inspectors that each earn £40,000 per year, this would save the state £4 million in short term payroll costs, however if these inspectors average a collection of £200,000 per year in unpaid taxes (£20 million between them) the £4 million payroll saving will be obliterated by lost tax revenue. Other factors that must be considered in order to avoid false economies when governments are making layoffs include; lost tax revenue on employees earnings, potential benefits payments to newly unemployed workers, damage to support industries (suppliers, cleaners, caterers etc) and the sociological consequnces of large scale unemployment.
Fearmongering - See the politics of fear.
Fiat Currency - Paper money which is not directly convertible in value to any other thing (ie gold) and only retains value due to government decree. In 1971 the United States abandoned the direct convertibility of the Dolloar to gold, since then all of the major reserve currencies of the world have been fiat money. One of the principle properties of fiat currencies is that their values can be manipulated by Governments or central banks via adjustments to interest rates or by expanding the currency reserves through money creation schemes like quantitative easing.
Financial Instability Hypothesis - An economic theory presented in 1992 by Hyman P. Minsky in which he differentiates three different types of investment; hedge, speculative and ponzi. Heavily deregulated economies tend to build up bubbles of more unstable speculative and ponzi debts based on assumptions (such as house prices will carry on rising indefinately, Credit Rating Agency valuations are accurate). If the authorities attempt to impose financial constraints in order to control inflation, many of the speculative investments turn ponzi and ponzi investments are exposed as junk. This hypothesis seems to accurately predict the Neoliberal Economic Crisis and also explains how the bailouts and quantitative easing measures have shored up many of these unstable speculative and ponzi investments at the expense of creating huge government debts and stagflation.
First Past the Post -The archaic voting system used in the UK Westminster elections which has been repeatedly manipulated by ruling Conservative and Labour governments (Gerrymandering) in order to ensure that no other parties get a look in. The system is nowhere as fair as the name suggests, there is not actually a winning post as such, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency gets elected, no matter how low the percentage of the eligable vote. This lack of proportionality means that in strongly Tory or Labour areas a vote for any other party is an absolute waste. The system encourages the main political parties to concentrate the vast majority of their efforts on a minority of marginal seats and creates a situation where a party that claims 23% of the votes, end up with only 8% of the Parlimentarians.
Fiscal Autonomy - The amount of freedom a nation has to make economic interventions through manipulation of their currency. Lack of fiscal autonomy can be seen as a causal factor in many economic crises (the Gold Standard effect, Argentine debt crisis, Eurozone crisis). One of the core principles in neoliberal economic reform is to strip fiscal autonomy from democratically elected governments by handing control of fiscal policy to central banks such as the Federal Reserve (USA), Bank of England (UK) and the European Central bank (Eurozone).
Free Market - Economic systems that are free from state intervention, one of the fundamental concepts of neoliberal economic theory. The concept of a "perfect free market" is an impossibility as without basic rules of law markets would descend into anarchy and conditions in which only the strongest and most brutal can survive. Since the "perfect free market" is impossible the term "free market" is commonly used to describe economic systems in which government interventions are limited to the prevention of criminality, protection of property rights and the enforcement of contracts. Proponents of free market economies tend to appeal to the concept of the invisible hand, the idea that markets naturally self organise into the most efficient form, but this idea is contradicted by the concept of perfect competition, as unregulated markets have no barriers to the creation of forms of imperfect competition such as monopolies, cartels, corruption or information asymmetry.
Gerrymandering -The practice of manipulating geographicical political boundaries in order to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, racial, linguistic, religious or class group. The gerrymander strategy is often used by the incumbent government in order to award themselves disproportionate electoral representation. The anachronistic balloting system in the UK is particularly amenable to gerrymanderers and over the process of decades the two main political parties (Labour & the Tories) have rigged the system so that in 2010 they received 87.8% of parliamentary seats, with the backing of only 65.1% of votes cast (a mandate from only 42.4% of the registered electorate between both of them).
Greed-is-Good - See Neoliberalism
Hedging -Hedging is considered the safest way of making investments, it involves making a number of parallel investments designed to offset potential losses.
Heterodoxy - A socio-political situation in which a single ideology holds absolute socio-economic control over a society. Examples include religious fundamentalism (the Catholic church in Europe, the Taliban in Afghanistan), totalitarian regimes (Nazism and Stalinism) and neoliberal corporatisation of the state over the last 40 years.
Homo Economicus -
Illusion of Choice -
InsiderTrading -
International Monetary Fund (IMF) -
Interventions - An establishment euphamism for bailouts.
Justice - [equal justice & commodification]
Leftist - A pejorative term used to describe anyone with more left-wing views than the individual using the phrase. Traditionally the "leftist" would be someone that believes in socialist or communist principles, however with the rise of neoliberalism and the shift to the right, people who speak in favour of centre ground/moderate right wing capitalist ideologies such as the mixed economy or regulatory capitalism are often dismissed as "leftists".
Liberalism -
Mandate -
Manufactured consent -
Meritocracy -
Mixed Economy -
Modern Orthodox Democracy - A nebulous political concept which is distinct from the ancient Greek concept of democracy as political self determination and political participation. Modern Orthodox Democracies rely on anachronistic ballots to create a "democratic mandate" of a certain length (usually 4-7 years), creating a sequence of elected dictatorships. Once the government is in power the population have little or no way of preventing legislation that they fundamentally oppose. Modern Orthodox Democracy is intended to create a false government mandate through by citing the disempowing democratic process as the only legitimate means of expressing dissent. In many supposedly "democratic" systems all of the mainstream political parties represent near identical ideologies, leaving the voter with no real choice other than to vote for the least bad candidate or not vote at all. Far from the noble ancient Greek aim of creating a society which enables the citizen to contribute to the running of the state, Modern Orthodox Democracy is actually a means of reducing real political participation and self determination to the absolute minimum level of widely interspersed general ballots between near identical candidates.
Monopoly -
Moral hazard - A situation in which a party insulated from risk behaves differently from how it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. A good example can be seen in the reckless investment strategies of the financial sector in the early C21st, which led to the Neoliberal Economic Crisis. because western financial institutions are underwritten by governments, a reassuring expectation that they would be bailed out if things went wrong is created, allowing investors to feel more secure in making extremely risky investments.
Mortgage -
Neoconservativism -
Neoliberalism -
Neoliberal Economic Crisis - The name of the spectacular ongoing financial sector meltdown that began in 2007 and has resulted in the collapse of several giganting financial institutions, the racking up of unprecidented levels of government debt in order to finance bankers' bailouts and the commencement of mad money printing scemes called Quantitative Easing. the causes of the economic recession can be traced directly to neoliberal economic policies such as deregulation of the derivitives market, reduced fiscal autonomy of elected governments, self defeating government austerity programmes and the socialisation of private financial sector losses.
Nihilism -
Oligarch -
Oligopoly - A situation in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. Oligopolists can collude to form price fixing cartels due to the lack of competition.
Orthodoxy -
Paradigm -
Political spectrum - The political spectrum is often described as a simple line progressing from Communism on the far left, through socialism, the centre ground of liberal democracy
Ponzi -
Post Hoc -
Post War Consensus -
Private Finance Initiative (PFI) -
Private Sector Efficiency - The myth that private sector enterprise is by definition more competitive than state productivity. Cartels, monopolies & quasi-monopolies, cost of borrowing, profit motive, bribery & corruption.
Privatisation -
Productivity -
Profit Motive (the) -
Profiteering -
Propaganda -
Property Bubble -
Pseudo-communism - Virtually every attempt at communism has ended up totalitarian heirachy.
Pseudo-science -
Psychoquackery - Psychological sciences.
Quango -
Quantitative Easing -
Quasi-Monopoly - Cartels, etc
Randian -
Recapitalisation - Making ordinary working pople pay off the reckless gambling debts of the uber-rich economic elite in the financial sector by handing the banks free money and making the general population pay it back through deliberate deflation of their assets and cuts in their services.
Revisionism -
Scaremongering - See the politics of fear.
Shadow Tolls -
Shill -
Short Selling -
Socialism -
Sovereign Debt -
Speculation -
Speculative Bubble -
Spin -
Small-statism -
Stagflation - A portmanteau of the words stagnate and inflation used to describe an economic situation in which the economy is suffering low or negative economic growth and the inflation rate is high. A good example of stagflation can be seen in the UK as a consequence of the central bank policy of holding interest rates artificially low and printing extra money through quantitative easing creating inflation while Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne imposed "austerity measures" that caused the economy to flatline. Both high inflation and austerity lead to reductions in disposable income, which can in turn intensify the economic crisis, through falling demand.
Status Quo -See Paradigm
Stupification -
Tax dodging - [The act of evading or avoiding the payment of (corporate or personal) taxation through the use of elaborate accountancy scams.]
Tax Haven -
The politics of fear - A political strategy aimed at achieving particular goals by manipulating the will of a population by inciting fear. The strategy was summed up in this statement by the Nazi aviation minister Hermann Goering "The people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." Many people have claimed that the "war on terrorism" is an example of governments hyping up a threat in order to facilitate their own political goals (such as the invasion of oil rich states or the restriction of civil liberties).
Third Way - Blairism worst of both worlds / mixed economy good
Totalitarianism -
Tribalism - Political tribalism is the tendency for particular communities to continue voting for the same traditional political party, even when that party has become virtually indestinguishable from the rest of the mainstream parties and actually works against the interests of the communities that habitually vote for them. This tendency is extremely harmful for the communities, since there is absolutely no incentive for the politicians to serve the communities best interests, when they know that they will continue to gather the votes no matter what they do. The classic example of blind tribalism is the post 1994 Labour party in the UK, who relied on the support of millions of left-wing working class voters and the financial support of the trade unions but spent 13 years cosying up to wealthy bankers and "business leaders" and following a Thatcherite-lite set of economic principles.
Trickle Down Economics - One of the many flawed arguments used in support of ideologically driven neoliberal economic policies. The idea is that if the government actively encourages the development of a super-rich economic minority, much of their wealth will "trickle down" to the rest of the population. In economies that have experienced decades of neoliberal policy the evidence clearly shows that if anything, neoliberalism creates a "trickle up effect" with the wealthy elite taking ever increasing shares of the national wealth then avoiding their social obligations through the widespread use of tax dodging scams, resulting in a huge widening of the wealth gap.
Underwriting -
Utilities -
Utilitarianism -
Vulture Fund -
Wealth Gap -
