Day 598 Sunday September 9, 2018 980 Days to go
I’ve been reading “Winners Take All” by Anand Giridharadas, which posits the question, “If neo-liberalism is so good why haven’t conditions improved?” To put that into English – if the idea of the self-made man, individualism etc. are going to improve our lot why haven’t they?
He continues by pointing out that there are a lot of rich people doing good, but the problem is that they perpetuate the system that made them rich and it doesn’t address the underlying conditions, likening it to the idea of the benevolent slave holder.
If things are so great since this all started with Reagan and Thatcher why have conditions for the average person gotten worse, and why are they blamed?
It’s an interesting question.
The idea that things are so bad we need big business to come in and fix the situation rather than having government and therefore democracy fix what is going on is part of the thesis.
There was another book earlier this year called “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?” by Robert Kuttner. Robert Reich in his flyleaf plug writes, “Democracies govern nations, while global capitalism runs the world.”
Nancy McLean in her book “Democracy in Chains” reveals how people like the Koch brothers are bent on so constricting our government that it will be unable to stop them from doing whatever they want, all under the guise of “freedom” and other high minded words and phrases.
The Panama Papers revealed how the very rich both individuals and corporations work to hide their money and avoid taxes. Some say Trump likes Putin because of his autocratic power and that may be true, but those that have observed them together have also commented that they are both rich and assume they can play by a different set of rules than the average person. Taxes are things that other people pay, not them, and so it has been throughout history. The kings and priests lived lavish lifestyles while the peasants toiled in the fields are were preached to about living a good life so they could go to heaven.
In “Lost to the West,” a book about Constantinople, Lars Brownsworth points out that in the many ups and downs of that city, every time the rich got their hands on the reigns of power, the first thing they did was cut taxes on themselves and put the burden on the poor and middle class. Times have not changed. We have only to look at the Trump tax cut to see that.
MacLean makes the point that the people behind these schemes realize they aren’t popular so they hide what they are really doing. Essentially, their thesis is that taxes are a way to extort money from themselves by the voters for such things as schools, medical care, and the like. This they label as collectivism, and say it is bad. The only thing they want the Federal government to do is provide a military and an internal police force. They like to work at the state government level because a state government is easier to control, and you can use it to suppress local governments if they get out of line. Look what happened to Detroit! Or Flint!
Meanwhile, people who buy into this, the red states for instance, those people live shorter less healthy lives, are less educated, more fearful, and poorer.
I remember reading about one fellow who railed against socialism and loved Nevada for its freedom, but he lived over the line in California for its health care.
All the turmoil we are in now makes me ask myself, “What do I want government to do?” While it might be nice for a Gates, or Clinton, or Zuckerberg, or James to donate to the good, do we want to abdicate our democratic institutions to privatization? Betsy DeVos has been trying to starve our public schools and enrich the private schools. Yet the highest test scores in the world belong to Finland where all the students go to the same school system, teachers are paid well, and tests are kept to a minimum while learning is stressed. Do we want to let our public school system die?
John Dean yesterday pointed out that The Supreme Court has several justices on it that are tainted by some sort of problem before they got on the court. Do we really want another one like that in Brett Kavanaugh? The current court has voted nearly every time in favor of corporations over individuals. The poor and the disadvantaged lose out. Kavanaugh’s record clearly indicates that he will not only vote along these lines, but that he will go even further. Roe v Wade would be gone for sure, but that would just be the beginning.
And then there’s the interesting case of Justice Kennedy. Why did he retire? He had all ready picked out his clerks for the next term when suddenly he retired. Why? Well, his son was the one at Deutsche Bank that approved those loans for Trump. With the Mueller investigation closing in Kennedy must have realized that such a matter might come before the court in the next term and he’d have to recuse himself leaving it a 4-4 tie. If he got off the bench with a promise from Trump to replace himself with his former law clerk Kavanaugh he could be better assured that his son wouldn’t be found guilty.
And Serena! She gets penalized for her coach giving her hand signals, which she didn’t see and it turns out the other coach was doing it too, and it turns out a lot of coaches do it. Then she called the ref a thief and he docks her again, yet there isn’t a man that’s been docked for saying a lot worse. Then they fine her $7000.00. What a class lady, she told her fans not to boo and hugged the girl who won.
980 Days to go
PS Grocery store reading
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