World May Be Better Off As a Dance of Polarities..
..for some time rather than stay a muddle of moderation.The result of the Left-Right schism has been princely priced, publically maintained, Corporate-Wall Street celebrity middlemen, that serve no larger purpose with the welfare they have cornered. by Ohm
(centrist)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
It’s very interesting the battle between the Left and the Right, and how the results of it have played out.
The Left leaning thought asserts that the markets can go wrong horribly; the booms and busts in a Capitalist set up can be devastating and destabilizing, so the institution of Government should regulate, protect and help the market players, especially when these players employ a lot of people. The freemarket Capitalists reject the notion that Government can be more efficient than markets are. The freemarketers also reject the very idea of taxation to “pay for civilized society”.
The result of this schism, in the past few decades, has been Reaganomics run without end, by middle-of-the roaders. What has resulted is a Corporatist set up, where Corporations and Wall Street receive tax support and unnecessary procurement and mandates from the Government, combined with namesake or toothless regulation that is easily flouted! For a few decades, Supply Side Economics created a nice boom. As marginal individual tax rates went down, then more and more deductions granted to compute taxable income, and the Corporate tax code too made increasingly nice, and procurement was upped, there was more money in the hands of the producers and people to produce and demand more goods and services, everyone benefitted. Before this bounty came to its conclusion or steady state, a Wall Street run system puffed up the economy by running a debt bubble, and sustaining it with bamboozle securitization that made it appear as if the credit repayment capability of the individual borrowers does not matter. But it eventually turned out that it did.
At the breakout of the crisis of 2008, there was no clarity as to what happened and what course of in/action is best for the economy forward. In the confusion, Wall Street received bailouts as the de-facto top node of the Neo-Reaganomic Top-Down money flow. The tragedy is that the trickle down of money occurs only when there are other, individual players that are also getting an infusion of money, and the various players see the chance to win it all by engaging in incremental commerce. Merely handing out money to Wall Street and running Corporate-Executive welfare could not have brought about trickle down employment, and all it achieved was maintenance of the pay and perks of its top honchos even on dismal performance.
These entities, the Wall Street and Corporations, are receiving Government maintenance, yet the Government cannot direct what portion of the money the CEO can spend on gold plating his commode and what minimum he must pass up for hiring more workers. The freemarketers, and I agree, would argue that, even if the Government was able to direct Wall Street and the Corporations on how they will spend their handouts, this is no way of designing an economy anyway, for this is an artificial, handout economy. Their preferred approach is to arrest all Corporate Welfare and let the businesses struggle it out for profits. The need for fighting for profits (in the absence of handouts at the top) also brings out the need to hire good, productive workers.
However, the result of the Left-Right schism has been that Executives at Wall Street and Corporations got it all: Their Handouts, with No Accountability or Restrictions on what they do with them; Maintenance of their pay and perks, independent of competence! The bailouts, and continued support such as the QE and more tax breaks, have failed as Social Policy, for they trickle down not anymore, as well as have weakened the vigor that genuine, freemarket, merit-Capitalism fosters. Yet the Left and the Right are unable to come together to clamp down on Corporate Welfare, payments without merit, which don’t even trickle down. Opposition movements like #OccupyWallStreet and the #TeaParty have a common beef with Corporatized Socialism, where people receive via proximity to the source of money (at the top of Corporate-Wall Street Hierarchy) rather than truly earning from better working the grassroot customer. Yet the movements are unable to come together for one is Left and the other is Right.
There is no escape from the stagnation and meritless connection-Corporatism unless the puritan Left and Right can act together on things they agree on (even if for different reasons), while essentially dividing the areas where one of the two opposite paradigms shall work exclusively. For instance, there can be a temporary agreement that the Government will continue to run schools, and a few other things, but not interfere in any other sector. It shall not perform bailouts of failing private entities, and when it does, it will take control, clean, and reprivatize within announced timeframe. In each subsequent election, the Left and the Right can campaign for mandate to move the socio-economy more in their direction. The middle-of-the-road political approach, of using the Corporate-Wall Street middlemen as employment agents of the Government, isn't quite working, and the mechanism by which it might even be expected yield employment (trickle down of money via connections and likings and whims) only weakens the individual achievement orientation and, instead, encourages lobbying orientation at all levels in the economy.
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Posted By: Walt
Date: October 19, 2011 11:25:09 AM
Interesting commentary coming from a centrist, considering the fact that it's the centrists who made the Corporate-Wall Street connection work so well. After all, neither the left nor the right has been in charge in Washington for a long, long time. It's been government by "moderates" for decades.
True. Centrism needs to redefine itself, shaking off Corporatism: welfare for, and through, Corporations. Corporatism is even more wasteful than Socialism, for it manages to masquerade as Capitalism (since the supported/pampered Corporations are 'private' entities), though it is not. We know that 'necessity is the mother of invention', the Left and Right need to at least support each other on the agenda that is common between them (and not play along with Corporatism as the Balance-of-Force between them!), to force Centrism to recraft itself without resorting to Corporate Welfare. Without this squeeze from Left and Right, Centrism will continue with its Reaganomic, Trickle Down, Corporatist germ.
