Score Two For The Plutocrats
Wow. What a week for the plutocrats.
First we were given the latest Paul Ryan budget which, predictably, reached its targeted balance by crushing social spending programs like food stamps and Medicaid. Then, today, we we told of the Supreme Couret’s decision to strike down all limits on personal political campaign donations, thus opening the door to an even greater flood of plutocrat money into our already distorted political arena. Taken together the whiff of class war hangs heavy in the air.
Why do we spend so much time on Paul Ryan? Because he is a rare bird: he is a Republican who puts forward a plan or an alternative to the administration’s position. That it is absurd, cruel, and dangerous is almost beside the point. At least it’s a plan rather than a simple negation of whatever Obama says.
Reading the highlights of Ryan’s latest budget proposal whilst deeply immersed in the subject of inequality is almost surreal. Can it be true that a real life class warrior reveals his intentions so manifestly just as I am reading about the melting away of our middle class brought about by the steady erosion of social spending, safety nets, and government spending on infrastructure and education?
It’s as if Ryan had timed things perfectly to throw an even starker highlight on the shift in American society begun by his hero, Ronald Reagan.
The few decades since Reagan took office have seen an upward redistribution – or, more properly, a staunching of the pre-existing downward redistribution – of around 15% of our national income. That’s a dramatic reorganization of society. It swamps any effects from favorite targeted of the left such as globalization or outsourcing. They may be significant, but they pale in comparison to the raw power grab represented by the slashing of tax rates, especially those on capital incomes and estates. It accounts for the stagnation of wages most Americans have experienced and the consequent run up in debt that they indulged in to support a rise in living standards. It also helps explain the flood of savings the wealthy poorer into the economy and the subsequent urge to find higher returns and thus higher risk. This last effect brought us the insane banking of the real estate bubble, the ridiculous home prices that have since collapsed, and the plunge into economic malaise that lingers on to this day.
A more unequal economy is a more unstable economy. Or so the past few decades have taught me. And regular people are less able to weather instability well: they simply lack the resources to combat the risks of life that they are now expected to bear.
I have bemoaned this before: if the right wingers want to create an economy full of more individual responsibility they need to follow through with a second step. Those newly empowered responsible citizens need to be compensated for the additional risks they are being asked to bear. That means upping wages to create the cash flows needed to cover those risks.
Instead we have witnessed just the opposite. The risks were expanded, but the cash flows were crimped tightly shut. The deflating of the middle class was a direct consequence. It was intended. Anything Ryan and his ilk say to the contrary is denied by the evidence of history.
As for the Supreme Court: what can we say?
The decision appears narrow at first: it removes any limit on an individual’s ability to give money to candidates or political parties. It keeps a limit on donations to any one candidate, but eliminates the cap on aggregate donations. It encourages an increase in the money flowing into politics and is thus a threat to democracy. The cover is some cooked up defense of first amendment rights. The reality is that the Supreme Court is enabling, no, it is willfully encouraging, the gutting of our democracy. It is beyond argument that a flood of money is distorting the political landscape. It means that a few powerful and wealthy voters can get their point of view across more volubly than those less well off. It thus crushes the concept of our each having an equal voice in the governance of society. The damage to freedom is enormous. The threat of even greater inequality looms larger than before.
It is a stunning decision. It is a terrible decision. It demonstrates clearly that the Supreme Court is either undeniably advocating the ending of democracy, or that it is utterly out of touch with the everyday reality of American politics. To argue, as some justices have, that it will encourage transparency is appalling. That the hand over of power to the wealthy is transparent hardly a comfort to those of us who value democracy.
Chief Justice Roberts is right when he says, as he does in the decision, “There is no right in our democracy more basic, than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” I just wonder why he thinks that right ought apply more to plutocrats than others.
Taken together the Ryan budget with its advocacy of more economic power for the wealthy, and the Supreme Court’s decision with its partial closure of the political process to those without wealth, add up to a new front in the ongoing class war that has been a feature of American society these last four decades.
One last thing: in its youth America was proud of its egalitarian nature. It led the way to institute high taxes on capital, incomes, and estates in order to limit the emergence of class stratifications based on wealth. It was less crippled than “old” Europe by the distortions great inequality always brings in its wake. Yet here we are in denial of that history and in the midst of a concerted effort to mold America into an old European style society complete with a plutocratic upper class in control of the economy. Worse: we are headed towards a society even more distorted than that of old Europe.
Is that really what we want?
