The solution to the world’s most pressing problems lies in the domain of the uniquely human ability to discover truths about the real physical universe and apply that knowledge to improve living standards, culture, and the rate of achievement of new discoveries. Lyndon LaRouche, the American economist and many-time candidate for U.S. President, developed a school of economics based on the non-quantitative, transcendental quality of fundamental discovery, and built a movement dedicated to creating an economic system coherent with the creativity and dignity of all human beings.
“The LaRouche Plan to Reopen the U.S. Economy: The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs” is the best guide to creating an economic future and its contents deserve study and reflection. An aspirational, achievable vision for the future – with international cooperation between the United States, Russia, China, and India – is desperately needed. And there is no time to wait!
Enormous economic dislocation is shaking, or threatens to shake, the trans-Atlantic world. In the United States, temporary measures to increase unemployment benefits, ban evictions, postpone student loan payments, and pause mortgage payments are currently set to expire over the period from July through October. Orders for machine tools are one-third lower than they were a year ago, a decline which began before the coronavirus caused large-scale economic slowdowns.
Chaos is being deliberately unleashed in the United States through the violent protests over the recent weeks in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the establishment in Seattle of the so-called Capital Hill Autonomous Zone, which is being set up as a provocation to President Trump, as a challenge for him to use the armed forces, if necessary, to ensure the ability “to enforce the laws of the United States.”
Across the world, the coronavirus pandemic continues to expand. Australia, China, Croatia, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, and Thailand (to list some examples) have the virus under control. But Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and Venezuela continue to set new records, every few days, for the number of newly confirmed cases within their borders. In the United States, areas that were first hit the hardest, such as New Jersey and New York, have seen the number of new cases plummet as a result of the awareness of the dangers posed by the virus and good adherence to health measures. But the number of cases continues to soar in such states as Texas, Arizona, and, following Memorial Day, Florida. In the four weeks since Arizona lifted its stay-at-home order on May 15, the number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators has increased by 400%.
Strategic tensions continue as well: on Friday, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee has approved $6 billion for the Pacific Defense Initiative, aimed at the military encirclement and isolation of China; on Wednesday, Russian bombers passed within 8 nautical miles of U.S. territorial airspace; and the U.S. insistence of including China in negotiations to extend the New START treaty to limit nuclear weapons arsenals could allow the agreement to lapse in February 2021.
These tensions cannot be overcome simply through protest, whether it is about police violence, the dismantling of patriarchal capitalist systems of heteronormative systemic racism and oppression, or face mask ordinances as an assault on everyone’s God-given right to take in oxygen.
Forget slogans. Take time for serious reflection about the fundamental differences between the human species and all other known life, and about the natural process of creative thought which occurs solely in the individual human mind. Work to make these characteristics the central source of your identity and of the economic system guiding our path into the future.
