Americans
realize the nature of economics have changed since the Reagan
administration. Deficit spending increased as if public debt was no
longer consequential. Presently it has reached about 20 trillion
dollars. Why has economics changed?
The
Nixon administration took the U.S.A. off the gold standard. The
dollar was given to float and its value was fly-by-wire based on the
generally loose parameters of the worth of the U.S.A. overall.
Machines, automation and mass communications along with computers
reduced the value of traditional labor. Abundant cheap foreign labor
plus cheap illegal iigrant labor drive U.S.labor wages down.
Combined with the factors mentioned above herein the tight value of a
dollar based on the requirement for human work to get things done in
exchange for some real commodity such as gold, ended.
Real
economics still exist though. Even in an era of zero-interest loans
from the Federal reserve to big banks so they can pile up cash or
electronically mint through making their own loans five times the
value of loans from the Federal Reserve people keep track of cash and
debt. The M0 money supply-the amount of actual cash in circulation is
surprisingly small; just 1.2 trillion in 2013 and at least half of
that was held
overseas.
So
Democrats have simply taken to being a party without much concern
about public debt. Free money lets the rich get trillions and wealth
was concentrated in the 1% of the richest of the nation. Barrack
Obama encouraged people to retire and shrink the reported numbers of
the unemployed. The most rich that own the corporate world controlled
the media and were rather in-synch with Obama’s tax cuts and free
Federal Reserve loans policy. The poor and middle class were let to
survive with two jobs, social welfare benefits or retirements since
there was a paucity of good new job creation in the U.S.A.
Democrats
also encouraged illegal immigration with that cheap foreign labor
being equivalent to that of slavery in the ante-bellum south. Working
white women that were an important element of the new Democrat party
were not laborers and enjoyed cheap lower-class, non-competitive
labor that subverted preponderantly just Republican men they regarded
as political rivals. The Democrat Party became one concerned solely
with race, gender and homosexuality special interests entirely
quitting the traditional focus on objective economic class concerns.
The new age economics encouraged Democrats to become indifferent
about economic class reason.
Transitional
economics are needed to fill the gap generated by the decrease of
Federal revenues and spending on infrastructure renewal of public
works. It is a rather felicitous moment in history where the need for
the United States to be a leader and ground-breaker in transitioning
to an economy founded in environmental right-reason and
sustainability occurs with a concurrent need to correct the new age
floating economy to one of sustainability for-itself as a reality
check of falling to the ground from the top may be a natural
correction for the vast U.S. economy if it continues to pile up debt
and let infrastructure rot while degrading the ecosphere.
Any
American party that wants to lead with Transitional economics to
environmental and fiscal sustainability together also will need to
assure the transition is smooth for all of the poor and middle class
of the U.S.A. today that may be regarded as just so many consumers
that for work purposes have already substantively been augmented by
if not replaced by machines, computers and such. A guaranteed minimum
income should be made to exist along with medical and housing
security while people are intentionally put out of work through
regulations that requires economic production to meet new
environmental economic criteria (see Daley’s ‘Environmental
Economics- https://archive.org/stream/fe_Ecological_Economics-Principles_and_Applications/Ecological_Economics-Principles_and_Applications_djvu.txt
A
primary purpose of government would be to bring to business ventures
to ‘zoning’ conformity such that there would be obvious economic
benefit with low-impact on environment. Competition between business
proposals would exist such that the best would be fielded to
determine if they would work in the real world.
In
the present economy with the Internet perhaps susceptible to moving
into de facto oligarchic control of free expression equal to that of
the broadcast media eventually, billionaires with very low taxes and
a global footing may pay very low taxes and effectively neutralize
national democracy and the capacity for democracy to evolve to an
environmentally rational, sustainable paradigm. The tension between
oligarchy and democracy has existed forever. Plato wrote about it in
effect in his book The Republic.
Socrates
and friends actually supported an oligarchy in opposition to the
Athenian democracy. He was executed for attempting to convert youth
to the side of oligarchy. Today billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg
are exceedingly influential and can oppose publically the policies of
a President of the United States with much public support from the
rich that own the broadcast media. Lost in the smoke and mirrors is
the political opinion of the average citizen. President Trump
attempted to speak for that somewhat though he probably lacks any
idea of Transition economics with an ecologically sustainable goal.
Instead he needs to Trump the frumps of media and European leaders
that seek to increase tensions with Russia through Ukraine in order
to stop a reduction of military spending for arms manufacturers. The
late Tom Clancy had a good idea about the benefits of a close
U.S.-Russia relationship in his book ‘The Bear and the Dragon’.
The east of Ukraine to the Dnepr should be Russian rather than German
or Polish as traditional invaders of the region along with our
friends the British have sought to divide and spend.
Plato
and Aristotle apparently believed the Demos-or people-are too stupid
to make democracy work in the long run. Perhaps that is so, yet
people must try though it’s like tilting at windmills, for wind and
solar power with energy use efficiency, fuel cells and etc. can go a
long way.
