Adult Education

Like the swallows and Capistrano, global corporate authorities gathered once again in secluded Davos Switzerland this past week. For the rest of us the corporate media represents it as the World Economic Forum with pronouncement made and issued for, you guessed it, the rest of us. Dear Leader attended, of course. Before leaving he too issued a pronouncement representing things in the US as being just all around boffo. We should all be very happy. Aren’t you? Why Greta Thunberg was there is anybody’s guess as she doesn’t fly in that rarefied milieu. Someone, who does, attended along with his boss. US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took offense at Thunberg’s lecturing the corporate elites. “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin suggested that Greta Thunberg isn’t the best person to give advice on economic issues related to climate change — at least not until she goes to college. At a press briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mnuchin criticized the 17-year-old environmental activist’s call to divest from fossil fuels immediately, according to the Associated Press. Asked how such restrictions would affect the U.S. economic model, Mnuchin responded, “Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused,” the AP reported. He paused before adding that his comments were “a joke.” “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us,” Mnuchin said. Thunberg, who has been outspoken about the lack of progress on climate change, tweeted Thursday that “it doesn’t take a college degree in economics” to realize that our remaining 1.5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up.” She did not name Mnuchin but said in a subsequent tweet, “either you tell us how to achieve this mitigation or explain to future generations and those already affected by the climate emergency why we should abandon our climate commitments.”” (‘Who Is She?’ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Questions Greta Thunberg’s Economic Expertise at Davos by Sanya Mansoor for Time, 1-23-20). For those of you keeping score at home Thunberg dropped out of Sweden’s version of high school to embrace activism (without much “formal” education in that, either). Mnuchin has a BA from Yale, a father who is a partner at Goldman Sachs, and had his first job with the investment bank Salomon Brothers while still a student at Yale. Secretary Mnuchin feels no need to learn anything about what we all share in common while Thunberg considers each day an opportunity to learn more. Analysis surmises that eventually she will be forced to give an accounting for why she chose to go to Davos. “The corporate state, however, is in trouble. It has no credibility. All the promise of the “free market,” globalization and trickle-down economics have been exposed as a lie, and empty ideology used to satiate greed. The elites have no counterargument to their anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critics. The attempt to blame the electoral insurgencies in the United States’ two ruling political parties on Russian interference, rather than massive social inequality – the worst in the industrialized world – is a desperate ploy. The courtiers in the corporate press are working feverishly, day and night, to distract us from reality. The moment the elites are forced to acknowledge social inequality as the root of our discontent is the moment they are forced to acknowledge their role in orchestrating this inequality.” (Chris Hedges, America: the farewell tour)