Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiDistract and Disenfranchise
I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.
Let me explain.
In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.
Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.
And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today's rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren't going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it's harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that "some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind."
But today's Republicans can't respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won't let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.
The Republican Party's adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can't offer domestic policies that respond to the public's real needs. So how can it win elections?
The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn't the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?
But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.
Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida "felon purge," which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.
Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with "voting while black." Former staff members of the Justice Department's civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia's voter ID law to Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.
The good news is that all the G.O.P.'s abuses of power weren't enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren't really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.
A week before the Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment to universal health care. And it's hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in response.
Paul Krugman is Professor of Economics at Princeton University and a regular New York Times columnist.
© 2007 The New York Times
44 Comments so far
Show AllBecause we're just going in circles. What I expected to hear is that you are willing to pay taxes as long as you get to decide how they will be spent. That is, to protect your person and property but not to help the less fortunate.
You keep insisting they are responsible for their condition due to their own choices, but for myself, having been part of that group and having lived among them, I know better. The vast majority of them work hard but are spinning their wheels. They are the most heavily taxed group in the country since they do not have access to the buffers available to the more well off. They cannot afford health care insurance, so they pay the full retail price when they do get it (my dentist is reimbursed $12 for tooth cleaning by the insurer, but charges $72 to the uninsured). Their educational opportunities are limited. If they are forced to borrow money, and more recently, they are, especially payday checks, the interest rates would make you faint. Have you ever been in a ghetto supermarket? You wouldn't even want to touch that produce. You may want to argue these points, but I know what their lives are like, and I've heard their stories. Your little acts of charity are a drop in the bucket of this problem. We're the richest country in the world. Why do we tolerate homeless hungry children? Our Vietnam vets offered up their lives for us, they are the largest percentage of our homeless population. Our mentally ill are living on the streets, since Reagan closed the halfway houses they were living in when moved out of the mental hospitals. Poor personal choices? Give me a break. And if you're complaining about having to stretch your income, it's because you, like the rest of us, are feeling the pinch of our national wealth being grabbed by the richest 1% of Americans at an increasing rate. They're the ones who don't have to pay taxes.
Why don't you answer WmC's question?
I'm glad I could answer your question Kathy...why is it I don't get an answer to mine in return?
"Trade is at an all time high and citizens on both sides enjoy the benefits..increased value flow in the form of money in one direction, in the form of the corresponding goods and services, in the other. Trade benefits both sides in a trade."
This, with all due respect, MtnGoat, is NOT evidence that the average American or the average Mexican has benefitted from NAFTA.
So let me ask for the third time: Do you have any data that backs up your contention? If not, people are justified in considering your pronouncements "rants". Or maybe bull shit is the more apt term.
Just checking. You told me what I exected to hear.
there is no system that can provide all things to everyone. it doesn't even exist in europe, as I pointed out already. despite all their programs people are *still* born in lousy circumstances and do not overcome it. the problem is not having enough stuff..it is all in the head, in ideas, in actions and choices.
it is convenient to blame them because it is objectively correct to 'blame' people for what they are actually responsible for.
please note I have already shown your connection between blaming them, correctly, and absolving myself of responsibility for them...is false. I already said I felt a responsibility for them. These items are not mutually exclusive. I can recognize their responsibility for poor choices and still feel they need help I am willing to work to provide.
I am not certain you are living by christ's teachings, since in no place in the new testament does he say to impose your will on others. he says to live your responsibilities yourself and ask others to help freely. He never, ever, said impose your will on others and make them help.
Why would I think there should be no police? People should not take their own retribution, that is what courts are for.I oppose being taxed for non objective functions that take people's rights instead of protecting them. The role of the State is to protect people from violation of their rights. Not to manage society for social goals. That is the role of each of us, without the aid of a hired bully to impose our wills and initiate threats.
I am still interested in if you think people should be like that you impose your will on them.
MtnGoat now you are atributing to me words I never said. I do not consider people in poverty because of poor choices, but because of a system that doesn't provide opportunities for them that people born to better circumstances have. Even Ross Perot saud these people need a helping hand out of poverty. But it's very convenient to blame them for their condition, it absolves you of any feeling of responsibility for helping them, which you obviously don't have. I consider your attitude very unChristian, although it appears you aren't one anyway. I'm not either, although I consider Christ a teacher, and try to live by his teachings.
I'm curious, do you think there should be no police? I can see you oppose being taxed, and I wonder if that means no money spent on any public programs of any kind whatsoever? So you think people should just take their own retribution against anyone who harms them or their property? I'm just wonering what kind of a world you think this should be.
So....should others like you imposing your will over them?
If you do not hold people responsible for their choices, then you are treating them as mindless creatures unable to make their own decisions. You are treating them unequally, disrespecting their minds and their ability to make decisions. Look at what you are arguing...they are not responsible for the decisions they consciously make. Are these adults children?
I don't just 'see' you as imposing your will over others...it is, in fact, exactly what you are doing, and exactly what you intend to do. There is no issue of perspective here...whatever your reasons for what you do, that you intentionally impose your will over others via the use of threats, is what is occurring. It's not a point of view.
It's precisely what you intend and *exactly* why you support it...as you said, whatever it takes. Unless you impose your will, people will not do what you want. How can you evade responsibility for that action, when the entire idea is to get what you want over what they want?
Let's be honest and admit that I see you as imposing your will over others... precisely because that is what you are backing, and you do it because it serves your ends. I see it not because it is some trick of perspective, but because it is real, because you intend to do it, and because you support doing it. If it doesn't sound good...that's because it is not. It's holding your wants over theirs. I have a difficult time understanding how anyone can view this as anything but the most selfish act, ever...when it is backed by threatening them.
Another point..I never said it was easy to hold corporations accountable. it never is. It should not be easy either, in the sense that it could be abused. people everywhere, inside and outside corporations, deserve the same protections.
MtnGoat, true, you didn't call anyone lazy, but the irreconciliable difference in our thinking is you blame them for their situation by their "poor choices" and I do not. This leads us down entirely different paths regarding solutions. You hate mine, as seeing it as imposing my will over yours, and I see yours as no solution, just a continuation of the problem.
It's not so easy to hold corporate criminal acts accountable as you suggest, and our current administration is doing it's best to make it impossible.
By the way, I wasn't talking about drug "side effects" when I referred to unsafe products. I was talking about improperly designed products that were knowingly released into the market, or pain medication causing heart attacks, not iodine allergies.
You are right about one thing, MtnGoat, we will not agree about social responsibility. I believe as a society we have a responsibility to help the helpless and you believe that only individuals should help the helpless - if they feel like it - and if not, tough. You see my position as extorting your money and I see your position as everyone for themselves. I see the unfortunate as needing a helping hand and you see them as lazy and deserving their fate.
You have attacked me on a couple of points that need clarifying. First, in an earlier post when I labeled corporate behavior sociopathic, I wasn't referring to making money, although I didn't define the sociopathic behavior until a later post. Of course I don't consider "making money" sociopathic, although some of the means they use certainly are. Next, you said poverty is inevitable. I don't agree. True, it's not eradicated in Europe, but in some European countries it is at 1%-4% which is a far cry from the 25% in this country. It's gone up under the more recent administration policies. Uner the policies favored by people of your persuasion, we will end up with a country of working poor, filthy rich, and very little in between. Not the kind of country I want. Fortunately not the kind of country most Americans want either. However, if Cheney doesn't turn this into a police state, we will continue to live by majority rule and take your taxes.
One more thing.
"The role of the State is to protect people from violation of their rights. Not to manage society for social goals."
That decision, the role of the state, is decided by majority rule, since that is how this country works. And the majority does not agree with your idea of the role of the state. Thank heaven, it would be a hellish place if it did.
Of course I do, WmC. Trade is at an all time high and citizens on both sides enjoy the benefits..increased value flow in the form of money in one direction, in the form of the corresponding goods and services, in the other. Trade benefits both sides in a trade. Now you will most likely not accept this, but I'm not particularly inclined to pursue it with you given that instead of viewing my comments as explanations and reasoning, you simply label them 'rants'.
I disagree with kathy, but she is at least willing to examine the comments in detail as shown by her detailed disagreements. You simply deride them as rants, not indicative of someone interested in answers as something to think about, instead of the pursuit of the ones you appear certain you already have.
Open trade without fraud between willing producers and buyers is a good thing. No one has the right to stand between the peaceful exchange of money for goods in an open and consensual exchange, nor bar products produced from entering in an effort to insure one's own profit from a captive market, as people who support tariffs and restrictions attempt to pursue. Janes hammer factory is not owed my labor nor my money just because it is in Ohio and Juan's is in Mexico. She has no right to raise my costs to profit herself by attempting to raise the cost of deals she is not a party to.
there you go then, katyodad. look at how your arguments are laced with what you want...which you will then attempt to impose on others. whatever it takes, right?
piece by piece what you support uses what corporations cannot, actual force, and literally forces harm on those who are not burdening society, who do plan and make good decisions. Every penny you use from us reduces our ability to care for our families. every penny also reduces my ability to aid people on a level where we are close and can see who and what needs help. Every choice you insist on centralizing reduces our ability to tailor our actions to our needs. there is apparently no solution to our agreed upon end goal, because you will continue to pursue what creates it's own opposition, all in pursuit of what you want.
Your judgement others aren't doing enough is followed by your willingness to do whatever it takes to get your ideals directed upon others to serve your ends. It's about you, how you feel, what you think, what you value...while you intend to use everyone for your ends. All of this action for your own goals is backed by the willingness to literally threaten people to get what you want.
What you see as 'collective' to you mean something that must be forced upon others. I simply do not agree with this formulation and it appears that due to your choices we will wind up locked in eternal resistance to each other.
you yourself defined seeking profit as sociopathic initially, now you are modifying that statement, which I appreciate. however you are then continuing on with examples that are not each wholly relevant or cognizant of the complexities of real life which you apparently feel I likewise miss. Yet there is NO product which is absolutely safe. None.
Every drug has side effects and every drug which benefits many may also kill some. your statements have the appearance of being willing to forgo many benefits at the cost of killing or harming those who drugs help, because you a appear to be unwilling to allow the risk to those they don't. Some of what you attack is actual criminal behavior, yes, such as improper disclosure. But sweeping statements about 'unsafe' drugs doesn't take into account the benefits of drugs..along side the risks. Iodine has many beneficial uses yet would kill my wife. Should this be banned, are the companies producing it making unsafe products? Yes, factually they are... but not for everyone.
yes, it is only possible to hold them accountable when they are dragged through the courts...yes this is how a system of law must function. courts are the only way to actually settle responsibility in some process based manner which respects the rights of all. Enron's actions where criminal, but their criminality was discovered by private means and the market...not govt action, in a due diligence process preceding a trade deal. Something not required by govt, but a check and balance of markets using profit seeking motives to uncover risk.
Also in this case, you are not mentioning CA's disastrous action in implementing deregulation that wasn't..and applying regulations practically custom designed to insure serious problems when energy prices fluctuate.
My perception of the problems of the poor is based in the fact that choices have outcomes. We have discussed some of the reasons for this, but the choices made whatever the reasons are still the choices made, and still will have their poor outcomes. Ignoring this will not lead to any solution you seek. If it did, poverty would be long since cured, since if it is merely an issue of resources, the trillions spent here and in other nations would have eliminated the issue long ago...instead of merely paying to support poverty.
After all, actual solutions would result in the end of the need for subsidies in the first place, as all concerned became productive members making good choices and the need to subsidize them ended. This is not what occurs, showing that the 'solution' arrived at is merely paying to support the behaviors....not changing them fundamentally.
I'd like to point out,MtnGoat: In all your lengthy rants you have not supplied one single SHRED of evidence that demonstrates the average American's or the average Mexican's economic status has been improved by NAFTA.
Do you actually HAVE any?
Makes me think of Reagan insisting that charity must be private,although he personally chose to opt out (until caught at it). You know, Reagan loved to tell his little stories about this or that success story (like the handicapped woman who got a job (which happened to be very temporary), but ignored all the others who couldn't even afford their medicines. I believe as a society we have a collective social responsibility to help those who can't help themselves, that it's criminal to not feed hungry children even if they have parents who are supposed to be doing it and aren't for whatever reason. Peehaps you're content to choose your own charity efforts, feel you're doing your share as you see it and consider that the rest of the need out there isn't your responsibility and sleep well at night, satisfied with yourself, but I'm not. Our particular society benefits some far more than others (especially those born to wealth) and that's life, but we shouldn't leave anyone to drown. So just what is your solution to our agreed end goal, since it requires a joint effort which too many people, left to their own devices, decline to contribute to?
And corporations do not meet the definition of sociopathic behavior for wanting to make money, but for polluting, creating hazardous working conditions, marketing unsafe products, and on and on, and LYING and covering up their egregious behavior. Don't say they don't, you know they do. Look at the tobacco companies. Pharmaceutical companies hiding dangerous side effects while people die. Look at Ford, hiding the fact that Pintos exploded when rear ended. Read Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader. Erin Brockovich wasn't a fairy take, it really happened. Enron almost bankrupted California while George twiddled and we in Oregon are still paying for the fallout with our energy bills. Accountability? Only when they get caught and dragged through the courts, which doesn't happen nearly often enough. Their bean counters calculate the odds of getting caught and paying off the victims vs the cost of correcting the problems and follow the money. That is sociopathic behavior.
I understand your reasoning, but it leaves too many children hungry and neglected, so no, we do not have the same goals. My goals are to do whatever it takes to provide for all of them, not to just do my share (which you apparently do) and then say sorry about that to the rest.
Your perception of the problems facing the poor being the result of poor money management and poor work choices makes me think of the Russian saying "A full man will never understand a hungry one".
Another thought occurs to me...here we are agreeing on people who need help...and yet what you support in order to address these issues, results in my choice to oppose you even though we agree on the end goal.
I can do no other because of the basis for action you rest upon. So you have a natural ally for actual cooperation...and someone who works to put a stick in the spokes of your plans of how to achieve the same ends.
After all, any support for coerced action has me as a target, and my intentions for your life are....to let you live it. I offer you open cooperation if you choose it, and what you support in return is use of my life by law! We two, who don't know each other face off simply because of your desire to force the issue, which I do not prefer and do not offer in return. Doesn't this seem needless to you? It sure does to me.
Multiply this by countless people of similar views on each side, and we wind up in the immense, and needless battles using energy better directed as true, chosen cooperation.
I can't get over the irony of a situation in which all that is occuring is resistance to your methods when we actually agree on helping people.
Who doesn't hold them accountable? You can sue them like anyone else, you can apply for redress of violation of your rights. I will easily agree any deviations from this norm are not acceptable, and I'm sure it does occur. Perhaps a consistent approach to the rights they do have as privately owned, instead of a piecemeal definition as it appears to be, is the solution. This would redress your desire for responsibility to some degree, would it not?
I don't see how the desire to make as much money as possible makes one a sociopath..it is the methods one uses that can be criminal. I am not making a case for any behavior that involves the violation of the rights of employees or customers, or suppliers, or any other individuals. I am making a case that in seeking profit *without* doing these things, one does not commit a crime, one is not sociopathic, one is using ethical means to profit from providing what people want. I like it when people create things I want..ethically...and trade them... ethically.
We seem to have different versions also of what constitutes 'power'. Power which cannot control me or compel my action is simply not the same as power which can, in my view. I can reject any offer whatsoever by Dish Network, and unless I have contractually chosen to obligate myself to them, there is nothing they can do about it. Neither can Intel, or Boeing. They cannot set foot on my land unless I approve, cannot put ne in jail, cannot take my house, can't make me do anything I do not freely agree to. This isn't power.
They don't impose anything on me. They can't tell me where to live, what to buy, what to choose. They can control what they offer..but that is their right, carrying no obligation whatsoever on my part.
Your example of the lousy conditions in which many are born is a very good one. Being a rationalist, the only 'responsibility' I view as objective, is causal responsibility. All other responsibilities are chosen, and cannot actually be imposed justly on others. This means if I drop a rock or take someones house, I have had an objectively provable causal effect, directed by my choices, which undeniably accrues actual causal responsibility upoon me. If I had not acted, these things would not have occurred is a good rule of thumb for judging this.
That laid out, your example is mostly comprised of outcomes which in most of the cases had no one causally and thus truly responsible for them other than the participants. When a child is born it cannot be my responsibility in the causal sense unless I am the parent, thus responsibility cannot be justly placed upon me for actions I didn't commit. It's not the childs fault he or she was born where she was..but it's not my fault either. The existence of foul conditions does not imply actual responsibility on others who had no control of the acts in question.
Now it may be the lead is objectively actionable, because that has a cause and is a problem. This makes sense as a pursuit to apply responsibility for it, because it is clearly a causal case. The abuse is likewise actionable, since of course it is clearly causal as well. Then there are the effects of not having good role models or education thus placing the child in the no win situation you describe, which definitely needs action. This is not a good situation and I agree it most likely harms everyone because of it in the long run.
Here is the crux then...the responsibilty of society you mention I do agree exists...as you do. The problem is it cannot be applied justly by force because it is not actually objective or casual...it is each of ours moral opinion...but not *literally* anyone elses responsibility.
Thus it is up to each of us claiming a responsibility to choose to assume it...without the necessity of forcing others to assume it too. Otherwise we go right back to using them as tools to serve our morals in a situation which is not objectively their responsibility.
Rule number one for me...respect the rights of others to not serve me or my goals...no matter how important I think these goals are, neither I nor my ideals are more important than their lives are to them. I will not treat them as vessels for the application of my morals and the replacement of their will with mine. I cannot expect to get respect for me and others if I do not respect others.
What is right is to accept that our burden is our burden and convince others to carry that burden with us peacefully, in an openly chosen common goal. So much of what we disagree on is caused by the attempt to have others lighten our loads by making them carry some too. This isn't selfless...it's the ultimate in being selfish.
We must sow the seeds of a new way of acting that ends the eternal conflict of people all trying to use each other to carry out our personal goals. Enormous amounts of money are wasted in this endless battle created merely by choosing the techniques of coercion that create their own resistance. Liberals push conservatives, conservatives push back at liberals, both sides at war to get the other to be forced to carry the burdens they want. Is this endless contradiction actually serving the cause of cooperation, when it is actually seeking to use the opposite of actual cooperation?
this is a pretty good discussion. liking your posts, even though i take issue
Perhaps each of reject certain things out of hand. As for the corporations, how can they be entitled to personhood when they are not held accountable for their actions? They claim the rights of human beings, but not the responsibilities. Their sole responsibility is to make as much money as possible for their share holders. If they were actually human beings their behavior would label them sociopaths.
Buckminster Fuller wrote in his brilliant essay The Grunch of Giants, "Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys-legally enacted game-playing-agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members."
It's one thing to give the individual people in corporations human rights, another to give a faceless piece of paper human rights. the states have special rules for corporations, they license them, have criteria for dissolving them (whether or not they actually do so is another story)
I also want to address your idea that the poor, as Reagan asserted brought their own condition on themselves. A child born into poverty and ignorance, exposed to too much lead, put in to a seriously underfunded school with underpaid and under qualified teachers, raised by a single working mother with a boyfriend who physically and/or sexually abused the child can be counted on to act out, bringing more punishment and isolation on him/herself, but without a clue of how to right the situation. What do you expect to happen as this child grows up, and does society have any responsibility to help this person, or only to continue to blame and punish? We all need to be accountable for our behavior, but some of us need more help and support than others. So what is right?
dang..still some mistakes. oh well. wish there was an edit feature!
One last thing, i'd like to change one paragraph to..
Her revulsion at collectivism, while accurately based in my view, comes accross as needlessly hostile to altruism. I agree as you can see from my previous note I agree with her on the immorality of forced altruism…but I disagree altruism has no value.
A few notes on what you correctly identify as my Randian tendencies. It is entirely true that much of my philosophy is based on Rands work. However, as she would approve of, I cannot simply take her words as whole cloth, i must question them and apply my own critiques of her words and her works. I find them to be largely true logically, but the dryness and apparent hostility of her writing tends to turn people off, for good reason since it too can be very combative. Like anyone, she was influenced by her experiences at the hands of the worst of the Soviet systema and society.
Her revulsion at collectivism, while accuratly based in my view, comes accross as needlessly hostile to altruism. I agree as you can see from my previous note I agree with her on the immorality of forced altruism...but I disagree it has no value.
It is the act of enforcing it that is the crime...pursuit of it for yourself upholds the highest respect for others and your own moral system. It violates no one and helps all because all action is really individual action anyway. Even State compulsion upholds this view because the compulsion is intended, again, to result in directed individual action.
We do not need the middleman. A fair judge and contract enforcer yes...a moral leadership, no. The view of others as tools for our ideals create resistance and treats them as things, not people with minds and hopes and dreams of how to achieve them. Turning society into warring groups such as we see today is entirely based on each sides desire to compel the other. It does not need to be this way.
Anyhow, once I get going I hardly know where to stop, so I'll stop now. I hope that at least I've provided one example for you of a different way of looking at some of the ideas you may have been taught to, or come to, reject out of hand.
I am not certain why corporations shouldn't have the rights of people, because they are composed of people and owned by people. I've never understood why this is somehow seen to be a problem. Free speech comes with being a person, as does the right to own and control property and all the rest.
The founders wrote a document specifically intended to curtail the power and scope of State power, not private power undertaken in legal activity by citizens, because the State is the only entity that can legally use force against you. No phone company can do anything to me the govt can, no car company, nor anyone else. they cannot compel me to patronize them, work for them, or put me in jail for refusing to do those things or many others. I fall in with resisting actual power, not the innately constrained power of other private institutions that only have the rights of the individuals owning them.
What I see in your posts gives me the impression you place little responsibility in the hands and actions of people themselves. Watching TV is entirely and totally controllable requiring only the will to do so. Single income families have always struggled..it's part of the decision to have a family to bear the responsibility of dealing with the consequences of doing so. What you are seeing when it comes to money problems is largely a lack of self restraint in the face of much temptation, and poor decision making when it comes to work selection.
We have a single income of modest size, for a family of four and take keeping control of our finances quite seriously...but we do not expect extravagance nor even niceties, solid budgeting comes first. I see fewer and fewer people living their lives this way, and the impacts are obvious. it's a mindset. what you are asking for is to try to apply external fixes to what is often caused by poor choices repeatedly made for years.
The price of goods has largely been falling in comparison with adjusted money. Yes, somethings are more expensive..and if you examine the situation, you find that most of the time it is because of market distortions caused by intervention. The natural curve of pricing in the face of demand and economies of scale is downwards...not up.
I am not saying people making poor choices are innately bad people...I am saying poor choices have bad outcomes, and attempting to fix a situation without recognizing it's real basis is an excercise in futility and a waste of resources.
There is so much resistance to simply observing that poor choices have bad outcomes, and that poor choices are responsible for bad outcomes...it's called 'blaming the victim' in some circles...when the fact is more often than not, they are to blame. This does not mean they are bad...but it does mean they are responsible for what results from poor decisionmaking.
I do not favor abandoning anyone...but not abandoning them is not simply using govt to subsidize them. Just because I do not agree with the methods used does not mean i want to abandon anyone. I expect to live my morality and take it seriously. I refuse to compel others to help on my say so because it disrespects them and abuses their right to live their own lives. They are not here to be used to serve my goals. I serve my goals..which include helping and persuading others to help.
My wife and I both do community work, we find people to help out all around us, we support a local animal rescue outfit and foster abused critters at our place at no little cost. We are preparing to set up some regular support of a childrens hospital and Project Linus after becoming aware of their very cool program after receiving a blanket for our recent premature boy, even though we didn't need it I was taken aback that such a neat thing was something someone had come up with. Now I feel obligated to return the favor. For me..obligated by my desire to help...without compulsion of others.
the way forward to a truly non conflict oriented solution for society is respecting each other while committing *ourselves* to the sacrifices required for our moral views...not to take the short cut of committing others against their will, which only creates conflict and their attempt to do it back.
I can see you are a deeply caring person and I respect that. I hope I have given you some sense of perhaps a different way of viewing open cooperation and the ways it offers for both foward progress and a lack of the compulsion of our fellows.
One more note: 25% of our children live in poverty - one out of every four. That's a big number. But an ominous change of late. The percentage of those children living in deep poverty has been skyrocketing of late. This does not speak well for our society or it's future. Would you prefer to live in a country of free will where children die of malnutrition and elderly try to survive on dog food? When I was a very young mother, my elderly next door neighbors starved to death, living on dog food. I didn't even know them, I'd just moved in but it shocked me into awareness. That iws not the world I want to live in.
MntGoat, our framers tried to write a Constitution that could adapt to a future they coudn't even imagine, and they (and a lot of Presidents since then) tried to warn us of the dangers of excessive corporate influence in government. But sometimes one event can radically change things. And yes, I agree that corruption has always been present, but not that it's inevitable. The one event I allude to was the case of Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad (link to story here: http://www.thomhartmann.com/restoredemocracy.shtml), which ruled for the railroad in a narrowly defined decision and explicitly excluded any reference to their claim to "personhood". But in the year of the Chief Justice's death, the court recorder wrote a fraudulent headnote granting personhood rights to corporations. Every ruling since then has been based on that headnote. Not much happened until the 1980s (the "Reagan Revolution") when corporations aggressively pursued personhood rights, and that was the beginning of our disastrous present situation. Coupled with TV producing short attenton span in children and econonomic hardships taking both parents out of the home to work full time, leaving very little time or energy for family time, our society has changed. Didn't have to be that way.
Meanwhile the corporations sucked the treasury dry; schools lost all the enrichment programs children need, community programs dried up, parks became too expensive for the working poor, infrastructure started crumbling and the rich got richer. Considering our wealth, we have the most abandoned children in the world. And we're paying for it. We don't even teach civics any more. Our citizens don't even know their rights. A dream come true for the corporations. They have destroyed our standard of living and you're blaming poor people for buying cheap imports when their salaries have nowhere near kept up with the price of the goods they used to produce. We need to fight back. I can see you're of the Ayn Rand philosophy, but personally I don't favor abandoning the weak, or see them as holding the strong back. I think we're all in this together.
It would be inconsistent to express a desire to recognize each humans right to determine their own trade and self determination, while patronizing buisnesses that use slave labor. This is a case where one is utilizing the irreplaceable time of another human by force, denying their innate right to self determination, and acting in the most unacceptable way possible next to killing or violence.
I have no problem supporting a ban on using slave labor or importation of goods produced with it. The right to free trade is no way confers a right to use slavery, i'm sure you may not agree with my conception of the former, but the absolutely unacceptable nature of slavery is probably common to both our worldviews.
On forced sacrifice: Inderdicting trade would incur such penalties. People wishing to trade with someone here or abroad, for products which a domestic producer wants stopped or taxed, sacrifices the right of the traders for the benefit of those backing the ban or tariffs.
The backers get to impose their moral valuation of the other parties trade directly on them by law, while both other parties are forced by law to sacrifice their trading rights for the moral desires of the supporter of the interdiction.
MtnGoat, maybe I should ask you to give an example of sacrificial action out of some people to benefit other people. I'm trying to understand your meaning of the sentence following. When you speak in generalities, it can be interpreted in numerous ways. So, please clarify.
Thank you. Without politeness there's no discussion. But the trading partner example is a simplification. What if their agreement includes one side providing goods from child slave labor? Is it inappropriate for the other side to have a law banning goods from slave labor?
MtnGoat, the whole idea of a democracy - commonwealth - republic is to pass laws to serve the greater good. We are a nation of laws. Our Constitution is designed on that premise. Without laws, we have people like George Bush running around doing whatever he pleases no matter who it harms. The problem with true majorities acting on their own without the force of law is that some individuals act on their own in conflict with the intent of the true majority. Without a stop sign, maybe the majority take turns or agree that one street has the right of way, but now and then, some yahoo goes against the tide and people die. Do you consider this acceptable collateral damage just so we don't have to respect laws or constraints?
I think you have it upside down, MtnGoat. Blaming and destroying government because corporate excesses have corrupted it is like killing an abused child because he's been abused. Go after the abuser. Unlike you, most Americans want government to provide good schools, universal health care, old age social security, regulations ensuring safety of food, workplaces, and products we buy. It's easy to get corporate money out of politics, it's called publicly financed campaigns. It's a growing trend and yes, an uphill battle, because the corporations are resisting being cut out of the political process. But they have no business being there anyway.
We really are moving toward a fascist state. All the symptoms are present;
Concentration of wealth at the top
Excessive nationalism and militarism
Corporate influence of government
Suspension of civil rights
But our public is uninformed and frightened (no accident).
The answer is not to drown government in a bathtub but to empower it do do what the peoople want from it.
MtnGoat, I also think you and I see the world with very different lenses. You appear to see it as populated by isolated individuals, all self-seeking. I see it as an interconnected network that can direct and focus our energy toward common goals.
Alas, ezeflyer, people are as corruptible as politicians for they are made from the same stock.
Do grassroots supporters of Green Party stop driving their cars and switch to bicycles en mass? I think not.
Do they stop investing their monies into mutual and pension funds planning for returns made of other people backs, while they spread their green gospel? I think not.
Do they look through smoke and mirrors of financial capitalism, which very foundation is prohibited by all world religion and mechanism of which was pried open 150 years ago by Karl Marx? I think not.
Instead the whole might of the United States was thrown in check spread of those revolutionary ideas, using all tricks available. For Karl Marx was preaching that 'have' mentality is the polar opposite of 'be' mentality. For Karl Marx the utmost treasure for man is his free time, not his wage slavery. Karl Marx is presented in this country as failed economist in order to mask off his main interest, which is human condition.
In my life I went trough the full circle and came back where I started, thanks to Reagan and Bush junta. I advice everybody to look into old man by yourself, starting from Communist Manifesto.
Alas, ezeflyer, people are as corruptible as politicians for they are made from the same stock.
Do grassroots supporters of Green Party stop driving their cars and switch to bicycles en mass? I think not.
Do they stop investing their monies into mutual and pension funds planning for returns made of other people backs, while they spread their green gospel? I think not.
Do they look through smoke and mirrors of financial capitalism, which very foundation is prohibited by all world religion and mechanism of which was pried open 150 years ago by Karl Marx? I think not.
Instead the whole might of the United States was thrown in check spread of those revolutionary ideas, using all tricks available. For Karl Marx was preaching that 'have' mentality is the polar opposite of 'be' mentality. For Karl Marx the utmost treasure for man is his free time, not his wage slavery. Karl Marx is presented in this country as failed economist in order to mask off his main interest, which is human condition.
In my life I went trough the full circle and came back where I started, thanks to Reagan and Bush junta. I advice everybody to look into old man by yourself, starting from Communist Manifesto and look how little things changed from his time.
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
The way I see it, the State (the government) vs. Private Industry debate hinges on two factors: Who decides if there is a need for regulation or de-regulation and who is going to do the regulating or de-regulating.
If these are decided by five politicians there is an excellent chance that these same pols will be bought by the same industry, to the peoples detriment. If these things are decided by millions of people who cannot be easily bought, they will decide to everyones benefit.
The problem comes down to easily corrupted representative democracy vs. incorruptible direct grassroots democracy.
The Green Party is the only party with grassroots democracy.
It's one thing to spout economics 101 theoretical talking points a la Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, MtnGoat. But it is quite another to demonstrate that they actually apply in real life.
Are you seriously arguing that the average American's and/or the average Mexican's life has improved as a result of NAFTA? Are you seriously arguing that democracy has advanced in either country as a result of NAFTA? If so, you must have some data to back you up. You DO have some data, don't you? Even a shred?
Oh look--get big gubbermint offa our backs:
"If you are interested in avoiding a fascist state, then work to get the State out of dictating corporate and industrial policy. As the state dictates more and more policy, it becomes the one running the industries to a greater and greater extent, all the while approaching ever more closely the state/industrial linkage fascism indicates. Additionally, increasingly treating people as if they exist to serve the state, with their choices and resources increasingly controlled by it, increases the other crucial aspect of fascism…individuals subject to the State."
Yesiree we damn well see what de-regulation done brung us. What a scam---folks flying that banner still recite their mantras without acknowledging that their free market reforms surely freed the markets to loot, pollute, enrich themselves at the expense of workers, buy the ...state, manipulate the state, state representitive agencies, pols of all stripes to do their bidding, set the agenda--domestic and foreign policy--all on our dime with ZERO oversight and accountability.
I say bullshit.
Mt. Goat, I, respectfully, think you have it backwards. I have always been lead to believe that by definition "fascism" is closer to industry controlled state than state controlled industry. I very simpified definition of communism and fascism is:
communism: state control of industry
fascism: (the reverse) industry control of state
By this definition we are, indeed, close to a fascist state. In my opinion what we need is MORE state control of industry, not less. We certainly don't need corporations dictating legislation, etc.
It is true that the first thing Hitler did was destroy labor unions, and industrialists loved him for it. Since Nazism is more-or-less our de facto definition of fascism this can be interpreted as state control of industry, so that argues in favor of your view. Maybe someone can provide better definitions?
Right on Kathyodat! Whom they can't corrupt they will destroy if at all possible. Are there any other real choices than either Kucinich or Nader in 08?
armybrat - I think you are right in some respects. The problem is that until there is a level playing field, there is NO chance that a third party will ever win. That means get the corporate money and special interests OUT of politics (campaign finance reform), and election reform that makes every vote count (open primaries, instant runoff voting, paper trails, etc).
amacd gets my vote. Mtn Goat is our to lunch in my book.
Until we vote in a 3rd party candidate, nothing is going to change. The Republicrats are all on the same team - and it isn't ours. Maybe then we can get corporate personhood removed - it is creating a fascist world, not just a fascist state. Same reason for the Boston Tea Party - corporations are psychopathic by nature - they can't be allowed the rights of human beings.
Hmmm. Don't think so.
"And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren't really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed."
Looks like Hillary is rolling in the bucks, hobnobbing with Murdock and letting the military know she's their man.
don't get sidetracked by personalities. the issues here are
* who benefits from the north american economy,
* who deserves to benefit, and
* how supply-side thinking has corrupted our democracy nearly to death.
eyes on the prize.
Paul Krugman as usual has it right. But leobixby, it's not personal characeristics that suts Dennis out, it's media panic. They avoid him as if he carried the plague. And he does, it's called principles. The corporations don;t like populists, but they fear and hate anyone who can't be bought. And even the Republicans in his district vote for him. Most voters want to vote for a principled man even if they don't agree with his politics. Amazing, huh?
This, my friends, is what truth reads like. If only this kind of logic would be honestly spoken about from the mouths of the democratic candidates, without being dressed up in a politically correct gown, we might see some real mass mobilization to get a genuine populist leader elected. Oh, wait a minute; that's Kucinich. Well, unfortunately he doesn't have a chance. Why? Because he breaks into song occasionally and looks a bit like an elf.
Politics is certainly not blind, and neither is our disastrously fickle demos.
Yes, armybrat, we have met the enemy, and they is not us --- they is global corporate elite Empire.
You are correct that Krugman, if anything, understates the problem.
The "abuses of power" are not "driven by rising income inequality" --- and they are not abuses of only Bush Republicans.
Income inequality is the outcome of abuses, and not the driver. While the abuses of power are driven precisely by the 'economics of empire', as they always have been.
Sure, the US GINI index is off the scale compared to its peers, but that is only because the non-elite US population bought into the Ponzi promise of future 'growth' more than other educated populations. Now that the illusion of growth (that 'rising tide') has been supplanted by the reality of rising sea levels and negative externalities as far as the eye can see, Americans will rise to a growl even quicker than their European and Japanese fellows. We may soon see why the CIA itself warns that GINI's above 45 lead to "civil unrest".
The vast American non-elite are going to have to digest two ugly truths in fast succession: that they live in a better disguised and distractive "Vichy America", with both phony parties (and media) controlled by a corporate elite Empire, and that the empire has been playing a three card Monty on them with a 'gamed' sham of capitalism, which has left them with nothing but the negative externality chits as debts.
Granted, this global corporate empire is "abusing power" at home and abroad (including the US military) but their global Ponzi, based on oil power, is going the way of all unsustainable Ponzis. And when it collapses, either in expanded war or loss of oil and financial domination, that ethereal global elite empire better be as untethered as Jack Walsh's ideal factory on a barge and get to their boats faster than the Albanian Ponzi crooks did.
There appears to me to be only one non-violent way to resolve this issue of guileful Empire and it's ersatz capitalism having stolen our country --- and that would be for the vast "Multitude" of Americans to simply reject the siren song lies and sorrows of Empire, and to institute honest, progressive, Schumpeterian capitalism in which all people are stakeholders as workers and investors ---- and in which all social costs are on the books and faced up to by everyone, rather than being dumped by an inhumane investor elite on society.