I started this as a comment to a
recent a David Brooks column in the NY Times. But it was too
late and the Comments were closed. So I expanded it 'a little.'
David Brooks' NY Times column of
3/19/13 with his reasonable style, amiable manner and beguiling title
(The
Progressive Shift) hid a devious purpose. By castigating
the Democratic party's Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget (a
plan that if ever presented to the American public by Democratic
Party officially would go over quite well), is by default
giving credibility to the Paul Ryan and Republican Party's brutal,
reactionary and economically unsound budget proposal. The
Republicans as usual would like nothing better than the weak recovery
to falter and collapse. What they offer is counter to sound economic
policy. They(as usual) want to attack, undermine and if possible
eliminate all social spending programs while pretending to be
concerned about the Deficit (which is now going down) and at the same
make sure the recession kicks back in - right in time for the
midterms. It's all so transparent.
What most people don't realize is that
Keynesian ('pump priming' by the government spending to initiate
consumer spending and hence more investment, jobs, etc.) has been
used effectively by both parties since the FDR days. But we use a
variation of its original version, 'Military Keynesianism', but for
better or worse it works. While Europeans were able to use it
properly, mainly on social spending (as John Maynard Keynes
intended), here in the US we have to add our Keynesian social
spending on top of our military (over) spending. And it is a
medicine abused by both parties. It is intended as a counter cyclical
response by a government to a business cycle downturn – restoring
demand for goods and services. But it has become like an antibiotic
ever less effective due to overuse. Yet it still works somewhat. What
do you think got us out of the plummeting GDP numbers in 2009?
Republicans in their heart of hearts
know it works it, too. That's why when they get in the Deficit is
suddenly not a problem, and they spend like there is no
tomorrow. Obama inherited the worse economic downturn in 80 years
(and debts from Bush's II's criminal irresponsibility) and
suddenly the Deficit mattered again. Of course it always mattered but
it supposed to be paid down in good times. Clinton in the 1990s at
least moved in that direction. The very worse thing to do now is go
into an austerity mode – exactly what we seem to be headed for what
with the sequestration idiocy and Obama's move towards 'splitting the
difference' with Repubs. Always keep in mind the Repubs love
hard times with a Demo is in the White House. The Progressive
Caucus's budget has zero chance of passage but it should have been
used to be define Obama's starting point in the bargaining process.
Yet only 84 Democrats in the House voted for it. Instead
Obama is talking bout 'chained CPI' and other initial concessions –
typical of Obama. David Brooks appears to be a is a closet
Obama supporter. His column blasting the Progressive Caucus's budget
proposal effectively is a roundabout way of supporting Obama's caving
into the premises that feed Republicans' position on the economy.
But on a deeper level, that is
globally, we are in more serious trouble than most people realize.
While Keynesian counter-cyclical spending worked to pull us of the
nosedive of our recent Great Recession and is still indicated with
lingering high unemployment, globally there are troubling currents at
play. Deficit spending can forestall a single developed capitalist
economy from its main internal contradictions – over overcapacity.
But what if we are approaching global overcapacity? How can you have
Keynesian deficit spending globally? There will never be an
inadequate demand for the necessities (food, water, housing,medical
care) not with a large portion of the world's population living in
abject poverty. But how much discretionary income driven consumption
can there be on (planned perpetually obsolescent) electronic devices,
consumer durables like cars and washer/dryers, etc. or the real
biggie, housing, if the global oligopolies continue to keep driving
down wages battering the only socio-economic class that both wishes
to and can afford to buy beyond there absolute need? Besides possible
overcapacity in China, globally we are still reeling from the
banker/middle class real estate speculation that pumped up the huge
housing bubble in southern Europe and the US. But now we discover the
Peoples Republic of China, the poster child state-capitalism, cheap
labor and skyrocketing growth rates in fact has been pumping up a
huge real estate bubble themselves. It appears to be all a house of
cards!
Could it be that very rich have given
up on capitalism, too? And their dysfunctional policy nostrums
(government austerity in midst of recessions, insistence on tax cuts
that further drain the already depleted government coffers leading to
further infrastructure decay, destruction of the middle class through
anti union and labor outsourcing) are only a means accumulate enough
wealth to survive some coming apocalypse. This as the oligarch
sponsored US Republican Party stands firmly in the way of dealing
with catastrophic fossil fuel related climate change. Could be that
they only pretend to believe their naive libertarian laissie faire
nonsense that they incessantly spout, and they really are just trying
to amass enough wealth to build fortresses to survive the coming
global environmental, social and economiccollapse they see (and are
helping bring about) coming?
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