Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic he said, simply, "government is the source of all our problems." When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. "The Depression ended because of World War Two," he pronounced, as if government had played no part in it.
A few days later I was confronted by another conservative Republican who blamed the nation's high unemployment rate on the availability of unemployment benefits. "If you pay someone not to work, they won't," he said. When I pointed out unemployment benefits couldn't possibly be the cause of joblessness because there are now about five job seekers for every job opening, he scoffed. "Government always makes things worse."
Government-haters seem to be everywhere.
Congressional Republicans, now led by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, hate government so much they're ready to sacrifice the full faith and credit of the United States in order to shrink it.
Taming the deficit isn't their aim. They rejected Obama's offer to cut $3 trillion of spending over the decade -- including major reductions in entitlement programs -- because his plan would also entail $1 trillion of tax increases. Their ultimate goal, in the words of their guru Grover Norquist, is to take government down to "the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
Where did this wrecking crew come from? And why do so many Americans seem to support them? To answer "the tea party" begs the question, because the tea party itself is a product of this rage.
Credit the economic fears and insecurities now felt by a broad swathe of the public who want to find a villain for what they're going through. Wall Street is too abstract and the financial games that brought on the Great Recession almost impossible for most Americans to grasp. But the government bailout of the Street was a specific act almost everyone could instinctively understand -- and to most Americans it seemed perversely wrong.
It's no coincidence that the emergence of the tea party coincided with the Wall Street bailout. An acquaintance who has embraced the tea party explained to me she hates government "because it's always captured by the powerful, who take our taxes and eat our lunch."
At the same time most of what government does that helps average people is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it's no longer recognizable as government. Think of the indignant voters who showed up at congressional town meetings to protest Obama's health care bill shouting "don't take away my Medicare!"
A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don't really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they "have not used a government social program." More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.
Add in the relentlessly snide government-hating and baiting of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and his imitators on rage radio; include more than thirty years of Ronald Reagan's repeated refrain that government is the problem; pile on hundreds of millions of dollars from the likes of oil tycoons Charles and David Koch intent on convincing the public that government is evil, and you have all the ingredients for the emergence of a wrecking-ball right that's intent on destroying government as we know it.
The final critical ingredient has been the abject failure of the Democratic Party -- from the President on down -- to make the case for why government is necessary.
One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation's collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.
Yet the case has not been made. Perhaps that's because, even under the Democrats, the interests of average people have not been sufficiently attended to.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
You quit school in grade 8 and we get to look after you through your union job the rest of your sorry life.
The right wing loons are steering the Uncle Sam bus regardless of whomever is in power because the Democrats are only attempting to let them drink and drive after 12 beers instead of the 20 shots of tequila they want to drink before driving the Uncle Sam bus. The Democrats are not taking away the keys and throwing them in jail as would be the obvious solution and widely supported by the passengers. Dems are saying, "While we don't technically condone drinking and driving, we are "pragmatic" enough to allow the Republicans to keep it to 12 beers while steering the bus. We aren't going to let them drink 20 tequila shots, don't worry."
The result is still a crash in the ditch either way, it just depends on how fast you want to get there.
In North America, for the last half a century, with only about 6% of the world's population, we have consumed more than a quarter of the world's resources, and despite that we continue to have persistently high levels of poverty and deprivation.
We have been unable to solve our economic problems because we keep insisting that the problem is the government when in fact the problem lies in the economic system itself.
Under our present system, even if we increased our consumption of global resources from 40% to 60%, the benefits of the increased consumption would accrue to those at the very top of our economic pyramid, while those at the bottom would largely be uneffected.
Illogical and hypocritical.
http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/fdr-has-word-or-two-about-taxes-1936
The first is the subject of World War Two ending the Depression. What was World War Two, for the US economy? It was basically taking millions of men and a few women out of the production economy, and having them in the military. A large part of our manufacturing was dedicated to making things that were designed to blow up. What if we did that today, would it help our economy? According to some, it would. Perhaps we should try it. Or perhaps instead of making things to be blown up, we should build hospitals, schools, roads, rapid transit and blow it all up. Same effect. Or build them and use them instead of blowing them up. Or is building things to use instead of blowing them up considered government overreach and socialism? Hmmmm?
The second thing is the bailout of the banks. Wouldnt it have been better if the banks had been required to write down bad loans in an amount equal to their amount received? In effect, passing the money through the hands of underwater homeowners on the way to the banks. It wouldn't have helped me, but might have helped some of my in-laws. Or my niece and her husband, who had never missed or been late on a mortgage payment. They begged and pleaded for their bank to renew their underwater mortgage, but were driven out of their home. Borderline criminality.
We need massive public investment programs, of the kind that finally ended the Great Depression. FDR's recovery programs ended the Depression.
And we need to correct the conservatives who say it was WW2 that ended the Depression. WAR IS NOT AN ECONOMIC RECOVERY TOOL!
We've got to stop referring to war as public investment. We lost half a million potentially productive citizens, burnt up billions of dollars on war materials that were lost forever, and are still paying the health costs of our WW2 veterans.
If the corporatists/plutocrats and the lobbyists and legislators who love them want war as an economy measure, declare war on poverty/obsolete infrastructure/oil dependency, etc
Good . . . they should have.
We've DOUBLED spending in the last decade, it's not like we've gradually been increasing spending.
When you're running $1.5 trillion dollar deficits every year and you offer up $3 trillion that is really just back loaded/kick the can down the road to when my term is over . . . it doesn't fly.
An increase in unemployment could lead to severe social unrest. The geniuses who have been calling for these brutal cuts in government spending have not thought through the consequences of their policies.
The House of Reps can be seen every day on Cspan. The Republicans stood in the well every day and stated that we could not pay off the debt because the county NEEDED it. They also stated that we
also could not put the Surplus in a "lockbox" for S.S. So they decided to BLOW it all on tax cuts for the wealthy. As a result we got a huge debt AND NO JOBS. but No One seems to remember that.
I also saw Dick Armey say to a journalist "So what if there's a trainwreck if the government shuts down"
This is the same Dick Armey who led the charge with the Tea Party under the financing of the Koch Bros. The bought and paid Corporate owned Mainstream Media kept them in the forefront espousing all of their ideology. They got what they paid for The 2010 elections.
Now they are at it again and the 1 day memory public seems to have NO memory of all of those same people who denigrate the government now WERE THE GOVERNMENT THEN AND ARE STILL RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT NOW.
When will the Dems remind the people and when will the MM show to the public these
same bureaucrats advocating for those policies of destruction
they are old fashioned far right.. they believe in a 'small government' for their enemies - and for themselves they imagine a police-state utopia in which the affluent white man rules over all - and all white men are affluent based solely on their complexion...
These people who claim that they are for smaller government, except for those few such as Ron Paul, are actually proponents of large invasive government that oversees the lives of us plebians to ensure that we live up to the right wing's moral standards, even if the right wing itself does not.
1. Helped me complete engineering college and graduate school with student financial aid.
2. Helped me buy not one, but two homes.
3. When I became physically disabled, Social Security kicked in.
4. Following an almost-fatal heart attack, Medicare was there and I didn't have to worry about loosing my house.
In short, my government was there when I needed it. Yeah, I served in the military, only because I wanted to, not because I expected anything in return. The Republicans want to axe all of these "entitlements," in one form or another. Now if you believe that all of these "bennies" are unwarranted and should be eliminated, that's your choice and I won't call you crazy like you did me. Under the Ryan Plan, for example, I would probably be six-feet under right now because nobody in their right mind would ever insure me against some catastrophic illness.
As anybody knows who has been paying attention, the GOPTP say one thing and do another. These same GOPTP ran on "jobs jobs jobs" in 2010 but have they created any jobs? A single job? No. Not one. They're too busy busting unions, taking away worker's rights, the rights of gays, minorities, women, closing schools, defunding education, the EPA, deregulating corporations, and picking a fight over the debt ceiling, etc.
The sooner the USA is rid of the GOPTP and Murdoch's Faux-news-GOPTP-messaging-empire, the better for our country ☮
Seeing as the so called elected representatives no longer appear to be representing the people, it’s time for some truly radical action to MAKE them pay attention.
I suggest a day where everyone who feels abandoned by government to make a stand. This will involve turning up in Washington equipped with chisels, hammers, sledgehammers and maybe even power tools if you have no further use for them now your job has been sold overseas.
We tell the authorities we’re coming and our intention is plain and simple, we dismantle Congress brick by brick until there’s nothing left but a pile of rubble.
We declare Congress and the political inhabitants of Washington to be defunct and surplus to requirement. If they will no longer represent the ordinary people then they will be deprived of their ivory tower and their special health care benefits with it.
It’s sure to focus their minds and if nothing else, it’ll be real change we can all believe in.