Economics of the Madhouse: Capitalism and the Market Today

W e are continually told that capitalism is the only economic system that can work. The reality for most of the world's five billion people today is that it is not working in our interests.
The World Health Organisation reports that the biggest killer in the worl<iioday is not coronary thrombosis or cancer, but 'deep poverty' in which a thousand million people live. Such poverty is a growing feature of life even in the industrially advanced coun tries, where there are more than 30 million people wholly unem ployed and another 15 million in insecure temporary and part time jobs according to the latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the United States-the richest society in the whole of human history-32 million people were Ii ving below the poverty line in 1988 ( at the height of the 1980s boom) and nearly one in five children were born into poverty.