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Monday, June 16, 2008
Politics and the
Insecurity Economy
by Stephen Crockett, co-host of
Democratic Talk Radio
The Bush Republican economic revolution has been
fought. Working class and middle class Americans lost along with the
nation. The result is the Republican insecurity economy of today. It
is not a happy place for most Americans.
The Bush Republican economic revolution really
started under Ronald Reagan and had some roots going back to the
anti-New Deal Republicans that fought against FDR. It just went into a
destructive hyper-drive mode with the selection of George W. Bush by
the Republican-dominated Supreme Court in 2000.
The core value of the Bush Republican movement is
that wealth and power makes you right no matter the cost to your
fellow citizens or the nation’s future. Under the guise of
“deregulation,” the power of extreme wealth to impose their unchecked
power over the economy on all Americans was unleashed. Government
regulators were corrupted. Laws were ignored. The national interest
was ignored. All of this was done for the private profit of the very
few.
The attack on our economy has come on many fronts
including taxes, unionization rights of workers, trade policies,
anti-monopoly laws, outsourcing, public debt, consumer rights, usury
laws, government expenditures and regulatory agencies. The Republicans
sold themselves almost completely. The buyers were large international
corporations and the very wealthiest of the wealthy worldwide.
The tax burden has been shifted to the middle
class, the poor and future generations. The American economic elite
and large international corporations received huge tax reductions and
benefited from huge government expenditures intentionally aimed at
profiting them. They lent back the money they should have paid in
taxes to the government at interest. The interest payments helped the
rich get richer. It sent out national wealth to economic elites of
nations like China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and Mexico.
The so-called “free trade” deals denied our
federal government of badly needed tax revenues that should have been
collected on imported goods. American workers paid higher income and
payroll taxes than they should have because of these trade deals. Most
of the benefits of lower manufacturing costs went to very large
stockholders and corporate executives instead of consumers. American
workers lost good paying manufacturing jobs and the benefits that went
with those jobs.
Bad trade deals have been a driving force behind
the rising number of Americans with no health insurance. Trade deals
helped destroy the 40 hour work week, lowered real wages and forced
many homemakers out of the home in order to stay afloat financially.
Our federal government lost much of their ability to regulate our
national economy in the process.
The Republican economic elite told the American
people that these globalization effects were inevitable. It was a lie.
Economic globalization resulted largely from deliberate changes in
economic policies especially trade policies. Economic deregulation was
never inevitable. Destructive anti-competitive monopolies and
predatory lending were never inevitable. These were political
decisions. There were deliberate choices involved and the choices
remain. They can be reversed by making other choices in terms of
trade, taxation, government regulation, worker rights, consumer
rights, public debt, government expenditures, consumer rights,
bankruptcy laws, anti-monopoly legislation, etc.
We need to return to the New Deal values of FDR
era. We need a heavy dose of economic populism combined with some
economic nationalism. We need to return the tax policies of our
federal government to some sense of sanity. The wealthiest of the
wealthy have the ability and obligation to pay significantly higher
taxes. The tax level should increase on these persons sufficiently to
eliminate the government deficit. Tax levels on imports should rise to
around 20-25% to pay for national health insurance and to pay off the
national debt.
Union-busting tactics by corporations should be
outlawed. Individual executives should be made personally criminally
liable for violating labor laws. Corporations should not be allowed to
restrict access to their workers by union organizers. Captive audience
meeting should be outlawed. The Employee Free Choice Act should become
law. Binding arbitration should be enforced by law when corporations
refuse to bargain in good faith. Employee pension funds should be
placed in union hands instead of corporate hands whenever labor
contracts are present. Corporations should never be able to raid the
pension funds of employees.
Labor unions created the American Middle Class.
Reviving organized labor is the best method for saving the American
Middle Class.
Predatory lending should be banned. Strict usury
laws should be passed. Anti-monopoly policies should be adopted and
actively enforced. Our economic policies at the national level should
be designed to revive a strong national economy with opportunity for
all citizens instead of just the Republican economic elite.
The study of economics was once called “political
economy” and should be again. The economy is molded and controlled by
political decisions. In a real functioning democracy, the average
citizens should be making political choices that benefit the vast
majority instead of the Republican economic elite. It is your vote and
your future. Use it wisely!
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Written by Stephen
Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio
http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ).
Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland
21919. Phone: 443-907-2367. Email:
midsouthcm@aol.com .
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