Socialists!

I just got back from the first meeting of Socialist Alternative. Brendan and Amanda also showed up, so it was a gleeful time all around. I took from it the fact that economic downturns occur because of overproduction. I should've been able to figure this out before, but I'd never really thought of it this way. The guest speaker, who'd spent a few years establishing a socialist platform in Bolivia, claimed that it would take $40 billion annually to provide food, shelter, education, and health services to the entire world. "Wow," I thought, "that doesn't seem right."

I just checked out the 2010 US budget and we're allocating $45.685 billion for education alone. So... either I misheard, the speaker was wrong, or the US is vastly mismanaging its tax revenue. I'll put my money on one and three. (FYI... ever wanted to see what the US budget looks like without staring at a huge list with lots of numbers? Look at this!!! Pretty graphics!)

Of course, the driving thrust of the speech was the utter failure of capitalism. Is it fair to look at the current recession like this? I took an introductory economics course here at Oberlin two years ago, and while I learned loads and gained a thorough understanding of how the current US and world economic systems function, I was left with the impression that economists don't actually know what's going on in a capitalist system. The chock everything up to the "invisible hand" and have no idea what's happening when 2000 lb. October 2008 anvils fall on their heads. Maybe socialists don't know any more than capitalists do, but I'm looking forward to seeing how their competing theories play out. Not that any political party besides Democrats and Republicans will ever come into existence in the US or anything.