The Broader Picture of Economic Crisis

For all those unfamiliar, a fantastic site for reading a variety of political news and forming your own opinions is Realclearpolitics.com. I was reading several articles this morning and what most caught my attention is how there seems to be this opinion among conservatives that regardless of how badly a ship is wrecked or how quickly it is sinking, the thing to do in all situations is to hang tight and wait out the storm--even go down with the ship if necessary. This opinion is not without its merit. A lot of fine men and women have been the type of people who are able to stand firm through the bumpier parts of life and come out on top over the long run. The problem with these conservative values (beside the fact that they are only viable for a portion of very stubborn ingenuous individuals) is that often times if these same individuals would resort creativity and resourcefulness over their hard and fast dogmas and traditions, the ship could be repaired in the midst of the storm and continue sailing to a more pleasant climate. No one has to die for us to remain strong and enjoy life. Although we may have to swallow our pride once in awhile and go with brains over brawn.

What provoked this thought this morning was an article by Joseph Calhoun who had the hubris to suggest that our current economic crisis was actually the fault of previous government intervention, which screwed up the free market system and now by trying to fix it again we are going to screw it up even further (perhaps so much so that we'll be unrecognizable as a capitalistic nation in the near future). This is one way of seeing it. Another is that free market capitalism has never worked in the history of the United States. The great depression happened as a result of President Coolidge, a laizze-faire president, like Bush, who thought the market would fix all our problems. During his presidency, which began with great economic success and continued to be successful through his eight years, it appearred that this system worked. However, the first year of Hoover's presidency directly following all of Coolidge's deregulation, the great depression happened. The great depression was ended by FDR, who created many of the socialized systems and civilian action organizations we have today that put people back to work and pulled us back into a time of great economic success (not to mention made life easier and more enjoyable for everyone). The same happened with Reagan and Bush Sr. They deregulated government and cut funding to our socialized and civilian organizations and the economy faultered. Clinton reinstated government organizations and we prospered again. Bush Jr. has undone all of Clinton's work to allow corporations to prosper instead of everyday people and again, here we are facing another depression. Free market capitalism doesn't work and never has. It is a fallacy of the American Dream (that we're all going to be the next Bill Gates) that working and middle-class conservatives seem to want to believe in against all evidence to the contrary.

What Mr. Calhoun is actually saying in his article is that we are waving, "Hasta luego" to capitalism as we have always known it. Conservatives of course hate this because it means they believe in something that doesn't work and will no doubt fight to reinstate this dysfunctional system even after Obama takes over and socializes a great deal of our nation's programs and gets our economy rolling again. Socialism is not a bad word. It has been made into a bad word by very loud and uninformed conservatives thoughout the last three decades comparing a hybrid of democracy and socialism (which is what FDR America looked like and likely what an Obama America would look like) with the Lenin style of socialism, which occurred under a hostile dictator in the early 20th century. Lenin's socialism was used to oppress his people by taking complete control of the government and allowing it to prevade every aspect of life in Russia without giving the people any means of voting him out or regaining control. Democratic socialism, which is working beautifully in most European nations, Canada and Japan is not this. The main reason being that even though there will be greater governmental control, we the people still elect the government officials. Which means with more socialized systems in place, we the people actually have more control over our country by paying attention to and participating in our nation's politics. With a laizze-faire style of capitalism (what John McCain and Bush and Reagan and conservatives in general purpose), the corporations are in control and they will claim that their wealth will "trickle down" to the struggling people or the people who just don't care to spend their entire existence chasing their own avarice and greedy intentions just to stay alive.

This brings me to the final point of this broader picture that life is short and that a great deal of stress in our citizen's lives is created by an imbalance of money and power. A wise supreme court justice once said that he didn't mind paying taxes, it was the price he paid for living in a civilization. This is what a democratic/ socialist hybrid of government would create--a civilization. A place where good people don't need to own guns to feel safe because the poor and impoverished have no reason to rob another person if their needs are being met by the whole of society. A place where we can send our kids to public schools with some confidence that they won't be disrupted by the children of those people not capable or not trying to take care of their own kids. We can raise our kids as a village and not keep allowing the rich to get richer (and more bitter) and create their own privitized world away from the real problems of society. We have to all grow as one unit or we're doomed to a future of class warfare by the poorer classes who have no way of rising up to care for themselves. It happened throughout Europe, it will happen here if we let it.