I wrote a reply to a “poet” hating on boomers with a litany of reasons they should cower before being destroyed violently in order to redistribute their wealth and fix all of the problems they’ve inflicted on the world. Yet it is an opportunity to describe some of the problems and potential solutions needed in the political climate of the United States.
The Offending Poem
The American democracy is effectively a plutocracy. The top 1% of national income earners took in more than 31% of the nation’s income in 2022. That one percent takes more of the national income than the entire middle class each year. That enables the 1% to be like apolitical sun with social class planets and business swirling around its gravitational center. Since capital increases faster than wages capital concentrates. Everything one does during a day for business increases the wealth of the rich through all of the technical means of transactions involving corporations. Corporate shares are largely owned by the 1%.
Historically political people make the same mistakes in pursuing personal advantage too far. Especially today with more than 7 billion people in the world and a Pandorra's box full of weapons of mass destruction with more being added every year (i.e. A.I.) political leaders and people really do need to work for an actual good society and economy rather than entirely indirectly.Yet they seldom do and things often end in a crash of civilization. As Toynbee pointed out of 23 past civilizations only two or three still existed in his day (he amended that to make just one-world civiliation, still existing).
There is one problem with the American plutocracy- the rich don’t really care about politics and in a sense no one is minding the store. The most rich concern themselves with keeping their wealth and accomplishing whatever projects they are working one. The day to day management through government of the national well being isn’t too much of a concern.
Democrats and Republicans both have drank the Cold War era kool-aid of capitalism and are mindless minions completely forgetting the history of relations between the rich and the working class before the cold war when loyal Americans took the side of capitalism vs communism and lost their grip on the tug of war rope between the rich and everyone else (largely the working class). With the appearance of the Second World War on the horizon F.D.R. was able to get the tax rate on the rich up to 90% where it stayed to make the middle class prosperous until the Reagan era trend to have deficit spending via Lafferian supply-side economics and tax cuts for the rich to stimulate economic growth.
No question economic growth was stimulated with Neo-Keynsian deficit spending, pump priming. Unfortunately Democrats took that as a role model for permanent economic policy themselves. Tax cuts continued to appear until the present day and 31 trillion dollars of public debt compiled.
Politicians were loyal to tax cuts in practice including Democrats and President Obama. President Biden managed to squander a majority in both houses of congress without passing a major tax increase on the rich. Individuals stayed with the theory that tax cuts stimulated economic growth (in an environmental era when economic growth is recognized to often be harmful to the environment).
Corporatocracy is one theory about how the social fabric of the nation exists. People working for the corporate world need keep their heads down and political voices muzzled if they are to rise in the corporation or even to remain employed. Any sort of public political expressions counter to corporate advantage is reason for repression, demotion or removal. Corporate leaders care about tax cuts or paying no taxes at all- there is a dynamic tension between public government legislators to tax corporations enough (as well as the rich) and CEOs that want no taxes at all.
While Congress can’t even select a House Speaker there is not a clue or possibility of increasing taxes on the rich substantively. Congress instead fights about social issues and avoids the big, troubling economic issues. Democrats are globalists flooding the nation with cheap foreign labor ineligible to vote or work for legal, minimum wages for a generation and sure that the world will accept U.S. social values eventually. National debt doesn’t matter as wealthy Democrat Party leaders avoid tax increases they would need to pay too. It is all kind of a viscous cycle at the top that won’t be solved by a Biden vs Trump winner.
American workers are expected to help themselves and hence need to focus on their own economic interests. They don’t often take the time to read books on Corporatism or Economics like Piketty’s ‘Capitalism in the 21st century’. They aren’t minions; they do what is necessary to stay afloat and seem to be loyal capitalist or socialist supporting Americans.
I support ecological economics (ref Ecological Economics Theory and Practice- Daly). It is wrong to throw an entire generation into a particular mode politically anyway-that’s quite prejudiced. It is logically wrong as well
There always was a lot of overlap of generations. World War Two veterans continued until fairly recently to exert a lot of influence politically. History evolves and presents a very imperfect body politic. Needless to say political violence is quite irrational and counter-productive. It is the way brute animals go about things in order to get a big pile for themselves.
Western civilization is a continuum that has merged into world civilization even including those of the east. There have been numerous conflicts in political leadership and goals internationally. The world does face many challenges politically today obviously and need do better. One of the problems is that political wisdom cannot be taught and passed on from generation to generation- people make the same mistakes as those that have gone before (a reason why faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a better idea with the sole system that actually does transcend human behavior and drives of thermodynamics and the inertial will to consume).
Since the early 1960s there was a rising generational awareness of the need to change the way humanity consumes the ecosphere as part of its economic method. That challenge to move economics to a new foundation continues today. Plainly political leadership has failed even to run candidates for for the Presidency that are even literate in ecological economics much less how to transition the nation to that system without causing mass social disruption and casualties.
Maybe you aren’t aware of some of the achievements humanity has made in overcoming pre-existing challenges the past half century. Changes in medicine that ended several mass global diseases that killed millions,, for a time ending the Cold War with the Soviet Union and Communist China, modern technology has liberated countless people from isolation and ignorance without access to mass media or communication.
The ideological and violence of the contest between free market capitalism and totalitarian communism was such an issue with a social force like gravity drawing much of humanity into it politically. People enjoy being fanatics and irrational without concern for other issues. Single minded focus is great if financed yet it is in the case of mass violence irrational. Finding intelligent course of political action is too much of a challenge for the simple sometimes,and that is not even rare or uncommon historically. Choosing to make intelligent, non-violent improvement in politics is what is preferred.
Instead of violence the most simple way to accomplish reform and halt the gross mass concentration of wealth is to increase the tax rate on the rich. It is not just the boomer generation that eschews tax increases- every generation able to vote has gone along with that. President Obama- not a boomer, signed off on tax cuts for the rich that would have expired if he had only let it and not twisted the arms of the Democrat Party in Congress to renew it.
Some people don’t understand economics at all well. Capital increases faster than wages of labor- hence wealth concentrates without adequate taxation and democracy becomes co-opted in favor of Plutocracy. Because of the war against communism people were very loyal to capitalism and did not recognize or rather forget the struggle the poor and working classes had to reign it in a little with taxes and social legislation. The depression of the 1930s brought FDR into office who wanted to tax the rich at a 100% rate but was satisfied with 90% during the Second World War. Gradually taxes were lowered and it stimulated economics. Presently the low tax rate makes wealth automatically compile. That urgently needs legislative correction. Even the Federal Reserve issuing trillions of interest free loans to big banks enabled the rich to in effect mint out five dollars themselves in loans for each dollar they had on deposit.
The great challenges of the world socially can be fixed with a little intelligent government. The great physical challenges to human survival require a lot of intelligent work; I refer of course to demographics and finite resources in the world, to global atmospheric heating and habitat loss along with mass extermination of species caused by human economic practices.
When people are not even aware of what the problems are or how to correct them they resort to violence. If remedies for mass social problems do exist that are not violent, and especially if violence is not capable of actually fixing problems (a basic premise of syllogistic logic is that the premises must add up to the conclusion for a proposition to be valid) it is sad when simple practical remedies that are lawful and available are ignored in preference of dysfunctional violence.
