Reverse Communism
Reverse Communism
12/28/05
From the first, I thought that the sign on Bill Clinton’s wall (“It’s the economy, stupid.”) was demeaning. This did not diminish the truth in it. I realize that Clinton was trying to depict the economy as the top factor in determining who gets elected President of the United States---and that this fact tends to get inadvertently overlooked in the exuberance of the campaign process. On the other hand, I would regard Clinton as generally neither stupid nor forgetful (he has rarely acted that way, and then only selectively and once spectacularly). The “stupid” part bothers me, but that does not lessen the importance of his admonition.
I first wrote a version of this essay in 2004, as inspired by an event on February 25. That was the day Alan Greenspan strongly advised Congress to consider cutting Social Security benefits for future seniors as a way to ensure that our mounting budget deficit does not overwhelm us. It actually could have been one of any number of incidents that set me to writing. I had been formulating this essay for years. This is not about the wisdom of Greenspan’s remarks. This is about the swelling national debt with all its ramifications. This is also about the structure we have for handling the economy and how it relates to our political system.
We found ourselves at the beginning of this decade back in the old situation of the late 1980’s, when there seemed to be no end to our mounting national debt, and the president at that time appeared clueless as to how to stop it. Subsequently, Bill Clinton became president, raised taxes, cut spending, and left us with a budget surplus. While all this was going on, the economy soared. It may be a coincidence that the economy soared, but you must realize that the real significance of this entails its flip side. In fact, while taxes were raised, the economy did not crash. That is important to consider. Taxes were raised, and the economy did not crash---it even soared. This led to subsequent paradoxes: the next president came along at a time when the stock market was about to go down. This probably was a coincidence, too. A stock market correction was due both from short-term and long-term perspectives. Then the current president, using the downturn as an excuse, ignored the fact that in the ‘90’s the economy did well no matter if taxes were higher---and he slashed taxes under the guise of stimulating the economy. Then he professed the wisdom that if you are going to cut taxes, you must cut the budget and thus cut federal services, and hopefully the stimulated economy would then fill the coffers because of higher tax receipts. But in practice he went on to ask for and get historic amounts of money for government programs other than those that would help the disadvantaged. Then he got us involved in overseas military operations at huge expense, and he regarded that as a side issue, budget-wise. Nonetheless, he used the war as the reason for the deficit, as if we should expect to run a deficit in this situation (a major difference between his father and him is that his father was oblivious and he is non-chalant). His claims are apparently meant to divert our attention away from the fact that he cut off the very source of revenue that should have paid for it all: the United States Treasury tax base.
Am I the only one who has remembered that the economy did very well in the ‘90’s right after taxes were raised? Surely the current president’s administration has some very insightful people within it who should know this fact. If they do remember the ‘90’s economy and the higher tax base and the budget surplus, then they must have had some other reason for cutting taxes. This begs the question as to who stands to gain the most from an income tax cut, and over what time frame they will realize it, and why it needs to be that way.
In my opinion, having a lower national debt is better from the standpoint of not having to use future national resources (the tax base) for debt service. That frees up more money for infrastructure. There is a contrarian point of view that says that running up debt is good, because it allows you to have your infrastructure and programs now and pay for them while you’re using them. To me, the flaw in this line of reasoning is that there is a limit as to how much debt you can accrue before you get overwhelmed by it. The need for infrastructure and programs is almost limitless and likely will continue to be that way in the future, in ways that we may not even imagine today. By running up a huge deficit, our nation is jeopardizing its ability to upgrade our infrastructure meaningfully in the decades to come. It is far healthier to pick and choose from the current menu of things we want in order to pick what we really need the most---and do so within our present-day ability to pay for it. Today’s president apparently does not see it that way. If he thinks about this analytically at all, apparently he considers only the short-term picture, to the exclusion of the concept of who pays back the debt later.
If you examine the big picture of our national economy, you can see that our major trend---transcending liberal and conservative presidential administrations, congressional balance, and other long-term factors---has been towards the dominance of large corporations governed by elite board members of high business acumen. These large corporations are overseen only loosely by governments, and they seem to be able to operate without external governance at all in many cases. Large corporations, managed correctly, are able to take advantage of huge economies of scale and thus amass wealth almost exponentially. They have a tremendous economic advantage over smaller operations, from the standpoint of wielding power.
Mom and Pop stores nonetheless continue to exist alongside the behemoths, and this might actually be useful for the large corporations. Some Mom and Pops can survive and eke out a living. This creates the illusion that the large corporations are not so damaging after all. Likewise, some large corporations have made bad business judgments legally or illegally, and rarely some of these big companies have fallen hard and dramatically. This also creates an illusion that large corporations are not so invincible after all and thus are not so threatening.
Illusions aside, evidence of the power of large corporations is all around us. There also is little question that the rich find it easier to get richer than the rest of us. But where does that leave the poor? I think that the hard-core poor have little to do with the issue. Certainly, there have always been people of low advantage, and there probably will continue to be. These people have little to lose, and so their downside is shallow. In the United States, the “traditional poor” consists of a bruised minority but a relatively small one. The current administration certainly has not helped them, but relatively speaking they do not comprise the demographic that is the most in jeopardy. Instead, we need to focus on the “ordinary person”. In this context, when conditions are such that the rich get richer exponentially, ordinary people do not have the mechanisms to do so. This has always been the case, but lately the people who comprise the small minority of the wealthy are becoming richer much more easily, as enabled by a government run by the elite for the elite.
Really, I think having more rich people is not the problem. Rather, it is the meaning of the wealth in this country and what you can do with it that is a serious threat to democracy. For as with monarchs in the past, wealth can buy power. In the United States, power is wielded in more subtle ways than that exercised by a king or queen. In our country, power is exerted most heavily 1) with political bribes (and by this I refer to the hiring of lobbyists, making campaign contributions that wield influence and solidify later favors, and other such legal payments that make our country “the democracy that never was”); 2) in the ability to buy up the competition; 3) in the nonprofit sector, where huge amounts of money can be controlled and channeled to recipients preferred by the wealthy to the exclusion of others who might be a threat or who the wealthy just do not like; and 4) in the disproportionately easy ability to grow existing wealth into even more, overwhelmingly larger wealth.
So who stands to gain the most from a tax cut, and over what time frame will they realize it, and why does it need to be that way? Those who have the most money stand to gain the most from a tax cut. They realize the benefits starting immediately. It has to be that way so as to plant the seeds for their ability to attain even greater, massive wealth so as to have even more power over ordinary people, and the sooner the better.
The government of our nation throughout all administrations has for decades been heavily biased to enable the above process. The present-day administration has only served to exacerbate this enablement many times over (for this is truly the presidential administration “of and for the entitled” in just about every way). Getting ourselves entirely free from this long-existing enablement, if we were to try to do it, is bound to be very difficult. The elite have such a grip on the government, it may well be impossible to wrench it loose.
These things that are lately getting extreme are being made to seem right by hiding within legitimate capitalism. Do I not have the right to make a profit and become wealthy? Of course I do, and so do you. The problem is not with this right per se, but with the wealthy individual’s legalized ability to undermine democracy using the power that wealth brings.
Whether we in this country really want to have a true democracy would have to be the subject for a different essay. But at least in order to salvage some semblance of democracy, with the 2004 election we should have mitigated the current extreme trend by removal of the source of its acceleration. In the 2004 presidential election, however, we did not do so. Too bad for us.
I maintain that removal of the current administration would have been the right move. The alternative candidate was not perfect but did not support elitism nearly as much. And after all, we had few other choices. In terms of the presidency, in this country we have all the options of a single-pole-single-throw switch (i.e., either on or off, one way or the other). Removal of the strongly accelerating influence would certainly have taken some of the heat off and would have been a good beginning. Beyond that, there is much work to be done to decrease the ease with which the wealthy can wield such heavy influence on the system for the sake of perpetuating their own influence.
Such a remedy, to be most effective, should not only dismantle the mechanisms of wielding influence by the elite, but it should also address the mechanisms that can enable those of lesser means to be able to build more wealth. After all, it surely would be the most constructive and desirable plan to allow the vast majority of the people of this country to be wealthy. I like to call this “reverse communism”. Communism entails the re-distribution of wealth and the setting up of systems whereby everyone is homogenized, less wealthy, disempowered, and vulnerable to runaway corruption. I define reverse communism as being where ordinary individuals and poor people are given every opportunity to attain wealth. Only the legitimately disabled, those not wanting to participate, or people aspiring to be non-productive citizens would be left behind. The truly disabled would need a support structure to meet basic needs. The pathological loners could be left alone. The latter group could be then offered barely comfortable services for sustenance and afforded a continual invitation to join the ranks of the educated and productive.
A United States with this high quality a populace would surely be far wealthier than even today but with much less economic volatility and a greater ability to live within its means. A highly educated citizenry would afford our country a sound reason for behaving more like a democracy. Our penal system would likely not be so over-taxed. Then we would be able to focus more of our resources on taking care of our truly disabled, providing for universal top-flight educational opportunities for all, maintaining a state-of-the-art infrastructure, fostering a well-funded medical research sector, and developing an advanced program to teach disadvantaged nations how to incorporate our elements of success into their cultures, too. And we could balance our national budget once again.
Reverse communism would work like this. Education would be compulsory. The social service sector would be expanded and empowered to customize appropriate educational circumstances for outliers. The social service would also have criteria for determining those who are gaming the system and to channel these people into an environment where there are incentives against parasitism and in favor of gainful employment. Education for grades 1--12 would be free for everyone, with state-of-the-art facilities and well-educated teachers. The teachers would have the power to achieve order in the classroom. Discipline would be non-corporal but dreadful, such as being locked up in a room where completion of an assignment is the only way to get released. Special schools with even more intense social services would be available for those who cannot fit in the usual educational environment. College or vocational school would not be free but inexpensive enough for everyone desiring it to attain. To those who would complain that such a system would be “too expensive”, I would only point to the hugely expensive consequences of not having a highly educated public that is capable of attaining wealth and stability. Intuitively, a population consisting mostly of highly productive families capable of generating wealth is bound to raise our nation’s prosperity exponentially compared with an unstable, low-income populace.
At the schools, intensive courses on all available techniques for saving and investing money would be compulsory. At that time, the philosophy of taking the long-term approach to attaining wealth would be taught. That is not all. The big picture also demands stable families. Personal responsibility would also be a major subject in the schools to be taught annually and in more sophisticated ways with each advancing year. So would teaching the subject of the characteristics of, underlying mechanisms of, and remedies for abusive families. Insight into these areas would be extremely valuable. This could well set the stage for a higher preponderance of stable, well-educated graduates who possess the skill set and philosophy for attaining substantial wealth, after about 20 years. There is a counterargument that says that you can teach all you want, but you cannot cause learning to take place. I agree, but I submit that this is no excuse for not teaching. Tuning up the classroom environment to where there is mutual respect and also compulsory, expected results as well as tangible, standardized consequences for failure to achieve should also dramatically increase the tendency for students actually to learn the material.
At the same time, our national election system would be revised, to where those running for office would have to do so in the same way and to the same degree as everyone else. That way, a person’s intelligence, management style, philosophy, and platform would be easier to compare with those of all other candidates. Thereafter, who can buy the services of the best marketing company would be less of a factor in elections. In addition, federal and state surcharges would exclusively pay for campaigns. All adult individuals and all for-profit corporations would pay the surcharge based upon gross income. There would be no other means of campaign finance. Bribing a candidate or public official would mandate a minimum 30 year prison sentence without parole. Boring? Yes, but fair to a fault, and it has a big chance to release us from the clutches of the elite.
Finally, our federal budget would be balanced, by law.
The above may entail some idealistic elements, but I firmly believe that all of it is realistic and represents much of what we must do and can do if we have the national resolve. The first step is to rid ourselves of the immediate negative force directed against the ordinary individual. During the next presidential election, we must put someone in office who is not such an intense elitist. That would make the next steps much easier to enact.
We must do this because if we do not, our economy is in jeopardy in extensive ways. As for democracy, I say that in this country democracy is not in jeopardy, for it actually has never existed so far. Reverse communism has a chance to allow us to have a democratic nation for the very first time. To me, the economy and democracy are intrinsically intertwined, but the economy is the bottom line. The structure of the economy can create a cadre of the affluent who are able to buy votes, but it does not have to. The structure of the economy can make anyone wealthy who wants to be, and it does not have to allow elitists to have a louder voice than anyone else.
I agree with Clinton. It is the economy. As for the “stupid” part, let us structure our educational system to enable us to deal with that.
© srman07, 2004, 2005
12/28/05
From the first, I thought that the sign on Bill Clinton’s wall (“It’s the economy, stupid.”) was demeaning. This did not diminish the truth in it. I realize that Clinton was trying to depict the economy as the top factor in determining who gets elected President of the United States---and that this fact tends to get inadvertently overlooked in the exuberance of the campaign process. On the other hand, I would regard Clinton as generally neither stupid nor forgetful (he has rarely acted that way, and then only selectively and once spectacularly). The “stupid” part bothers me, but that does not lessen the importance of his admonition.
I first wrote a version of this essay in 2004, as inspired by an event on February 25. That was the day Alan Greenspan strongly advised Congress to consider cutting Social Security benefits for future seniors as a way to ensure that our mounting budget deficit does not overwhelm us. It actually could have been one of any number of incidents that set me to writing. I had been formulating this essay for years. This is not about the wisdom of Greenspan’s remarks. This is about the swelling national debt with all its ramifications. This is also about the structure we have for handling the economy and how it relates to our political system.
We found ourselves at the beginning of this decade back in the old situation of the late 1980’s, when there seemed to be no end to our mounting national debt, and the president at that time appeared clueless as to how to stop it. Subsequently, Bill Clinton became president, raised taxes, cut spending, and left us with a budget surplus. While all this was going on, the economy soared. It may be a coincidence that the economy soared, but you must realize that the real significance of this entails its flip side. In fact, while taxes were raised, the economy did not crash. That is important to consider. Taxes were raised, and the economy did not crash---it even soared. This led to subsequent paradoxes: the next president came along at a time when the stock market was about to go down. This probably was a coincidence, too. A stock market correction was due both from short-term and long-term perspectives. Then the current president, using the downturn as an excuse, ignored the fact that in the ‘90’s the economy did well no matter if taxes were higher---and he slashed taxes under the guise of stimulating the economy. Then he professed the wisdom that if you are going to cut taxes, you must cut the budget and thus cut federal services, and hopefully the stimulated economy would then fill the coffers because of higher tax receipts. But in practice he went on to ask for and get historic amounts of money for government programs other than those that would help the disadvantaged. Then he got us involved in overseas military operations at huge expense, and he regarded that as a side issue, budget-wise. Nonetheless, he used the war as the reason for the deficit, as if we should expect to run a deficit in this situation (a major difference between his father and him is that his father was oblivious and he is non-chalant). His claims are apparently meant to divert our attention away from the fact that he cut off the very source of revenue that should have paid for it all: the United States Treasury tax base.
Am I the only one who has remembered that the economy did very well in the ‘90’s right after taxes were raised? Surely the current president’s administration has some very insightful people within it who should know this fact. If they do remember the ‘90’s economy and the higher tax base and the budget surplus, then they must have had some other reason for cutting taxes. This begs the question as to who stands to gain the most from an income tax cut, and over what time frame they will realize it, and why it needs to be that way.
In my opinion, having a lower national debt is better from the standpoint of not having to use future national resources (the tax base) for debt service. That frees up more money for infrastructure. There is a contrarian point of view that says that running up debt is good, because it allows you to have your infrastructure and programs now and pay for them while you’re using them. To me, the flaw in this line of reasoning is that there is a limit as to how much debt you can accrue before you get overwhelmed by it. The need for infrastructure and programs is almost limitless and likely will continue to be that way in the future, in ways that we may not even imagine today. By running up a huge deficit, our nation is jeopardizing its ability to upgrade our infrastructure meaningfully in the decades to come. It is far healthier to pick and choose from the current menu of things we want in order to pick what we really need the most---and do so within our present-day ability to pay for it. Today’s president apparently does not see it that way. If he thinks about this analytically at all, apparently he considers only the short-term picture, to the exclusion of the concept of who pays back the debt later.
If you examine the big picture of our national economy, you can see that our major trend---transcending liberal and conservative presidential administrations, congressional balance, and other long-term factors---has been towards the dominance of large corporations governed by elite board members of high business acumen. These large corporations are overseen only loosely by governments, and they seem to be able to operate without external governance at all in many cases. Large corporations, managed correctly, are able to take advantage of huge economies of scale and thus amass wealth almost exponentially. They have a tremendous economic advantage over smaller operations, from the standpoint of wielding power.
Mom and Pop stores nonetheless continue to exist alongside the behemoths, and this might actually be useful for the large corporations. Some Mom and Pops can survive and eke out a living. This creates the illusion that the large corporations are not so damaging after all. Likewise, some large corporations have made bad business judgments legally or illegally, and rarely some of these big companies have fallen hard and dramatically. This also creates an illusion that large corporations are not so invincible after all and thus are not so threatening.
Illusions aside, evidence of the power of large corporations is all around us. There also is little question that the rich find it easier to get richer than the rest of us. But where does that leave the poor? I think that the hard-core poor have little to do with the issue. Certainly, there have always been people of low advantage, and there probably will continue to be. These people have little to lose, and so their downside is shallow. In the United States, the “traditional poor” consists of a bruised minority but a relatively small one. The current administration certainly has not helped them, but relatively speaking they do not comprise the demographic that is the most in jeopardy. Instead, we need to focus on the “ordinary person”. In this context, when conditions are such that the rich get richer exponentially, ordinary people do not have the mechanisms to do so. This has always been the case, but lately the people who comprise the small minority of the wealthy are becoming richer much more easily, as enabled by a government run by the elite for the elite.
Really, I think having more rich people is not the problem. Rather, it is the meaning of the wealth in this country and what you can do with it that is a serious threat to democracy. For as with monarchs in the past, wealth can buy power. In the United States, power is wielded in more subtle ways than that exercised by a king or queen. In our country, power is exerted most heavily 1) with political bribes (and by this I refer to the hiring of lobbyists, making campaign contributions that wield influence and solidify later favors, and other such legal payments that make our country “the democracy that never was”); 2) in the ability to buy up the competition; 3) in the nonprofit sector, where huge amounts of money can be controlled and channeled to recipients preferred by the wealthy to the exclusion of others who might be a threat or who the wealthy just do not like; and 4) in the disproportionately easy ability to grow existing wealth into even more, overwhelmingly larger wealth.
So who stands to gain the most from a tax cut, and over what time frame will they realize it, and why does it need to be that way? Those who have the most money stand to gain the most from a tax cut. They realize the benefits starting immediately. It has to be that way so as to plant the seeds for their ability to attain even greater, massive wealth so as to have even more power over ordinary people, and the sooner the better.
The government of our nation throughout all administrations has for decades been heavily biased to enable the above process. The present-day administration has only served to exacerbate this enablement many times over (for this is truly the presidential administration “of and for the entitled” in just about every way). Getting ourselves entirely free from this long-existing enablement, if we were to try to do it, is bound to be very difficult. The elite have such a grip on the government, it may well be impossible to wrench it loose.
These things that are lately getting extreme are being made to seem right by hiding within legitimate capitalism. Do I not have the right to make a profit and become wealthy? Of course I do, and so do you. The problem is not with this right per se, but with the wealthy individual’s legalized ability to undermine democracy using the power that wealth brings.
Whether we in this country really want to have a true democracy would have to be the subject for a different essay. But at least in order to salvage some semblance of democracy, with the 2004 election we should have mitigated the current extreme trend by removal of the source of its acceleration. In the 2004 presidential election, however, we did not do so. Too bad for us.
I maintain that removal of the current administration would have been the right move. The alternative candidate was not perfect but did not support elitism nearly as much. And after all, we had few other choices. In terms of the presidency, in this country we have all the options of a single-pole-single-throw switch (i.e., either on or off, one way or the other). Removal of the strongly accelerating influence would certainly have taken some of the heat off and would have been a good beginning. Beyond that, there is much work to be done to decrease the ease with which the wealthy can wield such heavy influence on the system for the sake of perpetuating their own influence.
Such a remedy, to be most effective, should not only dismantle the mechanisms of wielding influence by the elite, but it should also address the mechanisms that can enable those of lesser means to be able to build more wealth. After all, it surely would be the most constructive and desirable plan to allow the vast majority of the people of this country to be wealthy. I like to call this “reverse communism”. Communism entails the re-distribution of wealth and the setting up of systems whereby everyone is homogenized, less wealthy, disempowered, and vulnerable to runaway corruption. I define reverse communism as being where ordinary individuals and poor people are given every opportunity to attain wealth. Only the legitimately disabled, those not wanting to participate, or people aspiring to be non-productive citizens would be left behind. The truly disabled would need a support structure to meet basic needs. The pathological loners could be left alone. The latter group could be then offered barely comfortable services for sustenance and afforded a continual invitation to join the ranks of the educated and productive.
A United States with this high quality a populace would surely be far wealthier than even today but with much less economic volatility and a greater ability to live within its means. A highly educated citizenry would afford our country a sound reason for behaving more like a democracy. Our penal system would likely not be so over-taxed. Then we would be able to focus more of our resources on taking care of our truly disabled, providing for universal top-flight educational opportunities for all, maintaining a state-of-the-art infrastructure, fostering a well-funded medical research sector, and developing an advanced program to teach disadvantaged nations how to incorporate our elements of success into their cultures, too. And we could balance our national budget once again.
Reverse communism would work like this. Education would be compulsory. The social service sector would be expanded and empowered to customize appropriate educational circumstances for outliers. The social service would also have criteria for determining those who are gaming the system and to channel these people into an environment where there are incentives against parasitism and in favor of gainful employment. Education for grades 1--12 would be free for everyone, with state-of-the-art facilities and well-educated teachers. The teachers would have the power to achieve order in the classroom. Discipline would be non-corporal but dreadful, such as being locked up in a room where completion of an assignment is the only way to get released. Special schools with even more intense social services would be available for those who cannot fit in the usual educational environment. College or vocational school would not be free but inexpensive enough for everyone desiring it to attain. To those who would complain that such a system would be “too expensive”, I would only point to the hugely expensive consequences of not having a highly educated public that is capable of attaining wealth and stability. Intuitively, a population consisting mostly of highly productive families capable of generating wealth is bound to raise our nation’s prosperity exponentially compared with an unstable, low-income populace.
At the schools, intensive courses on all available techniques for saving and investing money would be compulsory. At that time, the philosophy of taking the long-term approach to attaining wealth would be taught. That is not all. The big picture also demands stable families. Personal responsibility would also be a major subject in the schools to be taught annually and in more sophisticated ways with each advancing year. So would teaching the subject of the characteristics of, underlying mechanisms of, and remedies for abusive families. Insight into these areas would be extremely valuable. This could well set the stage for a higher preponderance of stable, well-educated graduates who possess the skill set and philosophy for attaining substantial wealth, after about 20 years. There is a counterargument that says that you can teach all you want, but you cannot cause learning to take place. I agree, but I submit that this is no excuse for not teaching. Tuning up the classroom environment to where there is mutual respect and also compulsory, expected results as well as tangible, standardized consequences for failure to achieve should also dramatically increase the tendency for students actually to learn the material.
At the same time, our national election system would be revised, to where those running for office would have to do so in the same way and to the same degree as everyone else. That way, a person’s intelligence, management style, philosophy, and platform would be easier to compare with those of all other candidates. Thereafter, who can buy the services of the best marketing company would be less of a factor in elections. In addition, federal and state surcharges would exclusively pay for campaigns. All adult individuals and all for-profit corporations would pay the surcharge based upon gross income. There would be no other means of campaign finance. Bribing a candidate or public official would mandate a minimum 30 year prison sentence without parole. Boring? Yes, but fair to a fault, and it has a big chance to release us from the clutches of the elite.
Finally, our federal budget would be balanced, by law.
The above may entail some idealistic elements, but I firmly believe that all of it is realistic and represents much of what we must do and can do if we have the national resolve. The first step is to rid ourselves of the immediate negative force directed against the ordinary individual. During the next presidential election, we must put someone in office who is not such an intense elitist. That would make the next steps much easier to enact.
We must do this because if we do not, our economy is in jeopardy in extensive ways. As for democracy, I say that in this country democracy is not in jeopardy, for it actually has never existed so far. Reverse communism has a chance to allow us to have a democratic nation for the very first time. To me, the economy and democracy are intrinsically intertwined, but the economy is the bottom line. The structure of the economy can create a cadre of the affluent who are able to buy votes, but it does not have to. The structure of the economy can make anyone wealthy who wants to be, and it does not have to allow elitists to have a louder voice than anyone else.
I agree with Clinton. It is the economy. As for the “stupid” part, let us structure our educational system to enable us to deal with that.
© srman07, 2004, 2005
posted by srman07 at 8:54 AM
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