Today I read Robert Kuttner?s article in The American Prospect for April 2006, and, mirabile dictu, there it is! ?When historians review this era, they will point to the striking failure of our political system to engage, much less remedy, the most pressing national problems,? writes Mr. Kuttner in his opening sentence. Exactly!
The first Carefully Ignored Topic (CIT) is that our standard of living has been in a 25-year decline. The poor became poorer, the middle class sank, fraying at the edges, and the upper crust became richer and richer, ?more than half the income lost by the bottom 80 percent since 1979 was captured by the top one-quarter of one percent.? When I was a child the CEO earned maybe 50 times what his janitor did, then it was 100 times, but in the last decade the disparity has become 1,000 to 1 or more; for the first time in history the children cannot look forward to doing better than their parents. ?If democracy were working,? writes Kuttner, ?this would be Topic A? for both political parties, along with the collapse of health care, retirement security, and earnings.
Another CIT is our entire financial and economic system with its massive budget deficits forcing reduction of the public sector, as well as corporate scandals like Enron and the jungle of capital markets which, truth be told, are actually ruled by insiders, and which distorts capital investment courting ?systemic collapse.? Acquisitions and mergers I have noticed, for example, squander capital resources to the enrichment of insiders, and result in no capital investment in basic production. The size of the public sector and the re-development of our basic economic infrastructure are suitable subjects for discussion.... where is it?
A third CIT would be ?how American democracy should engage with the destabilizing effects global commerce,? says Kuttner. It strikes me, for example, that we have been living off our capital, and are being turned into a functionary of what some call Globalization but I call Corporate Feudalism. What about our social protections in the face of immigration and the propaganda of the international business elites touting ?free? trade in the face of ominously growing hostility on the part of a world-wide underclass, an underclass into which more and more incredulous American workers are falling. The faceless international business elite is the new aristocracy. America?s mega corporate leadership is more and more disconnected from their own country and workers--- the new generation pursues narrow self-interest showing little or no social conscience. At least James Webb, in his campaign for the Senate, promotes a doctrine of Fairness, a revitalization of what used to be called the social contract, so there is someone thinking about this.
Our political elite is largely in default. Some blame it on growing extremism of the right and the left, but the historical truth is that the extremism has been completely on the Republican side, as that Party has moved far to the right, leaving Democrats as the ideological centrist party, a minority under aggressive one-party GOP hegemony. What will happen? Utter collapse? Or, will Progressives eventually get to clean up Republican messes..."but how much better it would be if an outbreak of leadership re-politicized these latent issues, and devised remedies that served and energized ordinary Americans now.?