2016 Here We Come – Or Is It 1980?

Here we go. The early speeches are being made. The media is getting breathless. Serious people everywhere are practicing their serious positions. The next presidential race is underway.

How many times will we be told that America has to face its ‘fiscal challenge’? By which, naturally, serious people always mean that we have to cut social spending because, obviously, we just can’t afford it.

Well it’s obvious to them.

It’s way too early to tell what issues will dominate the race – lots of war talk, and middle east confusion notwithstanding – but we are already getting a few hints.

Apparently the Republicans are terribly concerned over inequality, the decline in median incomes, and the generally dilapidate state of our middle class. Who knew they were so worried?

No one who has paid attention for the past three decades, that’s who.

Here’s a quote from a recent Jeb Bush speech:

“Six years after the recession ended, median incomes are down, households are, on average, poorer … and millions of people have given up looking for a job altogether … Roughly two out of three American households live paycheck to paycheck. Any unexpected expense can push them into financial ruin. We have a record number of Americans on food stamps and living in poverty. The recovery has been everywhere but in the family paychecks. The American Dream has become a mirage for far too many.”

This litany of disaster is, according to the Republicans, firmly and unequivocally Obama’s doing. It was him, they say, and his awful inattention to the middle class.

This sudden outburst of empathy for the 99% of Americans is, I imagine, a proactive effort to distract our febrile media and make sure that the Democrats cannot use inequality as a major electoral weapon. Not that the Democrats seem to have much of a position on anything. Yet anyway.

Anyone who has followed economic policy since Reagan launched his attack on the middle class will notice just how amazing this switch is. For thirty five straight years the Republicans have advocated policies based on the basis of orthodox economics – it’s a toxic mix of deregulation, neutering government, and steady diminution of social spending. The idea being that market magic will create enormous growth and that, equally magically, those self same markets will ensure wealth flows to those who ‘deserve’ it. It’s a great story. It has such a morally superior sound to it. Why on earth would we not go all in?

We did.

And it was shown to be the fallacious nonsense it always was.

Markets are unreliable to begin with. They are especially unreliable when they are twisted to favor a lucky and greedy few. Which is what deregulation fostered. In our case the lucky and greedy few being the 1% and the big corporations. They have certainly boomed under the rules set out by orthodox economics and the Republicans.

The middle class? Not so much.

In fact, I think it’s now pretty clear that those policies are the root cause of the middle class decline and the rise of inequality that the Republicans are now suddenly so worried about.

Hence the urgency of the need to divert attention away from the cause of the problem.

But, at least in the case of Jeb Bush, the Republicans can’t escape the pull of the allure of market magic, and, more precisely, the allure of protecting the 1%. Here’s what Bush said about Obama’s recent tentative attempt to change the tax rules on what are known as ‘529’ savings plans – the ones that allow tax advantages savings for college tuition:

“Just last month, he [Obama] thought it was a good idea to tax 529 college savings plans. Remember: 529s were created to be tax-free ways to save for college. Millions of people started them for their kids and grandkids … So it’s no surprise people hated the president’s idea. And he dropped it. But it was an instructive lesson in the liberal and progressive mindset.”

Well, well.

Whilst millions of people may have started such accounts, it is no secret that the people who benefit the most, as it is with all tax dodges, are the 1%. It is our already well off. Our well off and their kids raised such a stink when Obama proposed the tax change that he backed down quickly.

And, yes, it is an insight into our contemporary progressive mindset: there was not enough courage to cut an obvious giveaway to the rich.

Which means that as we enter the 2016 electoral cycle we have no one – as yet – who is truthfully committed to protecting the middle class.

In other words: expect lost of blather, misdirection, and nonsense, with very little actual action.