- by New Deal democrat
Whatever its other problems, the America of my youth was exuberantly optimistic. We had it better than any generation of humanity before us ever and we knew it, we had the world by the cojones and we knew it, and the future beckoned with wonders so long as we didn't blow it up in nuclear Armageddon.
Now I see a despondent and almost fatalistic "99%" on the one side, and a bitter, surly, and xenophobic rump on the other. There is no optimism in the reactionary radicalism that has ascended to power, it is all social Darwinism in a nasty and brutish war of all against all. There is really no more pretense that continuation down the ideological path we have trod these last 30 years will improve the lot of most people; rather, there is only the brute assertion that the masses are moochers who deserve their fate.
But I can dream, and here are the birthday wishes I would like to see come true for America on its 236th anniversary:
1. Infrastructure spending to replace our crumbling roads, bridges, water and sewer systems.
2. A new WPA to labor at all the government tasks that have been cut, until such time as unemployment drops to 6%.
3. The reinstatement of Glass-Steagall to separate investment banking from FDIC insured banking, and the breaking up of any remaining financial institutions which are "too big to fail."
4. The reinstatement of state usury laws. If for example a Delaware based company wants to offer credit to someone in Nebraska, they should have to abide by Nebraska's usury limits. Five years ago I used to get pushback on the theory of individual responsibility. That didn't exactly work out in the housing bubble, did it? Were only the spendthrifts laid off in the recession? Too much individual debt in the aggregate destroys the innocent and the spendthrift alike.
5. The conviction and imprisonment of the financial wrongdoers, no matter how high and mighty.
6. Repeal of the Bankruptcy "Reform" Act's ridiculous privileging of student loans.
7. Limitation of the Senate filibuster. If the old men want to filibuster, then they should actually have to stay up day and night to do so. Kibuki filibusters should be abolished, and other filibustering too except perhaps for a small number per session or perhaps limited to Supreme Court nominees with their lifetime appointments.
8. The reversal of Citizens United and its corporate corruption of the political process,
9. Replacement of part of the income tax with a revenue neutral Value Added Tax or similar, which would prevent the capture of all the profits gleaned from lower labor costs in the developing world by the uppermost corporate management and large shareholders, and instead give the US Treasury the means to ameliorate the costs of labor arbitrage to the benefit of average workers.
10. A law prohibiting states from offering tax incentives and abatements to out-of-state firms to relocate businesses. This is almost identical to one of the vices in the Articles of Confederation that led to the calling of a Constitutional Convention (European sovereigns were playing the 13 states off against one another for commercial treaties). Similarly, a phasing out of tax incentives that can be offered to sports franchises, in order to end the blackmailing of cities. Both of these are needed to stop the race to the bottom.
11. The prohibition of gerrymandering, whereby officeholders choose their constituents. Either an independent commission must be entrusted with the task, or else state and federal electoral districts must conform as closely as possible to pre-existing county and municipal boundaries.
12. A countercyclical balanced budget amendment, that would mandate surpluses in good times and deficit spending in recessions, enforced against the Congress by either the Courts or better yet, the States.
I'm sure there are a host of other festering excesses that I have missed. In the meantime, here is an American Tune for our time:
10 comments:
Words to Save the Union (paraphrased from Adrian Rogers)
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity, by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them; and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Dear anon
As you are so completely against government, please sign in under your real name and publicly renounce your social security and medicare benefits. After all, you'll just be stealing.
Also, please only drive on roads not paid for with taxpayer dollars, and don't hire anybody who went to public school or public university ..
You get the idea; your posts are bullshit.
HS
When this blog posts data, it's worth reading. But when analysis is mixed in, it's just down right embarrassing for it. The article could have been written by a high school senior or possibly a college freshman at best. Bonddad's analysis is poor enough, but this New Deal Democrat's knows no more than any average Huffington post commenter.
You know you're making a difference, Hale, when trolls start counter-propagandizing on your blog and telling you how foolish your opinions are.
They're afraid of you...
Congratulations!
And NDd, this is an outstanding wishlist!
Consider 2016.
Four-and-a-half years before Democrats won their transformational victory of 2008, a young, virtually unknown politician gave a game-changing keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. That politician was lowly Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, and of course, he leveraged that address, first, into the Senate in 2006, and then into the White House in 2008, defeating the most powerful and determined forces in the Democratic Party of 2004.
Here we are in 2012 at precisely that same point in 2004 that the unknown politician was selected to give that address to the convention that changed the course of history in 2008.
I suspect, NDd, that if some upstart, unknown, progressive politician is given the chance to espouse your 12 points in a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this summer, tben that politician would find themself in the prime underdog position for the 2016 nomination, leading to an upset over everyone currently being considered for the opportunity to be the next party standard-bearer.
Thanks for that post. I second the motion.
The 12 wishes present a decent starting point for discussion. But the devil is always in the details, and unfortunately, these suggestions are sorely lacking in that department. It’s a relatively easy task to point out the problems within the areas highlighted. Much more difficult to formulate realistic, specific solutions. And that’s where these ‘wishes’ fall (extremely) short.
Taking each number in turn:
1. Obviously, infrastructure in general is in need of revamping and building out next-generation platforms. But how will it be accomplished? By throwing taxpayer $$ at the problem, under management of the gov’t? By encouraging private sector spending through tax incentives? What is your proposal?
2. This is an interesting idea. Are you willing to accept the expansion of the budget deficits that would necessarily result from implementation of this policy? Note – I’m not arguing that the budget needs to be balanced. Just elucidating the consequent results of implementing this policy, and how unlikely it would be to get this implemented practically and efficiently.
3. Again, details please. As soon as FDIC-insured institutions are prohibited from proprietary trading, you still have to define what is hedging and what is not.
4. Many unsupported logical leaps in this argument. First, even with state usury laws, there’s no guaranty that individuals will not again borrow beyond their means on a large-scale basis. In other words, predatory lender behavior was not near the top of the list of causes of over-borrowing in the last cycle (unless you can support that it was). Rather, the structure of liability risk-bearing was the underlying greatest cause (who gets hurt if the loan goes bad, and who gets bailed out). Secondly, who was laid off in the recession has nothing to do with who took on too much debt. Again, the recession was so severe because the risk-bearing structure was so perverse. When it starting to come unraveled, the mess was on a massive scale, because if the lenders had more skin in the game, the excesses would have corrected sooner.
5. No sh#t Sherlock. I don’t think anyone disagree with this. Again, it’s a matter of details as to how you would suggest more effective enforcement of the securities laws.
6. This makes sense. Of course, it would also ultimately result in lower levels of student loan debt (since lenders would actually be at risk of defaults), ultimately resulting in less access to higher levels of education. I would argue this is the direction that it needs to go, but you must acknowledge that this would be the end result.
7. Not sure what this would solve. Even if these jokers were forced to debate/vote on each others’ proposals, 90+ percent of them are bought and paid for, so it’s unclear what a filibuster fix would actually accomplish.
8. This is probably more pursuant to the underlying problem. I agree.
9. How is further re-distribution a favorable outcome? If evidence supports it, then great – I’m all ears. Unless/until then, it is unclear how this proposal benefits overall levels of productive capacity and efficient allocation of resources (i.e. the main reasons why the U.S. is still the most prolific economy in the world).
10. Again, please demonstrate how competition among tax jurisdictions constitutes a “race to the bottom”. It seems that this is exactly what is needed in order to shrink the gov’t interference within all aspects of commerce and individuals’ everyday interactions.
11. No comment on this. I don’t see how this one is all that important, in light of the other major problems.
12. Please demonstrate how a balanced budget provides a benefit to the general welfare. In other words, please demonstrate how budget deficits are directly linked to less favorable outcomes in the domestic economy’s production levels.
NDD, great post as usual. These are things a lot of Americans would love to rally around, and as Jimdotz said, it would make a great platform for 2016. Heck, it would make a great platform for 2012.
WSM: NDD and bonddad have written extensively on how to solve many of the problems addressed in his wish list. Before you post, RTFM. After that, please point us to your blog post(s) where you put forward your own solutions to the problems of crumbling infrastructure, instability in the financial system, congressional gridlock, corporate welfare, and the other problems NDD addresses.
@ radard:
I read this blog regularly - it is in my RSS reader, so I see the posts every day. I would strenuously disagree with your assertion that "NDD and bonddad have written extensively on how to solve many of the problems". What they have done extensively is outline many of the problems. As far as providing practical, specific solutions, I guess we disagree on the meaning of the term 'solution'.
Your asinine comment referring to my own blog is right along the lines of the point I was making. Meaning, if I had the powerful platform of widely-read economics blog, I would be much more careful, selective, and well-researched with what I propagated on that blog.
With great power comes great responsibility. Since I do not have that powerful resource at my disposal, I am also not responsible for formulating the solutions and broadcasting them. I will be the first to admit that, realistically, none of the answers are simple.
Bloggers like this one would often have you think they know the answers - but alas, the solutions are elusive and complicated.
I noticed that you did not put forward your solutions, either.
Post a Comment