If you ask me, one of the most disturbing trends in American public discourse is the incredibly provincialism and solipsism of a lot of our policy debate. The idea that other countries are doing better than we are in various ways is totally off the radar. ...
I was reminded of that by this post from Tim Lee pointing out that broadband internet access in the United States is a lot better and cheaper than it was nine years ago so he “can’t get too upset about the possibility that in 2018 Americans might be limping along with 2 gbps broadband connections while the average Japanese family has a 20 gbps connection.” I, for one, am pretty upset about that possibility. The United States isn’t a poor country dealing with some objective shortfall of national resources. And yet across a whole variety of dimensions—from broadband speed to train quality to the cleanliness of streets to life expectancy to the crime rate—we fall far short of standards that are reached elsewhere. What we do have, on the other hand, is the richest multi-millionaires in the world. And an awful lot of people’s first instinct is to try to explain these things away or explain why it would be impossible to bring some of these quality of life features to the United States.
I bolded the key bit in the above. The U.S. has built a system that worships wealth and the country is willing to let the wheels fall off rather than admit that they have skewed things to the interest of the ultra-rich.
2 comments:
My first thought is: If we are going to spend billions to save our economy; why don't we spend it to bring some of these things you speak of here? I often think that we seem to be behind the other developed countries in so many ways. I wonder if it isn't our pride in the mega-wealthy that we have given asylum to. You know, like its a status symbol to have more millionaires than any other country. The very poorest of us seem to defend and support a system that has grown and rewarded these people for eight years.
I'm sitting in Canada and watch the two systems. Even in Canada there is some 30% of the population that want to privatize medicine, roll back pensions, and generally talk up the "ownership" society. But these right wingers say one thing and do another. For themselves these right wingers want a "Wall Street" ownership where if you can make a quick buck you get to keep it and if you lose a bundle the taxpayer picks it up (this is called "lemon socialism" by those on the left). These same right wingers want the middle class and poor to "own" the short end of the stick. The bottom 95% of the population don't get to "socialize" their losses like the big boys.
I like Obama because he comes across as a pragamatist, i.e. he is left-of-centre without being blindly ideological. I think he will be like FDR, the guy the right always considered a "traitor to his own class", in that Obama will save capitalism from the capitalists and give it back to the capitalists.
I'm not against capitalists. I like the idea of "entrepreneurship" and risk taking and creative ideas. What I dislike is aristocracies and fudging the system to ensure advantages for your heirs and social class. I like people like Warren Buffet, a gazillionaire, who came out against Bush's tax cuts. He pointed out that his secretarial and office staff were paying more, percentage-wise than he was on taxes. There is something fundamentally unfair in a system that gives all the tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy while heaping obligations (like the trillion, soon to be two trillion, dollar bailout of Wall Street, Detroit, the banks, etc., etc.
The hypocrisy of the Republicans is echoed in Canada by the Conservatives. These politicians work for the top 5% of the population (and the aspiring plutocrats who see themselves as joining that 5%). They are always proposing "tax cuts" as the solution. Right now Republicans in the US voted down Obama's stimulus bill because it was "wasteful spending". But in a recession/depression that is exactly what you want: spending. You don't want tax cuts that are saved. You want money spent to create jobs. These Republicans are hypocritical. They said Bush's tax cuts in 2001/2002 would create an economic boom. The tax cuts didn't then. And the tax cuts won't now. Instead it was a giveaway to the rich. But these Republicans figure the average person won't put two-and-two together and see that they are being served the same swill now as they were under Bush by these very same Republicans hacks. It didn't work then, it won't work now.
The growth of income inequality in the US (and around the world) was a by-product of a booming economy. But that left a lot of people feeling raw because they saw wealth generated but they didn't see their own life improve. The swing to the left under Obama is an attempt to re-adjust the political landscape to give the middle and working classes (and the poor) a better share in the overall economy.
Instead of an "ownership" society, you want to build a "civil" society, a society where everyone feels they have a place, a responsibility, and get to share in the glories of the cultural/economic possibilities. The Republican's ownership society smells to me of Roman latifundias, i.e. an elite few and an impoverished many. I'm for a civil society, i.e. a great middle-class society where everyone participates and shares a piece of the economic pie. Canadians pays more taxes than Americans, but those tax dollars are buying a civil society. The right in the US is anti-tax because they want an "ownership" society of great private wealth and public squalor.
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