Have conservatives stolen a half a million bucks from you? If so, that kinda makes that $300 check you got from the Bush "tax cuts" look like chump change, and leaves you wondering "who's the chump"? Forget your "Tax Burden", what's your "Debt Burden"?
"Starve the Beast"
Ever since the days of the Reagan revolutionaries, conservatives have identified government as the problem. With the chorus of "Small GovernmentTM" on their lips, conservatives have sucked government dry of resources and denuded it of its responsibility to provide services and safeguard opportunity and liberty for all Americans.
"Small GovernmentTM" is one of the three BIG LIES of conservatism, and it is clear that in the charge to denude the only force in American civic life with the power to oppose entrenched moneyed interests, that conservatism has created long-term structural failings in the US economy that no short-term stimulus package can contain.
We explored the 5 structural defects of Conservative economic practice as outlined by Hale "Bondddad" Stewart in a previous diary. In sum, they are:
1. Public Debt Spending
2. Private Debt Spending
3. Stagnant wages
4. Negative Savings (the real cause of the foreclosure crisis)
5. Trade Deficit
To give you a sense of the enormity of the problem, consider Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz' editorial in December's Vanity Fair The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush.
Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix-and that's assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden-even at 5 percent, that's an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.In short, there's a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I'm guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.
If I'm tallying up the ramifications of conservatism correctly, after deficit conservative spending, massive conservative trade deficits, zero savings engendered by the spirit of conservative entitlement ("Cure 9/11. Go shopping!"), currency devaluation, the auction of energy infrastructure, and lack of investment in both physical infrastrcuture and education, conservatism under Bush may well have taken between $20 and $40 Trillion dollars from the US Economy, or approximately $500,000 from every single man, woman, and child in America.
See below for Stiglitz "Way Forward"
Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America's economic house in order will be wrenching and take years.The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economy's metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. While such an increase would be good for the long-term health of America's economy, the short-term consequences would be painful. Money saved is money not spent. If people don't spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly-as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market-this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse before they get better. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.
And in any case there's more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don't have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.
When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. Finally, we'll be a lot better off if we work with other countries to create fair and efficient global trade and financial systems. We'll have a better chance of getting others to open up their markets if we ourselves act less hypocritically-that is, if we open our own markets to their goods and stop subsidizing American agriculture.
There is no short-term "stimulus package", even a $100 Billion stimulus package that will turn this disaster around. The way forward assumes that there is the political will in Congress and the White House to make change.
Therefore, I am not too hopeful that your final sentence can be fulfilled ("The way forward assumes that there is the political will in Congress and the White House to make change"). So far, the only presidential candidate or national Democrat to attack the current entrenched doctrine is John Edwards, but he has not offered a coherent counter-theory or doctrine, and without such a doctrine to frame the discussion we are doomed to pick at the fringes of the massive disaster which the conservatves have excreted and left in our lap like dog dung.
In other words, where is the progressive economic and political theory which will inform future policy decisions, which can provide an over-arching vision to inspire Americans for, say, the next two generations (or more)?
At this point, two generations of Americans have lived their entire lives hearing nothing but: greed is good; private enterprise is noble, efficient, virtuous and good; government and unions are useless, wasteful, immoral, and bad, etc., etc. After thirty-some years of constant repetition, this poison has congealed into a toxic form of "conventional wisdom" that, for millions of people, trumps facts, logic, reason, and experience. I think the best we can do is continue to present the facts to those who have not been immunized against all forms of logic and reason.
With respect to progressive economic and political theory with an inspiring, over-arching vision, I think the best place to look is to the old, New Deal. Maybe what's old can be made new again.