Main Index of
Articles
OBSERVATIONS
FROM SHANGHAI: The Republicans Will Not Save US
Between Two Ossified Ideologies, American Middle Class Faces
Managed Decline
Originally
posted on Facebook, from Shanghai, on July 21, 2001
By Marco
Antonio Roberts
Over the last few months, if not years, I have watched,
read, and listened at the barrage of news reporting and opining that is so
plentiful, on what ails our country - hoping to find, at last, that new insight
heretofore absent from all public discussion as to where the answer lies to our
country’s worsening economic, and ultimately national security,
conditions. I have not found it. Instead, I have only seen again and again
the same boilerplate solutions that have been offered by the opposing parties
for decades now – and now often offered even more simplistically and crudely
ideologically than ever.
From the declared (and not) Republican presidential
candidates, conservative and neo-con editorialists, and entertainment news
conservative pundits, we have what amounts to this (but redoubled): Go back to
the Bush years.
We Did That Already
As a morally and economically centrist conservative I am no
Obama supporter, and reject most of his ideologically leftist principles of
governance. Moreover, even many Obama
supporters are beginning to openly worry about the president’s ability to lead
us out of what appears to be an inexorable, if slow, descent into third world
conditions. Yet, when it comes to
Republican proposals, I have to agree with one thing the president has
said: “We already did that.” It was, after all, during and after eight
years of Bushian policies that we had two economic crises, first with the
dot-com bubble implosion, then the housing boom collapse. And while it is true
there was also the government intrusion into, and distortion of, the market
place, strongly supported and advanced by liberal Democrats like Massachusetts
Congressman Barney Frank, much of that was also done with tacit,
under-the-table Republican approval.
It was also during the Bush years that we had an
acceleration of the transfer of wealth from the American middle class to the
shores of Shanghai and Dubai; it was during those years when American
technological advantages further eroded or were co-opted by our likeliest and
most dangerous future rivals; and it was then that the failure to plan for a
vitally important American presence in space occurred, leaving us, as of 5:57
AM EDST today, vulnerable to political blackmail to a regime run by a former
KGB agent, a regime that has not been friendly to the U.S., one that cut gas
supplies to European countries in the middle of a harsh winter for political
gain, and has in recent years openly invaded other countries with brutal force.
A Well-Traveled Road
People need to understand that the freedom and prosperity we
enjoy today, which is still plentiful, did not come by anything we are doing
today. It exists only because of what
was done before by our predecessors.
Still, it is very difficult for people who have grown up in relative
prosperity and comfort to understand that, even if that prosperity was not
personal, but societal. Maybe that is
why great corporations and empires always eventually fall. But, if we cannot get the American working
people, especially the young, to peel their eyes and ears away from Snooki and
Gaga, and get serious – and educated – now, about the nation’s future (not just
their own personal careers), then we will follow the great nations of the past
all too closely, and our legacy will be disgrace.
I categorically say now, with the confidence of a student of
history with some empirically demonstrated logical reasoning and predictive
capabilities, that with the way our economy and political discourse is
structured now, we can look forward to the continuation of the decades-long
decline of the American middle class, and a creeping upward expansion of that
decline into the upper middle classes, along with loss of technological and
military might that will inevitably follow.
And, with the loss of security that might provides, we can further
expect a serious threat to our liberty and the prospects for future advancement
that we have enjoyed as a nation since the founding of our republic.
The reasons are many, but for now, if you will permit me,
let me suggest three things:
·
This is not the end of history.
All systems of government and trade must be substantively reformed from
time to time because a subset of highly motivated human beings always
eventually find a way to game the system for their own advantage, at the
expense of others. The Republicans (is
anyone?) are not offering any truly new approaches to re-establishing
employment and wage gains at the individual level on the main streets of
America. Instead, they seem to
perpetually assume (against obvious and persistent evidence), that as long as
the rich and the corporations do well, so will everyone else. It’s true that those at the top, and the
corporations they run, need to do well for the rest to prosper, but it does not
follow that we will all automatically prosper when those at the top do
well. The last 20 years prove
that. As the very rich have gotten
richer and richer, the rest of us, on average, have lost ground. (Many Americans on the losing end don’t
notice it because they are looking at their own circumstances, and only in
current dollars. But you can’t compare
your gains at age 45 to what they were at 35, with today’s dollars at the
dollars you earned ten years ago.
Instead, you have to look at what a 45 year-old in your same career and
circumstances earned ten years ago, compared to what you make today in inflation-adjusted
dollars.) A radical change may now be
in order, the kind that has reinvented past great nations, allowing them to
extend their years of progress and prosperity.
Exhibit A: China.
·
Corporations are amoral things. They are not persons.
Corporations should be treated and considered for nothing more than what
they are: a vehicle for maximizing and funneling profits. While they may not necessarily be
intentionally destructive actors, they are amoral ones. And, just as they have provided a basis for
prosperity, they also have a long record of justifying every abuse of
individuals, disregard of public welfare, destruction of cultural and natural
landmarks, and despoiling of the environment, with one clearly and openly
stated rationale: “we have a responsibility to maximize profit for our
shareholders.” I think it is safe to
say that all the great philosophical and religious traditions that have mused
about the elevation of the human experience, from Plato to Buddha to Confucius
to Christ, would have a problem with such a single-minded approach to
decision-making on issues that inevitably affect a nation’s culture and
socio-economic welfare. Nevertheless,
it reigns over much of our public life.
Ergo, vulgarity, misogynism, crude self-promotion, self-centered
immodesty, political extremism, are all promoted (and spread) because it is
profitable to do so. Historical
landmarks are destroyed, and shoddy new buildings are put in their place
because these maximize shareholder profits.
American and European conglomerates sell vital technology to our
potential future adversaries, including military and population surveillance
technology (as they are doing even now) because it makes money. And these are the legal things corporations
do. It is also why American corporations
are squeezing wages and outsourcing jobs on the middle to lower rungs of the
labor market even as they inflate their own executive salaries at a ratio to
the average worker that is 900% higher than it was back in 1980. Now, are these executives today intellectual
X-Men ten times smarter than their counterparts in 1980? Have they produced an economic juggernaut
that has produced unprecedented benefits to Americans at all levels? Or have they merely used their privileged
positions, as so many have before, to consistently arrogate to themselves, thru
ups and downs alike, an ever greater portion of the nation’s wealth?
·
CEOs are bleeding dry the middle
class. An economy is, at its core, about the trade
of goods and services; that is, the movement of value or income. From one day to the next, we can move from
boom to recession, even though we have the same number of able-bodied workers,
the same amount of capital goods, and the same infrastructure. So what is different? The flow of value. When the butcher stops trading with the blacksmith, who then
stops trading with the farmer, who then stops visiting the local saloon - at
that moment the total amount of hams, anvils, crops, and beer has not changed,
and neither has the productive capacity.
But, if the flow of value, i.e. trade, does not resume soon, each will
stop producing, or produce less, then resulting in a real decline in total
wealth. Well, what has been happening
in our corporate economy, we have had a constriction of the wealth flowing back
to the middle class, in the form of reduced employment and wages. While the
flow of income has not stopped, it has been reduced in one direction as it has
been accelerated in the other.
Short-term, each company and its top officers, and some many of its
large shareholders, may derive increased wealth. But in the economic ‘biosphere,’ eventually the employee/consumer
base is bled dry, and the flow finally stops, with catastrophic consequences
for the economy and all caught within it without the resources to escape. This is what has begun to happen in the last
two traumatic recessions, and will only get worse if a more balanced flow of
income is not restored.
Greed Is NOT Good
The sad truth is that while Democrats still ignore many fundamentals
of economics, and think that all you have to do to provide benefits and goods
to all is simply wave a legislative magic wand and utter an incantation like
“let there be healthcare for all,” Republicans appear closer than ever to the
caricature of them the Democrats so often portray: as Pollyanna corporate
boosters, for whom corporate profit is a goal that trumps all others, and with
nothing new to offer. Obama is
proposing to raise taxes for “struggling” families earning only $250,000 and
up, say the Republicans, including all the presidential candidates. “Struggling?” Really? At $250K a year? Considering that the vast majority of
American middle class households manage well on less than half that, this is
nothing but demagogic pandering to the ambitious class. But, in the book of most humans across the
earth, not being able to buy the latest, fully equipped Lexus, or go on that
fourth trans-Atlantic vacation, or attend that $500 a plate gala, or send your
kid to Harvard - in the midst of an economic retrenchment that is hitting most
people hard - that is not considered “struggling.” Struggling is being out of work for two years, not knowing how
you will survive when the unemployment benefits run out. Struggling is losing your $150K house because
you can’t even afford that modest home.
Struggling is not having enough to eat, not having any good educational
or employment prospects, and not being able to see a doctor at all except in an
emergency room. And, struggling is
where more Americans are today than ten years ago, and where more will be in
ten more years, if the executive class is allowed to continue to profess “greed
is good!” as they amass greater wealth in a faltering economy.
A Decline Profitable
for the Few
Traveling around Shanghai I am amazed by what the Chinese
have accomplished. But, as I am
encouraged for their future, I am frightened for ours. We have stopped building great new
buildings, bridges, and transportation systems to advance the nation’s
infrastructure, as nations east rocket past us with American money. We have
surrendered our supremacy in space, and transferred our technological prowess
to Chinese firms run by China’s army in exchange for short-term profits, giving
them spying tools that they can use on their own people, and maybe eventually
us: We have debased our cultural norms
and ideals that value civic duty, self-restraint, and national consciousness
because these are boring, and aren’t as profitable to promote as people willing
to degrade themselves and others in exchange for the tiniest bit of fame. And we have, in empirically measurable ways,
gone economically backwards for the majority of American people. And yet, with all this, the executive and
governing classes are doing well for themselves - in fact, hugely better than
ever, while the infotainment chattering ‘punderatti,’ all of them fabulously
wealthy by the same system, look the other way. It is time to raise our heads, see, and prepare for what is coming. Ignore it, and we all, but especially your
children and your grandchildren, are destined for a gradual national decline,
and the loss of freedom that must go with it, managed very profitably by a
self-selected few.
Copyright
2011, The Ultrapolis Project
May be used freely
with proper attribution. All other
rights reserved.