There are several forbidden topics in American Politics, one is to appear to be anti-business, yet I don't think that to be considering that growth may be bad even in the short term or that the short-term interests of business people might actually be detrimental to the interests of the people, that is of most Americans, is a topic not debated enough in politics. One reason is that most Americans are naive about why they have jobs, or don't have jobs. They gloat if they do, and they blame themselves if they don't.
A factor people tend to ignore is that it takes capital and investment to create jobs and that employers lay workers off if they run out of money, not because the work was bad, in fact this happens mostly because of various forms of mismanagement. There are many ways to fail in business, not the least of which is mismanagement of large sums of money in markets and institutions. Much of the pain in the current economic downturn is due to the lack of capital because either people aren't lending or they aren't buying and that is a vicious circle. This was caused by mismanagement of capital, not because people aren't smart or creative, or worthy, but because some people got control of significant amounts of capital and managed it badly, and they got help to do this from people we are accoustomed to thinking are prudant, conservative, and Conservative, always watching the bottom line, but whose loyalties are now to be found suspect.
The old saw says "If you don't live your life, someone else will." may apply. It may be a symptom of undeveloped psyche in a Nation noted for being outer-directed that in a sense no one has a life and so people invest all too much ego in what they do rather than who they are because they may not know who they are. In this country the second question people ask after your name is "What do you do?" meaning what tasks in some businessman's buiness plan do you get paid to do? That is a poor definition of another person's accomplishments in life.
If you asked most people if they liked their jobs, they might say "yes", especially when they know that right now the alternative is hard to come by, but if you dug a bit deeper you might find that they are not passionate about what they do to bring home that pacheck. Although, there are some few people that love their job, and there are others who love their work, two different things, ask most if they won the lottery if they would quit that job, and the majority would not hesitate to say "yes".
So, there is a big distinction between your worth as a person and whether the business plan of your employer is viable or has suddenly become unworkable and there is usually a lag between the realization and its consequences. This begs the question of whether one should put much trust in the wisdom of the entrapaneurs and the people who fund them, the investors, and banks, to make prudant choices. Evidently, at least some of them, who had huge quantities of capital at their disposal, were very unwise, if not criminal, in their decisions, recently.
And yet we are being told by Republicans and other people on the Right that there is no alternative to giving more power to business people to make decisions that are les scrutable than they would be if made by a government, that government is mostly bad, and that by implication, the only thing left, a so-called free market is good, and the better if it is unregulated.
First, the economic calamity of 2008 came after a period of market deregulation and "free" enterprize which resulted in instability, out of equillibrium behavior, not the homeostasis the market Fundementalists believed in. The Government after 20 years of Republican and 8 years of a relatively Conservative Democrat, a pro-business Democrat from the South, had a hands-off policy to business. And without an ounce of contrition the Republicans lambasted the Obama Administration for trying to fix things in 2009. That Rep. John Bayner from Iowa, a state with nearly zero population, has become the mouth in the House for the disloyal opposition and what a mouth!
That Americans are naive about economics and employment is revealed that their greatest lack is knowledge of history, of exploitation of people for the benefit of others. Politics is the differential advantage given to one group over another. History teaches us about the crude ways this is achieved by war and conquest and by corruption. Traditionally "corruption" refers to betrayal of a public trust, that is of a public official to serve the public interest, but chooses to exercise a conflict of interest and choose to make private gain that opposes the public interest. Recent history has been full of corruption. In business the rules are different, the problem there is to try to persuade customers that you have their interests while concealing the fact that you might not. There is a built-in conflict between what you offer, what is costs you to offer, and what your customers pay for it. You want the customer to pay as much for what you offer as "the market will bear" and that means that you must offer as little as you can. Of course competiton limits the con. Your customers will go elsewhere if they think they are being ripped off or if someone else offers them more for less. The offering more for less can result directly in technology that reduces the cost of offering the product or in improvements in what it offers.
Business depends on obstructing the flow of information about stretegy and costs to customers and to competators. That is why business people quake in their shoes whenever dsclosures about how they do business are asked. Nobody in business would tolerate the type of transparency demanded of Governments. They would always insist that it is detremental to business. Is that because their margin depends on stealing from customers, or that because of the busines plan that a higher than justified margin is locked in they might have to make up for the loss of worth by chinzing on some support of their customers? In the politics of this, they might want the fact that their conduct of business is in direct conflict with the interests of a majority of individuals who might vote in the next election. In California in 2009, a ballot proposition largely funded by Pacific Gas and Eectric that would have given them a virual energy monopoly was correctly seen by votors as a conflict of this type.
So, the tried old argument, given most recently by Meg Whitman, gubinatorial candidate in California, that we need to grow the economy, create more jobs, to take care of the people that are here. Then why are the people, 30 Million of them or so, here? They wern't born here. They came here because there were jobs here, because the state had policies that were attractive to business, and with them came the people. Today, the unemployment rate in California is one of the highest in the nation and the state government is broke because it doesn't get enough revenues from taxes and other sources to meet its obligations. The Republican solution is to make the tax climate more and more attractive to business that might want to locate here. The problem is that this hurts the general fund, and while these same Right-Wingers clamor "No New Taxes!" and play both ends against the middle, more and more human activity impacts the environment of the State from wildfires to infrastructure failures. Impacts like this will generally limit growth and people and jobs will leave. History tells us that whole civilizations have disappered when the ecological support for their way of life failed, People died often and the survivors up and left leaving ruins that tell us of great wealth and accomplishment lost and abandoned. At least a decay in roads and things like the electric grid and water distribution will inevitably have the last word over those Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Tea-Party, Libertarian. Right Wingers, who say in effect, "I've got mine, screw You!" Eventually, there will be nothing to cut, and everything will be broken and no one will want to do business here, millions of people will leave, and what is so wrong with that?
Nothing! It is the reality of the downfall of a self-limiting plan whose persuit by the Right either reveals disloyality to the American Nation or stupidity, and perhaps both, I am no believer in grand conspiracy, only that a Chinese with enough patience and knowledge of "The Art of War" might decide that the best way to cause America to give up all its assets to China is to use our own unconsidered tendencies against us. The problem is "How do you get a bunch of get-rich-quick-short-term-thinkers to give away their wealth to me?" After all, a dispassionate financier might agree, China wants a consumer economy to placate its 1 Billion inhabitants, so it needs to steal the capital from somewhere, why not America which has 6% of the world's population and consumes 25% of the world's resources?
I hasten to add that I don't believe in conspiracy, but if the unspoken path of wealth is to flow in the path of least resistance wouldn't the collective actions of the world's financiers to be to wrest it away from the wealthiest nation to use it where it is desired the most? I'm not saying that is a good investiment, I have reasons to say why it isn't, but it may be the current tendancy, and why not do it if you can enlist the Republican Party, some Democrats, and a whole lot of Independants, all of whom can't see beyond the end of their noise to be unwitting helpers.
It used to be that Republicans were unflinching Patriots. I doubt this, now. I think that many of them are more interested in their International investiments than being loyal to America. In fact, I think they are selling their country out to Global Financial Interests. That is What George H. W. Bush meant when he spoke of "The New World Order" in 1990. The Big Money has discounted America in favor of China.
Well, so be it! So what? If you say that growth is destroying the planet and that the Chinese may need capital, then let them have it. The problem is that people, led by the Republicans and other Right Wingers, in asserting that Capitalism is an unmitigated good, forgot to tell us that they are not investing in the future of this nation, that the quality of life for the future generations will decline regardless of what the future of nations on this continent is. They are doing this while appealing to the same mythology that drives the processes they seemingly advocate. If a comsumer-driven service-oriented economy was ever good for this country, while manufacturing and basic R and D went overseas, then what is left for us when the capital is drained out of our economy?
Prehaps it is the deconstruction of the Conservative urge and the myths surrounding money and employment. Imagine an America drained of its wealth, Is it totally out of luck? No. But it will have to change its values, its priorities, and to the disadvantage of Conservatives generally. The value of wealth consists not in in its accmulation but the work it does. Two laws of money: wealth that comes to rest decays in value. Rich people don't notice this because in being wealthy they don't notice how the excess cash on hand is decaying, The second law of money is that a lopsided wealth distribution causes capital to be used less efficiently, not more. That is what the credit crisis of 2008 means. A whole lot of wealthy investors with more money than sense, made possible by Ronald Regan's cuts to the Capital Gains Tax in 1982, got taken by a bunch of con men from Wall Street. The earning power of 90% of Americans was flat or dropped in that same 30 years. It amazes me that most people are not more upset by that.
What would Americans do if this nation suddenly became poorer? Many of then would suffer mightily, but eventually they would find out that it matters far more what you do with your time, and secondarily your money, than trying to hold onto what you had, the Conservative Urge. Conservatives love to insist to the contrary that they are individuaism lovers, freedom lovers, who want most of all to be left alone, especially to be left alone by the government, but the historical fact is that no economy exists without to midwifery of a sovereign state to at least govern a region of a continent and protect it from the inclusion of competing or incursions by neighbors. Like it or not the problems of Mexico and Latin America are intruding on America's southern border. We may have to use the anti-insurgant lessons of the wars in the Middle East to protect ourselves from Organized Crime from Mexico and further south, The point is that the urge to say "Leave me alone" is unrealistic in a world where indepandance is increasing and actions a world away have a more immediate impact than ever before.
Another thing that will change is that Americans will have to exchange a consumer mentality for a savings and investment mentality, but not the Conservative kind. They will need to go from short-term gratification to long-term planning. Rather than being pressured by the greed of business people who want immediate reward for short-term business plans, people will have to reconsider the idea of savings for a long-term goal and for acting on a plan with a long-term payout. This is going to be hard for a people who have been trained to seek instant gratification by entrapaneurs interested in a fast buck. The savings rate in this country has been historically low, partly because of a mistrust of financial institutions, banks, and insurance companies, who are hurting because people won't invest in them, but China has a high savings rate, about 25%, does that tell you what they think about their future?
Americans have to get re-educated and not just to compete in the job market, but to be able to create technology and opportunities that did not exist before. This requires both a reinvestment in the educational system and a rededication to basic research and development with a relaxation on immediate return on investment. One reason China is a risky investiment is the lack of creativity encouraged by that society, This has nothing to do with the intelligence or desire of the Chinese, they are as able as we are, but our culture has a leg up on the Chinese and many other societies in being more tolerant of innovation. I refuse to use that hackneyed ideom of "Thinking outside the Box." because most often the management-type who uses that cliche wants you to be in his box and not challenge his authority. The Europeans may pick up the pieces eventually from us all and resume leading the world because of their savy and at the same time their respect for good formal education and a University system, something that is never assured in America.
topGOP stands for "Greedy Oligarcic Plutocrats" and is borne out by the bold attempt to use the ballot to instate capital gains savings for wealthy Californians, Like Meg Whitman, who is running for Governor with more than $100 Million of her own money, a true Plotocrat, against Jerry Brown, a former Governor and now state Attorney General, and despite out spending him by more than 4 to 1, they are now just in a dead heat in the polls.
The gloves are off, if the GOP wins control of Congress they have already said that they will repeal the health care bill and reinstate the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. This proves to me that Republicans are but the shills of a takeover of American wealth by offshore fianciers who tried to wreck the U.S. Economy through manipulation of the Banking system and who have the Republican Party in their hind pocket. The Party of Goldwater, or Right Wing Patriots has become a party of American betrayal, selling out to Wall Street and International Financial Interests.
topI fear that if Big Money leverages our political system with help from the Surpreme Court, appointed by Republicans and other Conservatives, there will be an eruption of violence directed at wealthy people, at business people and at Corporations, especially if Minorities come to realize that these groups are actively taking opportunities away from them.
topPG&E may be inviting the horror story of its shareholders by having to pay the real cost of mismanagement if the investigations of the San Bruno Gas Line Explosion come to the logical conslusion that false economies led the Utility to short-shift critical infrastructure maintenence which may cost it much more in regulator imposed remedies and in lost public trust that will hit its bottom line directly. There is poetic justice in that bad management decisions CAN cause companies to fail, and sooner as the priorities are closely examined, exactly the thing which those decision-makers would want to avoid. I am very much in favor of this happening, of choices made having inevitable consequences directly on the Bottom Line. Even the most Conservative Pro-Business advocate of Capitalist Power cannot argue with that, especially if their are no backroom bailouts.
I really did try to make this the color of money, the root of all evil.