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The Rise of the Wrecking-Ball Right
Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic he said, simply, “government is the source of all our problems.” When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. “The Depression ended because of World War Two,” he pronounced, as if government had played no part in it.
A few days later I was confronted by another conservative Republican who blamed the nation’s high unemployment rate on the availability of unemployment benefits. “If you pay someone not to work, they won’t,” he said. When I pointed out unemployment benefits couldn’t possibly be the cause of joblessness because there are now about five job seekers for every job opening, he scoffed. “Government always makes things worse.”
Government-haters seem to be everywhere.
Congressional Republicans, now led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, hate government so much they’re ready to sacrifice the full faith and credit of the United States in order to shrink it.
Taming the deficit isn’t their aim. They rejected Obama’s offer to cut $3 trillion of spending over the decade – including major reductions in entitlement programs – because his plan would also entail $1 trillion of tax increases. Their ultimate goal, in the words of their guru Grover Norquist, is to take government down to “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Where did this wrecking crew come from? And why do so many Americans seem to support them? To answer “the tea party” begs the question because the tea party itself is a product of this rage.
Credit the economic fears and insecurities now felt by a broad swathe of the public who want to find a villain for what they’re going through. Wall Street is too abstract and the financial games that brought on the Great Recession almost impossible for most Americans to grasp. But the government bailout of the Street was a specific act almost everyone could instinctively understand – and to most Americans it seemed perversely wrong.
It’s no coincidence that the emergence of the tea party coincided with the Wall Street bailout. An acquaintance who has embraced the tea party explained to me she hates government “because it’s always captured by the powerful, who take our taxes and eat our lunch.”
At the same time most of what government does that helps average people is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it’s no longer recognizable as government. Think of the indignant voters who showed up at congressional town meetings to protest Obama’s health care bill shouting “don’t take away my Medicare!”
A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.
Add in the relentlessly snide government-hating and baiting of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and his imitators on rage radio; include more than thirty years of Ronald Reagan’s repeated refrain that government is the problem; pile on hundreds of millions of dollars from the likes of oil tycoons Charles and David Koch intent on convincing the public that government is evil, and you have all the ingredients for the emergence of a wrecking-ball right that’s intent on destroying government as we know it.
The final critical ingredient has been the abject failure of the Democratic Party – from the President on down – to make the case for why government is necessary.
One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.
Yet the case has not been made. Perhaps that’s because, even under the Democrats, the interests of average people have not been sufficiently attended to.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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Show AllWithout government, we would all live in anachy, poverty, disease and hopeless ness, just like we did prior to the advent of the New Deal. Prior to that, the average American had NO pension in their old age, NO medical insurance once retired and NO protections against life-threatening hazards at the workplace [reference the Triangel Shirt Factory fire], etc.
Minority peoples had it even worse; they were paid less than whites just becasue they were minorities and were often denied the very rights laid out in the Constitution Women didn't fare any better on any fronts either.
The Reagenites are all just self, ignorant of history, greedy bastards. The fact the the Dems haven't made this case is astounding. The fact the only real option I have for the next President of the United States is Obama and that is none to fabulous either.
Government isn't the problem. Government is always the solution. Government is an effective, problem-solving tool. Always will be. NEVER concede this point. NEVER.
The real issue is WHOSE hand is wielding that tool? WHOSE problems are getting solved with that tool? The Oligarchy's problems, or the People's problems? The oligarchs have an unquenchable lust for "more" (power, wealth, people under their command, etc...), they ALWAYS make a straight bee-line for the tool of government, then lie like hell about its' worth, to the people, to get them to turn their backs on their tool of government, so the oligarchs can pick it up and use it as a weapon against the people. The people should tell them, in one unified voice, "get your filthy hands off my tool", and dump those reps who handed it over to the oligarchs, and hunt down,arrest, incarcerate those filthy, treasonous oligarchs. Then the people can be considered sufficiently awake and hopefully vigilant, evermore.
Right, that's why there is no unemployment payments to people who have lost jobs. That's why there is zero help to those over 65. That's why no one gets any SS disability payments. That's why medicaid does not ever give any poor person anything...
"That's stuff we pay into..." Huh? That's still Government you pay it into.
The fact is, most people are oblivious to all the things that the good Socialist-part of Government does for them, even now. It's just taken for granted these days; just as 'good Government' was taken for granted by the Left for a long time. And by the time we woke up from the Right-wing takeover of Government (done precisely because the Right KNOWS how important Government is), good Government was gone. We now have to get it back, NOT give it up!
But I suppose maciek never uses roads, schools, safe food, medicine, flushes his toilet... or uses the Internet! The fact is, it was Government that brought this nation out of the last Great Depression (and saved Capitalism in the process, yet again... just like today). The fact is, even the Republicans still have an expensive 'jobs' program... it's called the Military. And they say not a peep about eliminating that!
The "facts" maciek throws against the Government are facts that should rightly be placed on the CORPORATE FASCIST OLIGARCHY (that actually Controls wages, locations, trade, industry, money, and the rest)... as well as CONTROL of the Government by that Oligarchy. But to dismiss it as 'the fault of GOVERNMENT' is to certainly throw the Baby out with the utterly-filthy Rightwing Bathwater.
The Rightwing KNOWS how important Government is, but it has expensively PROPAGANDIZED most people, a la Grover Norquist, into believing that a Government "of the people, by the people and for the people" IS the problem... just as the RIGHT wants you to think... so they can take over the Government with nary a whimper from the people... in fact, with the people actually CHEERING them on! A la maciek.
And maciek plays STRAIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE RIGHT! Yeah, forget the Government, source of ALL problems! Yes, eliminate the Government, as we plebians WANT to make 50 cents an hour with no benefits, to serve our Capitalist Overlords, and we WANT to wallow in overcrowded, polluted slums, so our Capitalist Overlords can have more money. And that's just where we are heading. A nation of (a few) winners and (almost all) losers. Just like some sports event. Just like a third-world country, where the 'winners' are allowed to take all. Because that's just God allowing the winners to win.
Yes, Maciek sez, Away with the remainder of any Social Government! We "can't afford it!" and "It doesn't serve us!" Instead, bring on the Tender Mercies of the RIGHT WING Capitalist Oligarchy! It's a Dog-eat-dog world, so to hell with the "nanny state!" Bring on good old Capitalist Anarchy! NO TAXES ON THE RICH WHO 'DESERVE' THEIR FORTUNES! NO "TOO EXPENSIVE" GOVERNMENT TO OPPOSE THE OLIGARCHY OR SERVE THE PEOPLE IN ANY WAY!!
What a plan! And then we ask what's the matter with KANSAS?
Inb --- You have stated it the most clearly I have yet seen. The psychopaths and the stupid among us use the lies, via the media, particularly Murdoch et al to bamboozle the general public, then leave the victims asking "What happened"? ----Thank you. dh
Exactly, lnb. The right makes sure that the US government does not work well for the people and then claims that this proves that it is impossible for a government to work well for the people, and far too many believe it. I suspect a large part of the problem is that the plutocrats cleverly convince the common joe or jane that the US government is the best government ever, even the best government possible, so that if it doesn't work for the people, then no government can. And they explain away the successes of Western European or other governments as dishonest facades that those in the know (e.g., US plutocrats) rightfully dismiss as fundamentally flawed.
The Democrats showed a weak response to the lurid accusations of rightwing Republicans decades ago. Even the term "liberal" became a fright word so far as most Democrats were concerned. "Liberal" the Republican would snarl. "What me?" the Democrat would cry out as he turned and ran with his arms waving in the air.
In today's debate the Republicans are still defining the terms of the debate. That is where the Democratic Party fails us. Sure, there progressives in the party, and a minority which will stand up and fight. But our president sneers at progressives, and has allowed the Republicans to determine what will be on the table. The country is seeing the budget/debt ceiling debate through the terms the Republicans, with the president's assistance, have laid out.
Wreck it Right. Wreck it Left. Its all the same. Our system needs total collapse. We need anarchy. We need chaos. American capitalism needs to be brought to it's knees. The world needs it. Humanity needs it. There can be no rebirth until the boot chokes the life out of it. They will not change their ways. Its just not something they do.
This dove-tails nicely with the oligarchs' dream of reducing the world's population to under a billion, barely-surviving, serfs to service their world, carved up into feudal estates: chop wood, hall water, die at 40, spawn a replacement or two.
I hope for something a little more dignified for humanity. Fortunately, it's on the way.
The voice of sanity, it's a tough job but someone (Inb) has to do it ;-)
His one observation nailed it: the "anger" that average Americans - aka the Tea Party for example - feel towards the government is misdirected. And willfully so.
They "hate government because it’s always captured by the powerful, who take our taxes and eat our lunch.” Instead of being mad at "government", Americans should be mad at the POLITICIANS they elect to run the government - the politicians who are bought and paid-for whores beholden to Wall Street and the Corporate Oligarchy - not the American people. They should be mad at the Corporate elite, who buy up the politicians in order to get legislation that is corporate-friendly, but detrimental to American workers.
As usual, Americans have the right idea, but the wrong target. Like bombing Iraq after 9/11 - when no hijackers came from Iraq. Like cutting social programs to tame a deficit in the midst of an economic recession second only to the 1930's - but not doing anything about the banks who caused the recession in the first place. Etc. All this anger the Tea Party and other Americans feel is, indeed, justified, but needs to be directed at the asshole corporate whores who have hijacked our democracy and are hell-bent on reducing us to 3rd world status in order to enrich themselves further at our expense.
But no - they hate all government instead.
There you go, and the following excerpt from Reich's piece illustrates why many low level Teaparty, the turf part of the astroturf, are there:
"One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people."
This is the perceived job of government to prevent and address, yet those very things Reich pointed out illustrate, in those cases at least, government's job was left undone. Oligarchy made sure of it,by underfunding inspections, bypassing full environmental impacts, abrogating bonding or reserves as deposits to repair any liabilities; each a regulatory mechanism that was in place but through policy no longer is. So yes, Demonstorm, many people hate their captured government, which is but a symptom, not a cause. It's like a doctor that would focus on the bruising instead of the leukemia.
There used to be enough independent media that when "right idea, wrong target" happened, the journalists would keep asking the relevant questions, which kept the public pre-frontal cortex rational until the cause was pinpointed and through public demand, eliminated. Now there is the additional hurdle of a complicit media to be overcome but the process is still the same. Overcoming the emotive short-circuiting with which many are being manipulated and getting them back into linear thought with their anger as the impetus to demanding accountability through direct action.
When Ronnie Reagan {in}Famously said 'Gov't isn't the solution- Gov't is the Problem' You would have thought people would have responded 'Then Why the hell did you want to be Gov of Cali & then US Pres -& why the hell should we vote for you - since by your own words- you're going to be a major problem maker!! And this should be the response to any poly-trickster or campaign donor who quotes Reagan on this.
Arguing about the need for Gov't or even its size - is a bit off target. There's no question that human civilization needs some type of Gov't [although what type, size, role is debatable], because there is 5000 - 7000 yrs of history of civilizations that say we must have some type of Gov't. But when it comes to modern corporations - they've only been around for just the last few centuries & mainly out of the Euro-American context-as an artificial legal construct. Thus unlike Gov't- Corps aren't essential to human development. When some particular Gov't becomes problematic- we need to seek to reform, change, or take back control of that Gov't - But NOT Abolishing GOV'T All-Together! BUT When a Corp becomes [as so many of them have] detrimental to human development - there is the very real option of completely abolishing that Corp.
The strongest corrupting influence in/on Gov't, the News media, etc... is the influence of Big Biz & the Power Elites. This is true for both the GOP & the Dems- the Exec, Legislature, Judiciary, etc, etc... If we abolished the Gov't & Corps today [if we abolished Gov't but NOT Corps -they, God forbid, would likely assume the role of Gov't] - we'd have to re-establish some type of Gov't - but we would NOT need to re-establish Corps....
Excuse me, Robert, but the reason we're in this mess is because people look to their "leaders" and party for solutions. Solutions don't come from above. It isn't the job of the democrats, or any party, to make a case for reality. The 60's kicked off not because the government spoke of all the injustices, but because the people didn't look for leaders, did what had to be done, and the government caught up because they were afraid of being overthrown.
"Smash the control images. Smash the control machine."
-- William S. Burroughs
This is much better than most of Reich's articles this year, and more openly critical of the DLC Democratic Party's participation in many bad policy trends with the Republicans, but still fails to link massive layoffs to "free trade" offshoring of good paying jobs with respect to flat demand and flat job creation in the U.S. There will be no economic recovery without the reformation of "free trade" to include globally enforced labor and environmental protections or its slow phasing out, agricultural and industrial sector-by-sector, over 15 years--about how long it took to dig this country into its present real economy job creation ditch.
Reich correctly points out the role of corporatist "mainstream" media and far-right media in indoctrinating (by constant repetition of Big Lies) most of the public with right-wing propaganda and contextual frames, but he fails to examine the Democrat-enabled over-concentration of all American mass media under five giant conglomerates (including book publishing) and the resulting sheer depth of audience market penetration those information monopolies now control. That specific development was mostly thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 signed into law by Slick Willy Clinton and stupidly supported by Al Gore and Zionist Joe Lieberman.
"openly critical of the DLC Democratic Party's participation"
Reich was Clinton Sec. of Labor. You don't think he had a hand in NAFTA and the selling off of America's jobs? As I remember, he was a strong proponent of both NAFTA and GATT.
"The rising tide will lift us regardless of where the headquarters of the global company is," said Reich. "NAFTA did not result in a gain or loss of jobs—just a new allocation of jobs. What matters is the value that we are able to add to a global supply chain."
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Reich-to-IT-Dont-Fear-Globalization/
Reich has been compared to a chameleon, always re-inventing himself.
His support for "free trade" as Clinton's Sec. Labor has been my main criticism of Reich and is in this post as well if you will read my entire post.
What I as a European expect of a government is to protect me from those who have a lot of money. Because without the government, it would be the law of the jungle.
I expect my government to act as an equalizer and transfer money from those who have too much to those who have too little. When it fails to do that, I get upset. Very upset.
How on earth people across the Atlantic - who on average do need a government that's their advocate just as much as any European does - got brainwashed into constantly voting against their own best interest, that is frankly beyond me and many of us over here
Despite Fox et al over there, you'd think that there is still some basic knowledge and understanding re whose only mission is to rip people off and whose it isn't, right?
All the cuts being offered are in the out years - they won't happen anymore than any other out year cuts ever have. This isn't fooling anybody anymore. These aren't honest offers at all, hence they're being rejected. The only real cuts are elimination of programs, offices and entire departments, I.E. structural changes.
We absolutely must cut this government back dramatically, its simply insane to think that its not getting enough revenue.
Fortunately the Tea Parties understand all this and will prevent the Republicans from caving. If the federal leviathan can be shrunk dramatically, I might be able to retire my sig:
Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, NOT a newspaper!
No, it's absolutely insane to be as clueless as you are.
We are $14.5 TRILLION in debt, we are running deficits of $1.5 TRILLION a year that obviously cannot continue and yet you say I'm clueless. You cannot solve the problem by raising taxes - there just isn’t enough money (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/higher_taxes_cant_solve_the_de.html):
“In 2008 there were 4,359,000 tax returns filed with modified taxable income (MTI) of $200,000 or above. The total amount of MTI above $200,000 was $1.189 Trillion.”
We’ve got a deficit this year of 1.5 Trillion (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/120xx/doc12039/SummaryforWeb.pdf). So, if we totally confiscated the incomes of those making more than $200K a year, we wouldn't even cover this year deficit. Next year we would get nothing from them, since you can only do that once, nobody will make the mistake of making that much money again.
Spending must be cut, its a mathematical necessity. The only ones who think we can tax our way out of this are clueless.
The CBO recently said that if Congress does nothing we will have a balanced budget in 4 years. This is because the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire next year and with Obama/Romney Care kicking in we will save considerable Medicare money. Your sky-is-falling bs is just stupid. Tax rates are at historical lows and we're spending lots of money paying people to do nothing (unemployment, food stamps, etc.). If our politicians weren't so ridiculous they would put people to work doing useful things instead of paying to do nothing. We could have actually tried stimulus spending instead of pretending that we did.
Do you have a source on that CBO info? I'd like to read it. I don't believe it is accurate. There will definitely have to be substantial increases in taxes on the super-rich and Obamacare will not effectively restrain overall health care costs without a government/public option for all ages.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/24/988227/-CBO:-Deficit-will-DISAPPEAR-if-Congress-Does-Nothing!
That is simply incorrect. It will take a fifth of the entire world's GDP to finance the government as early as 2020 if it remains on the current course. In this paper the current couse is called the base case http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1658543 :
"The large increase in foreign official holdings implied by the base case would require those holdings to rise to about 19 percent of rest-of-world (ROW) GDP, up fromless than 5 percent for most years of history."
Then we find that the world is already saying no
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/272022/great-charade-mark-steyn?page=2 :
"But already the world is imposing its own debt ceiling. Most of the debt issued by the Treasury so far this year has been borrowed from the Federal Reserve. "
So, spending will be cut. There is no choice to make.
Gee, you should see if you could be appointed to the CBO since you are so much smarter than they.
The CBO is better than many sources on federal budgetary data but even it isn't perfect, nor is it always as un-partisan as it likes to present itself. Sometimes General Accounting Office data and sub-categorized GAO Inspectors General data that are poorly reflected or un-reflected in more generalized CBO data are much more accurate. An example is spending on military sub-contracting as related to post-2001 lack of military contractor oversight due to Bush/Cheney era cronyism. The CBO reports lump as much military spending together as possible, regardless of whether it includes outright contractor fraud on the order of $Billions of dollars a year or not.
Your link to the CBO assertion says near the bottom:
"The CBO projection is based on elimination of all of the Bush Tax Cuts, not just those for people making over $250,000 but Everyone. In order to meet his long held pledge that he would not raise taxes on the middle-class, the law needs to be changed and those cuts extended for those who continue to struggle to make ends-meet and find decent paying jobs. But further, to reach the level of balance the CBO suggests without raising these taxes we would need to add even higher taxes for the wealthy, possibly including even higher tax brackets far about 39%, even 42% or 45% brackets for those making $500,000 or more than $1 Million per year."
So your contention that the CBO recently said that if Congress does nothing we will have a balanced budget in 4 years isn't fully supported if tax cuts for the struggling middle-class are preserved thus increasing the already otherwise justifiable need to raise taxes on the rich.
Because Obamacare will result in some Medicare savings does not mean that it will result in overall health care cost reductions--especially for the 30 million Americans being forcibly corralled into private sector for-profit insurance whether they can afford it or not. Millions will be on the borderline of affordability and un-affordability and their lives will become nightmares as the private insurance companies push to exclude the ones they don't want and the government bureaucrats take months or years to include them in any ill-conceived government "plan" for which I have yet to see credible details.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the former senior administrator at Harvard Medical School, showed in the early 2000s that single payer universal health coverage that unites all billing and administrative functions under one system will save more than enough money to provide medical coverage for every man, woman and child in America.
To do that would require the long overdue dismantling of privatized health insurance and for-profit HMOs who create nothing but an over-complex medical records and billing system managed by a socially parasitic, for-profit billing/administration/CEO class who build in inefficiency and unnecessary overhead and over-concentrate their CEOs' wealth at the direct expense of effective health care delivery as a basic human right for all Americans.
If you believe Obamacare will save money, you should recall that the Medicare program started out costing only $3 billion per year. http://reason.com/archives/1993/01/01/the-medicare-monster "At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly "conservative" estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion." Obamacare is even more obvious http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/04/does-obamacare-reduce-health-c
"The CBO finds that the effect of the healthcare legislation has been to increase government spending by $3.8 trillion between 2010 and 2020. From 2020 to 2035, federal spending under the two projections are equal percentages of GDP."
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/01/wsj-if-you-believe-obamacare-will-saves-money-youll-believe-anything/
"The accounting gimmicks are legion, but we’ll pick out a few: It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/24/988227/-CBO:-Deficit-will-DISAPPEAR-if-Congress-Does-Nothing!
The Laffer Curve is absolute Reaganomic hogwash and always was:
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/09/14/the-laffer-curve-debunked-part-one/
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/09/15/the-laffer-curve-in-real-life
http://siriusbuzz.com/forum/showthread.php?4415-Laffer-Curve-Debunked-Again.
Ayn Rand preached against social welfare programs her entire life. But in her later years she developed lung cancer and had one Evva Pryor, an employee of the Rand family's law firm, secure Social Security and Medicare for Ayn Rand enrolling her under the pseudonym Ann O'Connor (her husband Frank O'Connor's last name).
Scott McConnell, founder of the media department in the Ayn Rand Institute, quoted Evva Pryor as defending Ayn Rand's reliance on Social Security and Medicare by saying, "Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out."
It's just us "little people" in the middle- and lower-classes who deserve to be wiped out--not puerile amoral sociopathic hypocrites like Ayn Rand and their throngs of equally deluded followers. Atlas Shrugged is the childish gibberish of a sheltered intellectual and emotional Lilliputian who never evolved beyond fairy-tales of a mythical "free market" that has never existed in human history so long as governments have had the right to tax, mint coinage, print currency and dilute coinage and over-print currency. National and State banks that issue dedicated lines of credit for enterprises for the public good like infrastructure construction also destroy the myth of a "free market."
You people who actually believe in Ayn Rand's nonsense and in her devotees Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan are willfully participating in the destruction of your democracy and the democracies of the EU.
"But in her later years she developed lung cancer and had one Evva Pryor, an employee of the Rand family's law firm, secure Social Security and Medicare for Ayn Rand enrolling her under the pseudonym Ann O'Connor "
This is a common argument that is actually refuted in the book itself by one of my favorite characters - Ragnar Danneskjold. He is the pirate that only stole stolen cargos - mostly government, some from businesses that asked for government bailouts. Here's the pull quote from an article that deserves reading in its entirety ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block172.html):
"Thus, in Rand’s view, it is entirely proper to relieve the (illegitimate) government of its ill-gotten gains (the first part of this dual act). Was the U.S. a legitimate laissez faire government during the years that Ayn Rand accepted payments from Social Security and Medicare? To ask this question is to answer it: of course not. Thus, it would have been entirely proper for Ragnar to raid the Social Security and Medicare offices and make off with their stolen wealth, and, then, to give the proceeds to an innocent, such as Ayn Rand. If so, where is the hypocrisy of Ayn Rand accepting payments directly from these government bureaus? It simply does not exist. Similarly, she and all other libertarians are fully justified in mailing letters with the US post office and thus accepting the implicit subsidy therein, and, also, walking on the socialist sidewalks, driving on the socialist roads, using money issued by our central bank, eating subsidized food, etc. It is improper to give money to the illicit state, not to take from these bureaucrats."
Yep, just as I suspected, a psychopath. The victims deserves whatever they get. The ends always justifies the means. Yippee, you're not a hypocrite! Ayn Rand is not a hypocrite!!! Yippee!!!
Oh and if your FICTIONAL hero RagDan stole more from the offices of SS etc,than what "innocent" Ayn Rand paid in or what her husband paid in, or failed to distribute it to all the other workers who paid into the fund for whom the Govt held the money in Trust,( and because you did not include it in your illustration), then your argument is a FAIL logically.
"...the innocent Ayn Rand..."
Oh yes, she's the laissez-faire capitalist equivalent of Mary mother of Mammon and the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I all rolled into one. She simply must be so childishly enshrined in fairy-tales or her whole deluded mythology falls apart. Laissez-faire capitalism supports slavery, child labor, sweat shops, no minimum wage, no limits on working hours per day or week, no workers' benefits, no secure workers' pension system, absolutely minimized upward class mobility and no representation for workers in any political system. It always seeks to control any political system as absolutely as possible. Slavery and child labor are two of the most "innocent" institutions in world history as viewed through the amoral infantile lens of the mythical magical "free market" goddess Ayn Rand.
What toxic tortured fecal fairy-tale coliforms these "free market" fundamentalist plutocrat fluffers are forced to make themselves swallow in order to stroll along behind the GOP elephant parade of lies that excretes elephant sized misinformation turds every few feet behind it.
One of the key components of the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman pluto-psychotic nightmare is the infectious hysteria that unregulated markets create oodles of good paying jobs and, thus, widespread prosperity. The historical FACT is that laissez-faire and neo-liberal "free market" policies have been TITANIC failures everywhere they've been unleashed. They produce extreme income disparities, soaring GINI coefficients, dangerous market volatility and Depressionary collapses.
Laissez-faire capitalism has already had three strikes in America over the last 120 years. The first one was the Gilded Age Panic of 1893. Strike two was the Great Depression from 1929 to 1942. Strike three was the now globally infamous Housing Bubble implosion of 2008 that, thanks to residual neo-liberal capitalist influence to keep Wall Street and derivatives inadequately regulated, is setting up a secondary asset bubble implosion simultaneous with the threat of more bank runs in the EU. In all three cases, these economic convulsions and collapses were preceded by "business conservative" laissez-faire policies of corporate and banking deregulation, low taxes on the very rich and super-rich, and servile governments that groveled at the feet of corporations and plutocrats and were infested with corporate cronies.
Not only is the anti-empirical "economic philosophy" of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman globally failed--it is EGREGIOUSLY globally failed. The booming middle-classes and ultra-extreme income disparities it is producing in China and India are economically unsustainable both because the theory they are predicated upon is volatile and bubble prone, and because they are environmentally unsustainable. There simply are not enough global resources to provide hundreds upon hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians with Western-style middle-class and upper-middle-class lifestyles that were already becoming environmentally unsustainable in the West before the neo-liberal model was exported to India and China.
Dimwitted upper-class bell-hops Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman believed that endless capitalist "economic development" was possible because they viewed the earth's finite supply of natural resources as a limitless supply. Any damages to the earth's environmental life support systems (clean water, arable soil, destruction of habitats and species that supply food, etc.) is viewed by fairy-tale "free marketeers" as "externalized costs" that have nothing to do with their self-insulating definition of "the costs of production" and their rampant resource plundering for the sake of over-concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of nationalist or globalized plutocracies.
Ayn Rand loathed the middle-class and most of the upper-middle-class excluding the legal, medical and some artistic professionals who directly served or entertained the upper-class. Her "economics" is ALWAYS destructive of the middle-class.
Exhibit A: Worker productivity in the U.S. (thanks largely to computerization of the workplace) has soared for three decades. Per capita profits per man-hour worked have been going up commensurate with worker productivity. "Multi-tasking" of one worker who performs the same amount of work that used to require several workers (before workplace computerization) is now commonplace. But wages adjusted for inflation have been relatively stagnant or flat for over three decades. All that increase in wealth from increasing worker productivity went into the vested pockets of the plutocracy at the expense of increased indebtedness to the middle-class (sold to them via deregulation of usurious lending by the banks as a temporary mask for the de-linking of productivity increases from wage increases).
Exhibit B: The minimum wage now is worth less in real buying power than the minimum wage of 1968. In 1966 the average U.S. CEO earned about 50 times the minimum wage. After forty years of pro-laissez-faire, bipartisan Milton Friedman neo-liberalism, the average CEO now makes over 820 times the minimum wage. That's a sixteen-fold increase while middle-class wages remained stagnant or flat.
Now, as post-2008 Bubble implosion America and the EU cling to their failed economic neo-liberalism and our economies produce worsening income disparities, increasingly unstable GINI coefficients, ever more reckless market volatility and speculation in black market derivatives we face creeping bank runs in the EU and new asset bubble formations on Wall Street that could lead to a worse global Depression than any previously experienced.
The anti-competitive, monopolistic fixation of Rand/Friedman inspired fossil fuel extraction corporations in America on coal, tar sand, fracking, imported oil and poorly regulated domestic "drill, drill, drill!" is blocking this country's ability to competitively adapt to and survive accelerating global warming and the human induced Sixth Extinction event. What Ayn Rand-ism and Milton Friedman-ism is is really a white plutocratic yearning for human mega-death, if not extinction for all save themselves and some their upper-middle-class professional servant class (the ones they can't automate).
Madame Guillotine whispers, "Why? Why do you take it like sheep ruled by wolves owned body and soullessness by these upper-class pigs?"
So much to thank Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman for.
The Laffer curve is just an observation that at the extremes of tax rates you get nothing. Obviously at 0% you'll collect nothing and equally obviously at 100% you'll get nothing - nobody will work for free, after all. What's interesting is what happens in between. A lengthy discussion of the gaffer curve is here http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/06/the-laffer-curve-past-present-and-future. The heart of the matter: "
The basic idea behind the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues is that changes in tax rates have two effects on revenues: the arithmetic effect and the economic effect. The arithmetic effect is simply that if tax rates are lowered, tax revenues (per dollar of tax base) will be lowered by the amount of the decrease in the rate. The reverse is true for an increase in tax rates. The economic effect, however, recognizes the positive impact that lower tax rates have on work, output, and employment--and thereby the tax base--by providing incentives to increase these activities. Raising tax rates has the opposite economic effect by penalizing participation in the taxed activities. The arithmetic effect always works in the opposite direction from the economic effect. Therefore, when the economic and the arithmetic effects of tax-rate changes are combined, the consequences of the change in tax rates on total tax revenues are no longer quite so obvious."
The largest economic expansion in US history was at a time of 90% bracket Federal income tax, a .25% Tobin tax, GI Bill subsidies for higher education.
CD'rs wouldn't it be fun to give the MCS a chalk board and some chalk and see if he could do the math out for us instead of copying and pasting from his latest Chicago School of Economics 101 class? Oh wait, I forgot, no one here is going to want to waste their time listening to or looking at a bunch of discredited crap.
@ mcsandberg1-
You are A "Mindless Quelp" for what you just stated...
I would suggest you read more and get out more...You couldn't be more wrong and people like you are the true enemies of Democracy and our Republic...
Ayn Rand was nothing but A sexually frustrated little Jewish Princess, who couldn't attract Frank Lloyd Wright or Dumb Ass Greenspan for that matter, so she wrote cheap sensationalism to quell her fantasies...
Now, go snuggle up to your Daddys, the Koch Brothers or get A life!!! Maybe they'll drop you off at MacDonald's for A "Galt Burger"....
New name for MCS, a fan of "The Fountain", since coming to CD: Pwnce de Leon
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pwnce%20de%20Leon
No, Atlas Shrugged was not meant as a warning or a newspaper. For people like you, it is obviously the blueprint. If you get your MadMax world, people with the name Sandberg are going to get extra scrutiny from me.
Its regularly in the Amazon top 100 after over half a century because its reading more and more like a newspaper every day.
It was meant as a warning. November 2, 2010 showed how many people are now taking that warning seriously. We won't be going any further down the disastrous path of collectivism, now that the American people have seen just how nasty it is.
Let's go to the core of why the hatred of government is so easily inflamed. It's resentment. When the Dems were in power they did nothing to protect my job even though they said they were on my side--bastards. I'll vote Republican even though they don't promise me anything more than revenge on big bad government that helps other groups, (blacks) as it abandons me. And i'll keep voting for them until I miss my SS check at which point I'll call them hypocrites and vote for Dems again even though I still hate them. That will show the Republicans what happens when they betray me.
Tammons ------ wake up!!!!!! the Republicans have already betrayed you!!!! We will all rise up when the SS check bounces. dh
Why do citizens receiving government benefits fail to see these benefits come from the government? Perhaps because they are conditioned to thinking about any benefits at all that come from government as "welfare." And because such a connection is humiliating they refuse to make the association.
Reich's excellent commentary is the seed for a book. Each aspect he raises is a tiny part of a much larger whole. Take, for example, the far right notion that "your tax money belongs to you, not to the government." Who, then, in a representative democracy, do our elected officials represent? And who does (or should) government spending benefit? That's just one example.
Another one is the notion that "government doesn't create jobs, the private sector creates jobs." Oh? Now that one is really weird and reflective of a strong ideological bent. Who pays the salaries of millions of public employees?
Nor does Reich go into, and, surely, he knows all about it, the basis for the contemporary framework of the fantasies and lies which claim lower taxes and deregulation - in other words, less government - are the problem. Anyone who has been educated in American history or followed current events knows all this rose, simply, out of greed..... going back to the Robber Barons. Perhaps to the slave holders during our revolution. Certainly to those Captains of Industry who fought against labor unions. etc.
No matter how good Reich's arguments are, there is a problem
He is a SCAB
what is effectively the union at the Huffington post has a boycott, and they have asked writers not to contribute
Reich has crossed the picket line, and sent in articles to huff
But, as the old W Guthrie song says, a scab never has to worry..he will always get by on what he can steal out of blind men's cups
Did he post it there or did they pick it up from his blog and reprint it? I'd go check it out but I am boycotting them, does the article say submitted (or posted) by Robert Reich?
I'd like to thank both the Democratic and Republican parties for the outstanding political leadership of the last fifty years. Elect us and we will lead the way to a bright new future. We believed, we voted,we cheered when our man won because now we were just a few more promises away from making up for those other promises that didn't quite work out. ( Yea but that was the other parties fault) Well you have led us to the verge of total bankruptcy, and unlimited global war fare. When our lives become hell on earth, like so many we have reached out and touched around the world. Someone who just doesn't understand the way thing really work might meekly ask, Hey when do we get that bright new future you guys are always promising?
"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"
Reich sez: "Congressional Republicans, now led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, hate government so much they’re ready to sacrifice the full faith and credit of the United States in order to shrink it."
***
Good idea. Cantor, et al can make a positive contribution to the shrinking by walking away from their taxpayer-supported "Big Government" salaries and benefits.
Don't get me wrong here, I do like Robert Reich and his persistence in writing about the economic dilemma we face-
I just wonder , as Secretary of Labor, just how much did he speak out to Mr. Clinton aginst GATT and NAFTA????
Is our present Secretary of Labor voicing any reasonable concerns to Obama about the 3 new South American Countries soon to sign predatorial, anti worker, Free Trade Agreements???
***Hey, 2Bsmarter-I see what you were getting at with the paragraph dilemma-not too late to teach old dogs new tricks, after all l!!!
THE 08 ELECTION ACT AGAIN: PART II
"The failure of most of an entire generation of American intellectuals and
scholars to make the phenomenon of power a central concern has
permitted a fog of obscurantism and irrelevance to descend upon the
study of American life in the twentieth [ and twenty-first---PL] century."
Historian Emeritus, Gabriel Kolko in THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY: AN ANALYSIS OF POWER AND PURPOSE,
Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, p. 3).
In a comment of my own in Common Dreams , 7/15 I wrote under "The
08 Election Act Again:" as follows:
"Barack Obama is a consummate corporate obecient servant certainly
in the slave-master tradition of old. In 2008 he was used by the ruling
class to act as a "populist", a spokesperson for the wealthy and
powerful. He was permitted, if not encouraged, to criticize the wealthy
and make promises he never intended to keep.
Now we in the US are repeating this act for 2012. The wealthy do not
mind a few jabs because they know in advance that it will not happen.
Most of us "out-of-the-loop" are fooled today as we were before.
Obama is our "savior".
When it's over and done, it is a win-win situation for the ruling class.
If Obama wins, they will cash in on their "investment" in his marketing
ability. If, on the other hand, if the GOP should win, they already they already
have decisions and policies in their control.
[ The ruling class doesn't "care" what happens to the non-wealthy in the
US unless it affects their profits.]
The obedient servant, Barack Obama, will do his job as he understands it.
Precisely as lower management in large corporations obey their masters.
There will be lots of finger-pointing. It is an integral part of the game.
Just as in 2008, once the "election" is over, the ruling class will cash in.
Liberals, progressives, and those less advantaged will look to their "savior"
to deliver.
And he will deliver. He will deliver for the ruling class.
(This is not an invention of Barack Obama. It has been done many times
before and had served the ruling class well. For a greater explication
see Gabriel Kolko, op. cit, in other chapters.)
The economy of the US may suffer but world economies are owned
to a large extent by giant trans-national corporations anyway, mostly
from the US.
email:peterloeb@yahoo.com"
Mirror, mirror on the wall - who’s the most mislead of all?
The little man in the corner dressed in red, white and blue, the mirror replied.
For he is the one that sees not his own reflection, but the reflection that
he is told to see.