Marx disdained capitalism because in part he was sure capitalists could never get their game right. Selfishness eventually, he was sure, would always defeat their purpose.
Capitalism is true to itself only when it spreads wealth, to the advantage of the working middle class, more than it concentrates it. When it concentrates wealth more than spreading it, capitalism soon becomes something else. Plutocracy or oligarchy, or a brew of the two. Take your pick.
Isn’t this the lesson of “trickle down,” of which Ronald Reagan was the most famous and influential booster? Playing on for three decades, bolstered anew by the Bush-Cheney warmongering, the trickle down economy has shrunk the middle class, undercut American competitiveness, and added massively to the national debt – the weight of which threatens the cherished American Dream.
The national debt nearly tripled under President Reagan, and nearly tripled again during Bush II, all on the pretext that national security demanded it. Though we reign now as the world’s only superpower, our national security is more threatened than it has ever been, at home and abroad. Superpower is a bullseye, pinned on our backs.
The longer we live by trickle down, the less secure we will be, economically and domestically. The more we are divided between the One Percent and the Ninety-nine Percent, the weaker free enterprise will be at securing the middle class on which consumer economics depends for survival.
Serious conservatives can’t possibly be comfortable knowing that the national debt grew most heavily under two Republican presidents, with Bush II leaving the country and the presidency encumbered with raging budget deficits, debilitating unemployment, and a sputtering economy, from which reversals are far from assured.
The politics that pervade Washington and most state capitals today show little promise of delivering such reversals. Conservatives have permitted the fiscal responsibility that long was their guiding tenet to pass into the hands of the corporate rulers, whose sole allegance is to the bottom line, and who impose their will on the capitals by flooding the system with money that pads the pockets of legislators, lobbyists and lawyers.
By anointing corporations with unlimited First Amendment rights, the Supreme Court has effectively silenced the Silent Majority. It gives them the power to spend whatever it takes to buy as much media and political influence as it takes to keep themselves essentially free of any rule of law that nations may want to exert.
Since the Supreme Court has equated corporations with persons, might this free the people to indict them by citizen arrests? If a corporation swallows or kills a competitor, leaving thousands of workers without jobs, why not charge them with homicide, as if it were one person killing another?
How about trying Mitt Romney for murder, since he built his substantial fortune by killing a dozen companies?
– Frank Mensel, March 2012
Great idea, Frank!
As always with you, it’s first class, especially in content but also in site design.
In connection with your first post, on our vast war machine, you probably would like Rachel Maddow’s new book, Drift.
Love,
Wayne
Wow, this is awful. Look at us. Why are we still in Afghanistan? If we really want to make it btteer, we need to let them do it themselves! Provide them with the supplies they need, and they don’t need us to be there! If they think that killing civilians is improving’ Afghanistan, we might as well just cover every square inch of the country with mushroom clouds. In fact, it’d be btteer. Save them the pain of being shot and left to die, and just vaporize them. Gone in an instant.And I’d also like to say that I think that we ought to just bust up the banks like we did with Bell. That would solve the problem quite easily, if I do say so myself.Finally, I couldn’t read the last link because I’ll be damned if Firefox can read a PDF without severe lag. I think it almost crashed. But, judging by the wording, it must not have been good. Though I’m not really surprised. Every time the rich get a small cut, the poor get beaten, tortured, maimed, killed, mutilated, and raped, in that order. Metaphorically, of course. Well, I hope, anyways.I wonder what it’ll be like when the government collapses. It’ll probably be like post-Rome Europe, with all these little, tiny nations constantly at war with each other. Europe will, of course, revert back to the way it was in the medieval periods. Except we’ll all have modern weaponry to kill each other with. That’ll be lovely. Can’t wait ’till we’re shelling all our neighbors to death!