The New Existential Threat by Paul Moore

When this humble teacher advised that the global economy was over a few months ago it was greeted with mild amusement by most I'm sure, if it registered at all. After all who am I? The end of the global economy was, of course, not my original idea. It belongs to the "peak oil" pioneers. People who saw that the planet's supply of oil would peak and then decline. And that an economy built on a fantasy, that oil would serve as a perpetual and cheap source of energy, would fail.

The failing has begun and much smarter people than me have begun to talk about it. For instance, NPR's Morning Edition spoke with Canadian economist Jeff Rubin about his new book 'Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller' Take a listen here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104466911&m=104517033

For more about the book go here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104466911

Why discuss this matter on a site that seeks to defend the principle of universal public education across the US? Because this transition will have a profound effect on public education and what's left of American democracy.

For instance the biggest threats to public education in the age of globalization, the Business Roundtable, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the wife and spawn of Sam Walton, and Mayor "Little Ceasar" Bloomberg are going to go into decline. The Green Dot's, the KIPP, the TFA's, and Eva Moskowitz' Harlem crusade are soon over. The $18 billion Gates lost this year is just the first measure of his fall. He's gonna live like us soon! Of course I exaggerate, Gates would fake his own death before he'd work for a living. But the point is a realigned capitalist economy will deal these folks out.

The US economy is going to be run out of the banks, out of Goldman Sachs' offices. That's why the US treasury is being transferred there now. And the social order, if it can be maintained behind massive joblessness and the end of pensions and health care, will be the responsibility of the military. The public schools face a new existential threat, fascism, the last refuge of capitalism from an economic system that actually works for humanity.

Paul A. Moore