On the Contrary

Yes I read both the “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” and cheered for her chief protagonists, Howard Roark and John Gault, and felt the requisite amount of moral outrage against the rules of government that were hindering the great plans of these industrialists and engineers, and cheered for the individual freedoms that would allow these characters to build a colossal world.  But it was a work of fiction and it failed to recognize the realities of our world, one of which is that without the equalizing hand of government, many talented and gifted people would never get a chance to rise to the heights of greatness.

Her view of government was that its primary purpose is to protect individual rights including property rights.  But when you looked closely at this philosophy, it protected the individual rights of the rich and connected, not the rights of the poor and the average citizen to a good education, healthcare, or a decent wage.  These kinds of rights intruded on the rights of her fictional characters to fully express their individualism.  Today her idea of laissez-faire capitalism has coming crashing down around our heads.  It turns out that those “Masters of the Universe”, being free to pursue ever more wealth, simply robbed the rest of us and bankrupted our economy while they lined their pockets.  Even Allen Greenspan, the great guru of this line of thought, finally admitted he had made a mistake.  This failed economy is what Republican economic philosophy has brought us.

And it has worked so well.  From The Bill Moyers’ Journal, Bill reported:

“Or this: the 30-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – or OECD – is out this week with a new report on global gaps between rich and poor. Guess which great industrial nation had the fourth highest inequality in incomes – behind Mexico, Turkey and Portugal? Right. Us.”

Or said another way, wealth is being spread around, but to only a very few wealthy and it is hurting our economy.  The New York Times, in a lengthy editorial endorsing Barack Obama for President, noted:

“The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain — a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in the Reagan revolution” — is still a believer.”

But they missed an even more important point about the reality of Republican economic philosophy, which was reported by Mr. James K. Galbraith on the same Bill Moyers show:

“What I mean is the people who took over the government were not interested in reducing the government and having a small government, the conservative principle. They were interested in using these great institutions for private benefit, to place them in the control of their friends and to put them to the use of their clients. They wanted to privatize Social Security. They created a Medicare drug benefit in such a way as to create the maximum profit for pharmaceutical companies.”

It is not just that government should not impede business, but that it no longer represents the citizens, but corporations and then works to favor them over the citizens.  This is the true impact of Reaganism and the Republican revolution.  It is centralizing wealth among a few and destroying our economy.

So with the recent events, you would think that we have learned our lesson but I am not so sure.  Note that Mr. Paulson and President Bush talk about these “temporary” measures we are taking and emphasis is on temporary.  Most Republicans, I believe, think this is just a bump in the road on the way to restoring the Republican economic ideal.  “Some people got greedy, but as soon as we can restore the markets, we can return to business as usual.”  How else do you explain John McCain’s economic proposals?

What I think you are going to hear is the call for a return to the basics of Ronald Reagan.  Except if anybody was paying attention there were no basics.  Andrew Bacevich, in his thought provoking book, “The Limits of Power”, notes:

“He (Ronald Reagan) vowed to put America’s economic house in order.  “you and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, think that collectively, as a nation, we’re not bound by the same Limitation?”  Reagan reiterated an oft-made promise “to check and reverse the growth of government.”  He would do none of these things.  In each case, in fact, he did just the reverse.  During the Carter years, the federal deficit had averaged $54.5 billion annually.  During the Reagan era, deficits skyrocketed, averaging $210.6 billion over the course of Reagan’s two terms in office.  Overall federal spending nearly doubled, from $590.9 billion in 1980 to $1.14 trillion in 1989.  The federal government did not shrink.  It grew, the bureaucracy swelling by nearly 5 percent while Reagan occupied the White House.”

The point is, it has never worked and now we are facing new challenges that few of us understand.  Americans think in clichés and proverbs and do not deeply examine them.  After almost 30 years we are buried in conservative economic conventional wisdom, which we have seen, is failing us miserably.  Taxes aren’t necessarily bad if they pay for the things we need, and they aren’t too burdensome.  Creating a climate for the rich to get richer does not lead to an increased standard of living for all of us.  And of course, government is not necessarily the problem.

The future we face is going to require government to be a major player in restarting our economy and then making the investments in our citizens and our infrastructure to prepare us for a vibrant economy in the future.  Socialism is not bad if it means access to education for everyone, reliable and affordable healthcare, and good transportation systems so that goods and services can move freely.  The fight is going to be with the old guard who will want to reign in government spending and limit its ability to pull us out of our mounting economic crisis and to invest in our future.  For the near term, deficits don’t matter.  We have to develop a plan led by government to put our people back to work, keep them in their homes, and increase their ability to compete in the 21st century.  To get there we will have to jettison conservative economic philosophy and the Republicans who have championed it.

I am afraid.  The election is going to depend upon what has been estimated as the 10% who are undecided voters.  Now after almost a year of campaigning how can there be undecided voters?  The difference between the candidates is striking, not only in tone, but in philosophy of government.  So the choice is stark.  One wants to continue the policies of the past, only with less “waste, pork, and earmarks” and other says the government is fundamentally going in the wrong direction and government needs to play a much stronger role in choosing the strategic direction of this country.  So it is not like these two candidates have similar policies and we are just trying to decide which would be more effective in implementing them.  Basically you either like the way things are, you are benefiting from our present course, and you think a little house cleaning will sort things out, or you want a whole different direction.  So why are there so many undecided voters?

It is fairly apparent these 10% are neither deep thinkers, nor have any real understanding of the political choices.  They are going to vote based upon how they “feel” about a candidate or which one promises them more goodies/free rides.  When you hear independent voters interviewed, as we did after the first debate, it was truly frightening.  Most of these people had no in depth understanding of the issues and were reacting to how they “felt” about who looked stronger.  Strong is good, but if your strength leads you in the wrong direction, it is wasted energy.  It leaves the nation’s future in the hands of those least equipped to judge where the nation should be heading.  These are the voters most susceptible to the argument of free rides.  By that I mean that with just some minor adjustments and no sacrifice on your part, we will be up and running in good working order in no time.  This is the argument of the Republicans.  This is the argument of the magical and invisible hand of the marketplace.  This is the argument that lower taxes will fix everything.  This is the argument that says why are we bailing out Wall Street?  Where is my handout?  This is the argument that says we need to stay and win in Iraq, but you need do nothing as we send our troops over for their fourth rotation and we will pay for this war by borrowing from China.

A prime example of this mentality is the belief that all of our problems can be solved by rooting the waste out of our government.  The present attack on earmarks is a perfect example.  As Barack pointed out in the debates, it is easy to get headup about these personalized appropriations, but they only represent a very small fraction of our spending and their elimination will make negligible impact on our spending problem.  The problem is one person’s wasteful spending is another person’s lifeline.  In the earmark debate John McCain has referred to the Bear DNA study as an example of this kind of waste.  In another attack, Barack Obama criticized the earmark funding of the study of the mating habits of Alaskan king crabs.  The problem is both of these studies produced valuable scientific information, one on de-listing the black bear as an endangered species, and the other to help an important fishing industry become sustainable.  Sure there are frivolous earmarks, but not all are.  They are cheap shots to appeal to that 10% that doesn’t think very deeply.  The key to earmarks, which is a minor problem, is to make them fully visible, not to outlaw them.  But that is beside the point and distracts from the real issue, do we have the self-discipline to reign in our feelings of entitlement and live within our means?

The issue here that neither candidate has addressed is that Americans have a strong sense of entitlement to their life style.  Even though they can’t afford that life style any more, they are unwilling to make the hard choices about what is important and what needs to be jettisoned.  We don’t want to pay taxes, but we want government there when we need them.  We want government to spend less, but when it comes to cutting programs, there is a great out cry.  I watched as one of my conservative friends who is now facing a severe medical crisis in his life, became appalled at the sorry state of medical insurance and wondered why doesn’t government do something?  This is the same guy who voted in George Bush and is against any increase in taxes.  So the demand for more and more services with less and less sacrifice on our part to pay for them is a non-partisan issue.  On a personal level we buy more and more on credit.  We need to have these things now and payment is in the future.  If you look at our balance of payments, we are borrowing to acquire all the stuff we have to have, and we are not bringing in the income to pay for them by selling our own stuff overseas.  As Andrew Bacevich pointed out in his highly insightful interview with Bill Moyers last week (Bill Moyers Journal) we all say we support the troops, but are not willing to make one sacrifice to support them.  Just keep on shopping.  We are on a path to total self-destruction.

So as we enter the last month of this campaign, the final outcome rests in the hands of that 10% who is clueless and looking for who promises them the best free ride.  They are not looking for the candidate to paint an honest picture of what we need to do in the future to get back on track, and the sacrifices they will have to make if we are to recover.  What they are looking for is who will promise them most convincingly that things will be all right and you don’t have to do anything.  They are looking for their bailout.  In this equation, it is weighted toward the Republicans.  I fear for this country’s future.