It’s been a moment since I sat down and recorded something, so today is a bit more rant than news.
I start off talking about the issue of running “government like a business,” namely that businesses are not homogeneous and are profit-seeking entities, not service providers. For a business, providing service is simply a thing they do to create profit.
But more than that, the type of business they’re actually running America like is called “private equity.”
They’re behaving exactly like the private equity firms that acquired and then demolished Toys R Us, Sears, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and countless other businesses that have been dismantled and liquidated to pursue easy profit for private equity firms.
Now they’re taking clear aim at the USPS (the creation of which is an enumerated power to Congress in the Constitution before the entire Executive Branch), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Amtrak, SNAP, WIC… go down the line, they see a failing business instead of an essential service provider. And they’re gonna dismantle and privatize each and every service that working people rely on in America.
Segueing from there, I then read extensively from this speech by Otto von Bismarck, delivered March 15, 1884 (141 years ago, this weekend) in support of Germany’s world-first Worker’s Compensation program.
The whole problem is rooted in the question: does the state have the responsibility to care for its helpless fellow citizens, or does it not?
[…]
The question is, where do the justifiable limits of state socialism lie? Without such a boundary we could not manage our affairs. Each law for poor relief is socialism. There are states that distance themselves so far from socialism that poor laws do not exist at all. I remind you of France. From these conditions in France the theories of the remarkable social politician, Léon Say, whom Herr Bamberger referred to, are quite naturally accounted for. This man expresses the French view that every French citizen has the right to starve and that the state has no responsibility to hinder him in the exercise of his right.
I encourage you to check out the whole speech and ask yourself why the conservative position in America is exactly the same as among the 19th century German aristocracy, and in why Democrats are constantly told we must moderate when the party already messages largely to the right of Bismarck.
Then I discuss the economic concepts of “velocity of money” and the “multiplier effect,” in contrast to the economic policies we are currently living through.
I also discuss how “profits” themselves are a form of economic waste and raise the conundrum of why stimulus checks for workers are called inflationary but tax breaks for the rich aren’t?
Either those tax breaks aren’t inflationary because the money doesn’t circulate in the economy (which would be bad), or it is inflationary because they’re re-investing all their hoards of money.
The only other option is that inflation might not be driven entirely by spending and the volume of money in an economy. I personally think that inflation in the U.S. is generally not driven by “too much money chasing too few goods,” and I also don’t believe these billionaires re-invest the hundreds of billions that they claim to do. The whole story is bogus, in my opinion.
Finally, I call for Democrats to start fighting for a vision beyond “Trump bad” or “Elon bad” — namely I call for national Democrats to adopt and start fighting coherently and cogently for a 21st century Economic Bill of Rights. Every 80 years or so the fight between oligarchy and democracy comes to a head in United States history. That moment is now. We either present a vision of how to move democracy forward and deliver for everyone, or we cede the next 80 years to the oligarchs and economic royalists.
So, those are the main themes of today’s Blue Ridge Breakdown.
What do you think? What’s the appropriate role of government? Are profits a form of economic waste?
Thanks, as always — Troy
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