“How Conservatives Are Destroying Capitalism”: The GOP Is Working Nonstop To Exacerbate The System’s Worst Excesses
I’ve written before about how Thomas Piketty’s great new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made free-market conservatives distinctly uneasy. Perhaps for the first time in the post-war era, a genuine American socialist movement might be on the horizon, thanks to growing awareness both of rising income inequality and of a system that is flagrantly rigged in favor of the financial elite.
Paradoxically, conservatives are more responsible for this socialist resurgence than anyone. By fanatically opposing the kind of mild — and yes, socialist-tinged — reforms that would make capitalism more tolerable for the most vulnerable in society, conservatives are stoking a leftist bonfire.
Some conservatives, like the reformist Michael Strain, seem to grasp the problem. But most appear to exist in a kind of time warp in which the Soviet Union still exists and leftist ideas are obviously self-discrediting. Jim Pethokoukis gave us an example of this at National Review:
Thanks to Piketty, the Left is now having a Galaxy Quest moment. All that stuff their Marxist economics professors taught them about the “inherent contradictions” of capitalism and about history’s being on the side of the planners — all the theories that the apparent victory of market capitalism in the last decades of the 20th century seemed to invalidate — well, it’s all true after all. In their progressive hearts, they always knew it, knew it, knew it! The era of big government is back! Let the redistribution commence! [National Review]
Sorry, Jim, jeering just isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Take it from someone who had no stake in the intellectual arguments that dominated the postwar era. When I graduated from college in 2008, the American economy was hemorrhaging 600,000 jobs per month. The country was undergoing a crash course in subprime mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps. Aggregate demand was collapsing, and liquidity was freezing up. The appropriate response would have been to spend like a drunken sailor until unemployment was restored, then cut back slowly and start paying down accrued debt. Thank God we were about to elect this Obama fellow, because he knew what he was doing, right?
Wrong. We did pass the (badly underrated) stimulus, but the likes of Paul Krugman were howling themselves hoarse that it wouldn’t be enough to restore full employment. He was, of course, completely right.
Unemployment rose steadily, peaking at over 10 percent before coming down with agonizing slowness. Meanwhile, the vast bulk of newly created wealth went straight to the rich. If all of this isn’t indicative of an enormous failure of capitalism, then I don’t know what is.
Then the Left watched with increasing horror as the entire United States political mainstream turned from stimulus to austerity, abandoning a job that was not even half-done.
Then the Republican Party — which not even two years before had proposed its own $713 billion stimulus — won a sweeping victory in the 2010 midterms, and with a crazed messianic fervor dedicated itself to making everything worse as fast as possible. They demanded Herbert Hoover–style austerity and repeatedly held the government’s credit rating hostage to get it, which they succeeded in doing (abetted by Democratic “moderates,” to be fair). As a result, we’re well past the halfway point of our first lost decade with no end in sight.
Current political debates, while not quite so mind-blowingly bizarre as those in 2010–11, are still striking in that even political moderates are willing to toss millions of the most vulnerable people overboard for very poorly defined reasons. Unemployment isn’t even close to low, and yet repeatedly discredited inflation paranoiacs are, again, cooking up highly suspect new reasons to crush wage growth.
In short, political elites have been doing all they can to convince lefties that Marx was pretty close to the mark on that whole rich-exploiting-the-poor thing. Republicans in power are against even the mildest moderating structures to keep the middle class and poor from being left behind by galloping inequality; instead, they are for obliterating what inadequate protection we do have and for savage austerity that would increase the population of desperate jobless.
Every new Paul Ryan budget — all of which openly gut safety net programs — is another bundle of kindling on a potential leftist bonfire.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, April 10, 2014
“Socialized Education”: Another Republican Who Thinks It’s Time To Close The Doors At Public Schools
Once in a great while, a conservative policymaker will condemn the existence of public schools in the United States. They’re usually not quite as direct, though, as Ohio state Rep. Andrew Brenner (R), who recently published an online item insisting, “Public education in America is socialism.”
In the post, titled “Public education in America is socialism, what is the solution?,” Brenner laid out his argument. He noted that the Tea Party, which “will attack Obama-care relentlessly as a socialist system,” rarely brings up “the fact that our public education system is already a socialist system […] and has been a socialist system since the founding of our country.” […]
Brenner’s solution: more privatization. “In a free market system parents and students are free to go where the product and results are better,” he wrote.
Did I mention that Brenner is the vice-chair of the Ohio House Education Committee? He is.
For what it’s worth, the Ohio Republican apparently looked up “socialism” on Wikipedia and found that the word means “a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy.” And since he sees public education fitting this bill, and because he believes all socialism must always be bad in all instances, Brenner seems to think it’s time to close the doors at public schools.
Of course, the same could be said for public police departments and fire departments, which would also have to be privatized, but one assumes Brenner and his allies will get to this on another day.
To be sure, even most far-right policymakers rarely talk this way publicly – most Americans celebrate the nation’s public-school system as an important institution and would generally oppose candidates eager to close them all down – but it’s worth noting that Brenner isn’t entirely alone.
Indeed, former senator and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, just a few years ago, made very similar noises about public education. “Just call them what they are,” Santorum said in 2011. “Public schools? That’s a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools.”
In early 2012, CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked Santorum, “Are you saying that we shouldn’t have public schools, now? I mean, I thought public schools were the foundation of American democracy.” The Republican didn’t back down, reemphasizing his belief that federal and state governments should not be involved in public education.
Republican pollsters have frequently suggested that it’s a mistake for party officials to call for shutting down the federal Department of Education because it gives the appearance of hostility towards public education.
But this apparently doesn’t stop some GOP candidates and policymakers from going even further.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 14, 2014
“Oh Ye Of Little Intelligence”: Rick Santorum Wins The Prize For The Worst Nelson Mandela Tribute
ObamaCare is a great injustice, much like the institutionalized racism and segregation of post-colonial South Africa, according to former Pennsylvania senator and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R).
In an appearance on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly Thursday, Santorum likened Mandela’s anti-apartheid crusade to Republicans’ continued efforts to dismantle the president’s health care law.
“He was fighting against some great injustice,” Santorum said, “and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives. And ObamaCare is front and center in that.”
Leaving aside the fact that shanghaiing a world leader’s death to peddle your political beliefs is gross opportunism at its worst, Santorum’s comparison is flawed for another simple reason: Mandela was a prominent proponent of expanding access to health care, especially for the poor and disadvantaged.
From a South African department of health report on the nation’s health care system:
On the 24th of May 1994, President Nelson Mandela announced in his State of the Nation address that all health care for pregnant women and children under the age of 6 years would be provided free to users of public health facilities. The free care policy at primary care level was extended to all users from 1 April 2006. [DOH]
Free public health care? Sounds like socialism to me.
There’s more.
South Africa’s constitution enshrines a “right” to health care in the same subsection that it guarantees the rights to “sufficient food and water.” The Kaiser Family Foundation named an award after Mandela honoring “the efforts of individuals who make extraordinary contributions to improving the health and health care of the most disadvantaged sectors of the population in South Africa and internationally.” And Mandela’s work, both in office and after, laid the groundwork for South Africa’s new universal health care system.
We’re sure Rick Santorum will be issuing a retraction any moment now.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, December 6, 2013
“Deja vu On Obamacare”: In The Crossfire Tonight, Americans Begin Signing Up For FDR’s New “Social Security” Program
Voiceover: It’s December 1, 1936 — in the Crossfire tonight — Americans begin signing up for FDR’s new “Social Security” program — but can the post office handle the volume? And is it essential protection for seniors — or the slippery slope to socialism? In the Crossfire — Frances Perkins, secretary of labor, who supports the program — and congressman Daniel Reed, Republican of New York, who opposes it.
Good evening, I’m Upton Sinclair, on the left.
And I’m Freddy Hayek, on the right.
Sinclair: After 18 months of planning, President Roosevelt’s breakthrough Social Security program to ease poverty among senior citizens recently began its rollout, with application forms sent to post offices across the country — and with employers forced to register as well. Freddy, I think it’s a milestone for a civilized nation. After all, two dozen countries already have systems of social insurance on the books. And the whole idea was invented by a conservative, Otto von Bismarck, back in the ’80s as a shrewd way to assure social peace. Can’t you concede that morality, not to mention the survival instincts of the ruling class, requires a decent society to offer something like Bismarckcare to protect against destitution in old age?
Hayek: Spoken like a communist out to weigh the economy down, Up. Don’t you lefties see that your taxing and spending will put us on the road to serfdom?
Sinclair: Catchy phrase, Fred — might want to hold onto that for a book at some point. Let’s bring in our guests. Congressman Reed, here’s what you said about Social Security during the House debate over the legislation: “The lash of the dictator will be felt, and 25 million free American citizens will for the first time submit themselves to a fingerprint test.” One of your Senate colleagues said the new program would “end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with the average European. But isn’t this rhetoric a bit over the top?
Reed: Not at all, Upton. This is simply the reality. As another Republican in our caucus says, “Never in the history of the world has a measure been . . . so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”
Hayek: Secretary Perkins, you don’t look convinced.
Perkins: It’s always the same sob story from the party of wealth. The sky is falling, the lights of freedom are being extinguished, blah blah blah blah blah.
Reed: Plus, the darn thing doesn’t cover enough people.
Perkins and Upton: What?
Reed: It’s only slated to reach a couple hundred thousand Americans in 1940. And with very modest benefits.
Perkins: So your beef with a program you want to kill is that it doesn’t do enough for enough people in need?
Reed: Well, that, plus it’s very complicated and hard to sign up for. Have you seen the lines at the post office? People have no idea what to do. The wait can take hours.
Sinclair: You can’t blast a program for existing and also for being inadequate.
Perkins: Sure you can, Upton, if you’re a Republican. But my real problem with the GOP is different. More than 50 percent of our seniors live in poverty. You see them in the street every day. Charities are overwhelmed. These poor souls have nowhere to turn. They can’t afford food or medicine. And Republicans say there’s nothing the government of a great nation can do.
Hayek: Congressman, what say you?
Reed: Isn’t this socialism, Frances?
Perkins: Absolutely not.
Reed: Come, Secretary Perkins. Isn’t this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?
Perkins: It’s a load of common sense and decency, is what it is.
Reed: It will discourage people from saving for their own retirement. And it creates incentives for employers to drop any pension coverage they offer now. They’ll assume everyone can just be dumped into the government system.
Perkins: No, congressman, it’ll save companies money by letting them tailor any pensions they offer to work atop the national minimum that Social Security provides. Some basic level of government-funded retirement security is good for business.
Reed: Then why does every thinking businessman in America oppose it?
Perkins: Don’t throw oxymorons at me, Dan. Mark my words: Social Security will end up bigger than anyone today can imagine, even as America grows much, much richer — proving that social insurance and capitalism are mutually reinforcing, not mutually exclusive.
Hayek: Such poetry, Frances — such misguided but lovely-sounding poetry!
Upton: After the break — some Democrats are urging FDR to go big on basic health coverage for every American, too — but the president says we can come back and address that question in a few years. Who’s right? Answers just ahead — when Crossfire returns . . .
By: Matt Miller, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 30, 2013
“But For Protecting The Middle Class”: Still Believe President Obama Seeks A Permanent American Socialist State?
One of the strangest—and for me, most annoying—perversions of politics in the Obama era is the meme pursued by so many on the right suggesting that this president is a raging socialist who seeks to install a permanent welfare state in America—despite all evidence to the contrary.
In the wake of the fiscal cliff deal—supported not only by the President but by an overwhelming vote of elected Democrats—we should now be able to put this foolishness to rest once and for all as we acknowledge a simple and clear reality—
If Barack Obama is indeed a socialist, he must be the absolute worst socialist in recorded history.
How do we now know this beyond any reasonable question of a doubt?
Any good conservative will be among the first to tell you that financing a permanent welfare state takes huge amounts of money—money that can only be raised by taxing a wide swath of the nation’s citizenry. And yet, the President just pushed through a law permanently lowering taxes for some 99 percent of all Americans— and was hailed as a big winner for his effort to do so.
For someone who would prefer to be President of, say, Sweeden, such a deal could only be viewed as a crushing defeat, not a political victory.
And if you somehow imagine that the President believes he can accomplish the financing of his “European style welfare state” through the rather meager increase in progressive tax rates now to be levied on the nation’s largest earners, I would suggest you take heed of the many conservatives who have incessantly reminded us over these past few months that the sum total of the tax increases on the rich will only serve to fund government for a few days a year—clearly nowhere near enough cash to fund a true, socialist agenda.
Still, I know what you’re thinking…the President is planning to create his socialist paradise by borrowing and printing all the money required to pay the high cost of the expanded welfare state he covets.
Sorry…it just doesn’t work and the President would know this better than just about anyone.
While borrowing money may be the modus operandi for filling in the shortfalls when it comes to financing entitlement programs in an era of relatively low taxes (at least comparatively speaking) and a dramatic increase in the senior population depending upon entitlement programs, I suspect even the most conservative economists would tell you —correctly I would add—that all of our available borrowing power is strained just trying to stay even with our entitlement and defense obligations, let alone expand entitlements to the point where we would even approach a government philosophy that could be comparable with a European socialistic society.
Indeed, even if the President chose to press for more borrowing or printing, he could, at best, only do so in support of the existing entitlement programs as it would take an act of Congress to expand the system.
Does anyone believe the Congress is heading in the direction of expanding entitlements? We have a House of Representatives gerrymandered into GOP control for a period likely to last at least until the end of the decade—meaning it will outlive Obama’s second term.
Thus, when Obama got behind preserving the Bush tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans, he did so knowing that he would never be able to expand the entitlement programs at any time during the remainder of his term. If it was a socialist society he was seeking, he had but one chance and that was to raise taxes on everyone, not just the very wealthy.
So, exactly how is it possible that a President and a Democratic Party—hell bent on creating this permanent welfare state in America—could support any deal that would not allow the Bush tax cuts to sunset as scheduled so that tax rates would return to the larger numbers of the Clinton era?
Such support would make no sense for anyone favoring expansion of the welfare state. And yet, this President chose to support the permanent lowering of taxes on the middle class as did his party.
While you may be displeased with the fiscal cliff compromise for any number of reasons, including the failure of the parties to do much of anything about spending, the simple fact remains that—for better or for worse—decades of Democratic Party/progressive tax philosophy went out the window last week when an overwhelming majority of Democrats voted to support the fiscal cliff deal—and with it went any rational support for the notion that President Obama and his party have some secret, European socialist vision in mind for the country.
All you need do to understand this is take a look at the number of Congressional Democrats who cast their votes in support of the two pieces of legislation that produced the Bush tax cuts and compare those votes to the vote of the Congressional Democrats making those very cuts permanent for approximately 99 percent of all Americans.
The vote tally for the 2001 bill that created the first round of the Bush tax cuts delivered just 28 votes in support from House Democrats. The second round—which came in 2003—could only muster up 7 Democratic votes in support.
The vote this week to make these very same tax cuts permanent received overwhelming support from House Democrats, who cast 172 votes in favor of very likely ending middle class tax increases during our lifetime—and they did so at the specific behest of the same Democratic president who many argue is committed to creating the American welfare state.
That simply does not add up for a President looking to create France in America.
As a result, one cannot rationally argue that the President, and his party— who cast their support in favor of leaving more money in the pockets of 99 percent of Americans so that they could spend the money supporting the businesses of America rather than handing it over to government to spend it for them—desire the path of socialism.
While I’m certain there will be no shortage of issues available to those wishing to attack the President, can we now dare to hope that the next time someone feels the need to vent, they might do so without the whole “Obama is a socialist” narrative?
I hope so. What was a silly narrative before the fiscal cliff deal, it is an embarrassingly preposterous narrative today.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, January 6, 2013
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