You might enjoy this piece by Jonathan Freedland —
If the market economy is looking peaky, then its accompanying free market ideology should be on life support. Behold the hypocrisy. The free marketeers have spent the past two decades preaching against the evils of state intervention, the dead hand of government, the need to roll back the frontiers, and so on. Yet what happens when these buccaneers of unfettered capitalism run into trouble? They go running to the nanny state they so deplore, sob into her lap and beg for help. The results of their own greed – “exuberance”, they call it – and incompetence have caused more than 100 substantial banking crises over the past 30 years, yet time and again it is the reviled state which answers the call for help. Four times in this period, the authorities have had to rescue crucial parts of the US financial setup. If the banks make money, they get to keep it. The moment they look like losing it, we have to cough up. In Wolf’s brilliant summary: “No industry has a comparable talent for privatising gains and socialising losses.”
This is a much larger than the banking industry. Throughout our economy, there are abundant examples of tax the poor, enrich the rich.
Bill Moyers interviewed David Cay Johnston on his new book: FREE LUNCH: HOW THE WEALTHIEST AMERICANS ENRICH THEMELVES AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE (AND STICK YOU WITH THE BILL.)
They discuss how utilities owned by Buffet get interest free loans, how Trump milks tax revenues for development funds, and W’s Texas Rangers scam where a tax built the Arlington Texas stadium thereby raising the value of the team. And so on.
The “money” quote is this from the end of the interview:
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: The problem of the political donor class’s outsized influence and its grip on Congress is bipartisan. There’s one party in Washington. It’s the party of money. It has different wings and factions. But Washington is the party of money. And the wealthiest people in America, the large corporations in America, are busy milking the government for everything they can get. And you are paying the price of their free lunch.
Transcript and video are available here
The head scratcher for me is why did bush travel all the way to middle east to beg the dollar rich arabs to invest in citi bank. You would think bush would first ask halliburton or the American oil industry for some dollars. He did empty the treasury for them.
I saw that Moyer’s piece with David Cay; he’s a pretty bright fellow although such a complex pyramid scheme is difficult to explain in a 10-minute segment on T.V. He wrote a book several years ago about how several well to do industries are ripping off social security as well. But his point about the money class in Washington is right on the mark, which is why to me it seems hopeless, anyone with any reform minded policies (reform that does not include cutting corporate tax rates) is belittled in the mainstream press (see John Edwards “Breck girl, 25,000 sp. ft. mansion, $400.00 haircut, etc). The folks with all the cash control everything john-Q-public see’s on T.V. and John-Q-public has become disinterested in learning anything about the process because politicians “are all the same”.
I love that the Kudlow style pundits of the financial world are asking for corporate tax breaks, and permanent “Bu$hco” tax cuts. That will fix everything, poor more money into corporations so their stockholders can reap profits (with minimal dividend tax), while the rest of us watch our 401k’s and IRA’s fluctuate while they continue to take profits out of the market.
I believe the fix to social welfare was welfare to work,†lets get these folks off the dole†and out in the workforce so they will become independent of the “welfare stateâ€. Well what good for the folks is good for the markets, let it pull itself up by its bootstraps so the markets can be free of the “welfare stateâ€.
Did anyone see Letterman mess up Edwards hair last night? Too funny.
Touche
New campaign slogan:
how about “welfare reform” for the wealthy that is