I believe that it was Winston Churchill who popularised the phrase" We learn from history that we never learn from history". The above observation is tragic but unfortunately true of at least some members of the US congress.
A group of Senators is proposing the adoption of a windfall profits tax reminiscent of the one passed over twent five years ago when Jimmy Carter was the president. The result of that experiment turned out to be a gift to OPEC producers. Why are we determined to have a replay of this failed policy? Could it be that Homo sapien sapien have failed to evolve to the level required to learn from history? Stay tuned.
1 comment:
Hegel would certainly like the idea that we haven't evolved enough to learn from history, but potentially could (sorry - I'm a philosophy major).
Personally, I don't think we've evolved nearly as much as we think, and for the most part, our vast and glorious accomplishments amount to pretty much nothing positive. If there were no buildings, our wonderfully 'civil' society disappeared, and every scientific innovation and technological invention were gone, I think there would probably be fewer starving people and more happy people. For all our ego tripping, we really haven't come very far. Paul Francis does a good job of capturing the ignorance and hypocrisy which pervades even our everyday language: "Friendly fire - that's a funny term, like civil war."
As far as I can tell from my minor knowledge of economics, high profits in any sector will only serve to increase the polarization of wealth, which, in turn, seems to have an effect on things like the distribution of food, extent of education, environmental degradation, etc. I think that Aristotle was probably right, profit is not part of a legitimate economic system (that's very heavy paraphrasing).
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