Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Has "The Invisible Hand" Given Us The Finger?

'Tis the season to be jolly. The economy is giving off the cheery glow of meltdown. Today's free market advocates have one word of advice for the unemployed (and those about to become unemployed): "Suck it up!" The not-so-true believers in the free market are throwing money into the whirlwind, hoping that The Invisible Hand will be satisfied. Instead of "In God We Trust," the watchword of the day should be "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here." If this is (fair & balanced) nihilism, so be it.

[x Wikipedia]
"The Invisible Hand"

The invisible hand is a metaphor coined by the economist Adam Smith (1723-1790). Once in The Wealth of Nations (1776) and other writings, Smith demonstrated that, in a free market, an individual pursuing his own self-interest tends to also promote the good of his community as a whole through a principle that he called “the invisible hand”. He argued that each individual maximizing revenue for himself maximizes the total revenue of society as a whole, as this is identical with the sum total of individual revenues.

[x Salon]
This Modern World — "Attack Of The Invisible Hand," Part I
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Click on image to enlarge.

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Salon and Working for Change. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.

Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.

When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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