Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "big-government"

Saving Capitalism For the Many Not the Few by Robert B. Reich, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

In the coming elections we face both confusing realities and difficult choices. However, there are clear options, illustrated in great detail in Robert Reich’s new book Saving Capitalism. Odd agreements between Tea Party members and liberal Democrats tell the tale. Both seem to understand the dangerous positive feedback loop between money and politics. They both oppose subsidizing Big Oil, Agriculture and Pharmaceutical businesses.

Reich emphasizes that our choices are not between Big government and a “free market.” There is no such thing as a free market. All markets are defined by laws of some kind. We need to re-organize our markets for “broadly based prosperity, [not] one designed to deliver almost all of its gains to a few at the top.”

I see in this coming election that our choice is not so much between Republicans and Democrats, not even between “establishment and anti-establishment, as Reich suggests, but between changing how we redefine and regulate our “free market.” Not voting in public elections is actually voting to let the wealthy continue to warp the defining laws and practices in their favor.

Reich goes into great detail describing what laws have been warped to favor the wealthy at the expense of the working middle glass, whose median wage has been dropping since 1970. Even young college graduates’ hourly wage has gone down since 2000.

Examples of laws that should be changed (I counted 27 in Reich’s book, aside from “reinventing the corporation.”) include reversing the Supreme Court’s decision “Citizens United” or amending the constitution so Congress can regulate campaign spending. Others: ban the gerrymandering of districts and voting restrictions, require disclosure of all outside sources of public domain testimony, revise patent and antitrust laws to undo power-grubbing tactics, resurrect Glass-Steagull to separate commercial and investment banking, ban forced arbitration and insider stock trading, restore bankruptcy law to give labor or students higher priority and most importantly require congress to fund the enforcement of such laws that benefit the working and middle classes. Other suggestions deal with international trade agreements and local school funding.

Reich provides a readable litany of how big money has redefined capitalism, noting that in 1874 the Supreme Court in Trist vs Child that persons could not be hired to lobby Congress. In 1920 the Tillman Act banned corporations from making paid contributions, now allowed by the Citizens United decision.

He tells us that insider trading is still rampant, antitrust laws no longer keep monopolies from dominating markets. The stories continue. The 300:1 ratio of executive-to- worker pay is due only in small part to globalization, technology, lobbying, subsidies and loopholes.

He reminds us that things are different in Europe. That we could once again have a truly “free market” if we would take command of how Congress, agencies and judges write the laws that define what the market is. Bankruptcy laws favor corporations by giving low priority to paying off labor costs. Student loans, now 10% of the total, are not allowed bankruptcy protection. In Germany education through college is free to students.

We can recover who we were, a country where the middle class grew and thrived, and common sense, not money drove our ideals.

by E.J. Dunne Jr., Simon and Schuster, N.Y., 2016.

This is a short summary of the author’s take on conservation history in the United States. --his review of the politics of the Reagan, Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan years: I was surprised to read that, “Urged by Democrat Moynihan, Nixon pushed for the Family Assistance Plan…minimum guaranteed income for poor families.” Though skilled at arguing for a “conservative position,” he called “essential…all aspects of Social Security. At the same time he made cuts that “hit programs for low-income Americans.” A master of contradictions, he “could live with a good deal of cognitive dissonance between his public statements and his practice.”

Sound familiar.?

Bush was noted for raising the income rate from 28% to31%, whereas Reagan “established tax-cutting as a central…tenet of…Conservative dogma. Then came Clinton, calling Republicans the party of the rich and special interests. The author notes that “Republicans moved right” while Democrats took more of the center. “The white South…became solidly Republican.” In 1990 50% of white southerners had voted for Democratic House candidates. In 1994 “50% of white Southerners had voted for Democratic House candidates ; in 1994, only 36 percents did.” In 2010 that number was “down to 27%.” In Congress rules were changed to require “a three-fifths majority to pass a tax increase.” At the same time tax and welfare cuts were made.

President Clinton noted that “the new congress…was well to the right of the American people,” and would propose cuts in education, health care, and the environment in order to pay for tax cuts and defenses increases. Voters preferred the opposite . The problem continued to be that politicians mistake “…their own opinions for the views of the vast majority…” In the late nineties radio and television grew rapidly and widened the gap between the right and rest of the country.

We are still paying an ever-growing price for that gap. Immigration and differences in marriage issues increased as talk radio got into the fray. Suburbanites, swing voters, were 41% Democratic in 2002 and 51% in 2006. Conservation took a “hard right turn” in the Bush years. Then George W. Bush gave the banks a 700 billion bank bailout in 2008, enraging “free-market purists” Was this a slippery slope to corporate socialism? Such Big-government spending was seen by the left as a barrier to health coverage, poverty and inequality. In the Obama years the Tea Party was still struggling with stagnant wages.

Americans are still divided, as money enters the divide. The wealthy fear the country is moving toward “socialist oppression.” However, “Opposition to big government did not extend to …medicare and social Security. Meanwhile, abortion, religion, Hilary Clinton, and immigration joined the fray. Thinking was more “winner take all” than patriotism. Thinking on all topics grew mindlessly absolute hard edges.

This book suggests that we are better than that. As we face the dire challenge of the Covid virus, we should ease back and find well-thought out solutions for the future. We don’t need to let our voices distort the debate. We can ask honest questions, like why are American conservatives the only ones in any of the wealthy democracies to oppose a universal guarantee for access to health insurance?