Summary
Noam Chomsky: Requiem for the American Dream
Ten Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power
In this indispensable book on income inequality, Noam Chomsky exposes the key actors of neoliberalism and provides a clear, cold, and patient insight into undeniable economic facts. What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power that we find in America today? These principles are very clear: suppressing democracy, shaping ideology, redesigning the economy, shifting the burden to the poor and middle class, attacking mutual human solidarity, allowing regulators to be guided by their own interests, electoral engineering, using fear as well as state power to keep the masses under control, manufacturing consent and marginalizing the people. In the book Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles and offers us additional
excerpts from important texts that influenced the development of his thoughts and led him to the conclusions presented.
"Take Reagan, he was an icon of neoliberalism, free markets and the like. The greatest protectionist president in postwar American history. He doubled down on protectionist barriers trying to protect incompetent United States management from superior Japanese manufacturing. Financially he subsidized the banks instead of letting them pay for themselves. Moreover, during the Reagan era, the state grew stronger along with the economy. I should add that his "Star Wars" program was openly promoted in the business world as a kind of cash cow from which the money leaked out. But this only applies to the poor: do not expect any help from the state, not the solution, and so on. This is neoliberalism in its essence. It has a dual character that we can follow back through economic history. One rule applies to the rich. The opposite rules apply to the poor."
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