2020 & Beyond
In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism.
- Washington Post,
By J.M. Hamilton (4-28-2016)
Today, let’s kick it off with a quick
quiz, and we’ll make it multiple choice.
Question: Which political
party supports: an Ayn Rand style economic policy, which leads to job
killing monopolies and cartels; war without end; unlimited money flowing into
political campaigns, from SuperPACs and 501(c); an opaque government, where a
tremendous amount of information is classified and shielded from the public’s
view; free trade agreements that export U.S. jobs offshore, and establish
extra-judicial courts, where multinationals can sue sovereign nations for
threatening or harming corporate profits; mass incarceration for victimless
crimes, like drug possession; Wall Street uber alles; job crushing M&A fueled by hyper-accommodative Federal Reserve policy;
the surveillance state and the military industrial complex that consumes more
than half of Federal discretionary spending; and Federal Reserve monetary policy driven by the stock market and the financialization of the American economy???
Answers:
a) The Republican
Party;
b) The Democratic
Party;
c) The Plutocratic
Party; or
d) All the above
If you answered, “d) All the above,”
you’d be correct. The idea that we live
in a one party state, owned and operated by the plutocracy, should not be foreign
concept to any keen observer of Presidents Clinton, Bush (W), or Obama. In other words, the more things change, the
more they stay the same. Namely, thanks
to neoliberal economic policies, the ends always justify the means when it comes to M&A, concentration, dereg, government and regulatory capture, tax cuts for high net worth individuals and corporations, offshore tax havens, and
free money for the connected, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.
The second a politician pushes back on
the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, and any other trade organization, or lobbyist, out comes the same refrain: any action contrary to
Big Biz’ demands will kill jobs, make U.S. companies uncompetitive, harm
stockholder value, and/or crush quarterly profits. And politicians from both political parties –
due to the campaign finance system – swallow it and run with it, that is if
they want to remain viable for re-election.
Outside of fifty to sixty-year-old social
battles over reproductive rights, LGBTQ, and race issues (which the plutocracy continuously
stirs up at the local, state and the federal level, via owned politicians),
there is little difference between the two political parties when it comes to
economic and foreign policy. To keep the
public distracted, and the illusion/pretense of choice between the two political
parties - the corporate run news media
keeps the hot button social issue of the day front and center,
meanwhile the nation is run by and for the aristocracy.
If you doubt me, examine closely the
right-wing Clintons and their policy of triangulation, essentially adopting and
co-opting the GOP’s pro- big business push.
Still doubt me, examine the plaudits Madame Hillary Clinton has received from right-wing conservatives and neocons, among them: Dr. Kissinger, Richard Perle, Rupert Murdoch,
Charles Koch, & Lord Vader himself, Dick Cheney. How bad is it when the elites are abandoning
their party, for an, alleged, Democrat?
Pretty bad. The GOP elite have
always used white evangelical protestants, during the election season; and once
in power, conveniently abandoned their base, only to stir up both the base and
the aforementioned social issues at the next election. Notice how these social issues never quite get
resolved: race, gender, reproductive issues, gay
and civil rights. That’s by design. It’s called divide & conquer, or misdirection, and it is a
strategy as old as time.
The reason why these highly worthy social issues are never quite put to bed is they provide a distraction from the true prize: economic and civil liberties - combined, or what FDR labeled as the four freedoms.
The reason why these highly worthy social issues are never quite put to bed is they provide a distraction from the true prize: economic and civil liberties - combined, or what FDR labeled as the four freedoms.
Read my post released prior to the outcome of the 2012
Presidential election, calling the race for Obama – when by all rights he
should have lost due to the economy. In Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy,
JMH correctly noted that the demographic trends in this country would yield
Richard Nixon's, and the GOP’s, Southern strategy useless and inoperable in future
national elections. Doubt me
still? Read my post from 2012, titled
ESTABLISHMENT, predicting that
through maleovent neglect, and evisceration of the middle class, voters would
rise up and turn against the economic and political establishment, and seek out
outsider candidates.
How did my prediction turn out? See Messrs. Sanders and Trump. Witness the rise of fascism in Europe.
Where are we going w/ all this? The point of today’s piece is, it’s really not
too late. The Plutocracy can save
itself from its worst impulses and tendencies, and restore the social
contract. Crony-capitalism and the exploitation of government, by the private sector and the elite, can be reverse
engineered for the greater good. The solution to the neoliberal economy (aka the Ayn Rand economy) is called a mixed economy, the best of both worlds:
real capitalism, w/ competition strictly enforced and monitored by the
government (even free market deities, Smith & Hayek, acknowledged the need for
government to set capitalism’s rules of the road), and social benefits paid to
the people (the 99%), instead of those least in need (the 1%). As James Carville said, it really is all about the economy.
Other areas in desperate need of attention: Crony-capitalism, monopolies and cartels
can be broken up, which in turn should create more jobs and opportunity (if
M&A is largely designed to eliminate expense and labor redundancies, the
reverse is also true). The idea of
utilizing financial engineering to buy back stock to boost ROE, and management
pay, can be reverse engineered, turned around, and utilized to enhance worker
pay and aggregate demand across the economy.
Big Biz can insist upon a tax overhaul, where they pay at a lower published
tax rate (instead of no rate), and lift some of the tax burden off the middle
and upper middle class. Free trade
agreements could be negotiated, and rewritten, with a bottom-up focus, instead of a top-down approach. The separation between money and state is key. As for the massive global
(private and public) debt, there’s two choices:
write downs, or negative yields to eliminate the debt service load and
principal. Neither is appealing, but the
alternatives are continued stagnation, subpar economic growth, or worse, default. And finally, government privatization, and our global wars, and our drug war, must all come to end.... they are a huge drain upon the nation's resources.
Why would the wealthy do all this? It’s called self-preservation.
Millennials aren’t afraid of socialism
and seeing as how the elite pig-out at the government trough, daily…. Well, socialism
seems to work pretty damn well for the 1%.
Millennials aren’t afraid of Big Government or government programs. Again, the youth are only following the
legacy of Wall Street bank bailouts, and multinational handouts courtesy of
free trade agreements. Bank CEOs
strutted around like the world owed them something, or were they merely doing the Goddess’ work(?), while their Great Recession destroyed the global
economy. The public saw all this but the millennials paid a disproportionate price.
If we continue on our present course, if
the neoliberal/laissez faire economy fails to produce jobs and opportunities
(which it will), the latest generations will insist that a living wage be paid to all citizens – by the government, whether they are employed or not. After all, how long will millennials tolerate
unconscionable & usurious college debt, non-living wages, and cohabitating w/ their parents? (Maybe it's destiny: Even with real capitalism – with real
competition enforced by the government – increasingly relying upon robotics,
automation, globalization, and A.I., perhaps it's only a matter of time before we
are all unemployed?)
Think Messrs. Sanders and Trump are
novel, and outside the political norm?
If the establishment blows this election off as an anomaly, and continues
on its present course, the political extremes will, more than likely, only amplify
and magnify, in 2020 and beyond.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2016
Correction: Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy was released on election day, not on election eve, as previously described.
Correction: Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy was released on election day, not on election eve, as previously described.