by Frank Thomas
California is not getting hood-winked into the conservative right doctrinaire harangue that an “unregulated free-market” economy equates with democracy. California acknowledges our nation is going down the path of an extreme version of pure capitalism where "competition in a free market" is elevated to mythic status as the arbiter of all economic, environmental, and implicitly, cultural and social decisions. California is taking some wise steps of re-examining some of the most basic assumptions of democracy, human rights, and the institution of mega global corporations, now society’s most powerful citizens.
The idea is to have a civil society where the well-being, rights and interests of people, community, and the natural environment are paramount and not undermined by the power of corporations or the state. This means a vibrant societal focus on policies creating the conditions where government and market driven capitalism function in the most equitable, transparent, democratic manner serving the needs the whole society and reducing the levels of inequality disintegrating our social fabric.
For California, if this means rethinking the social-economic model, then so be it. If this means focusing more attention on the bottom 99% than the top 1% that is so heavily involved in politics (i.e., the political inequality gap) expanding their own greedy self-interests, then so be it. If this means a much higher minimum wage base; access to quality, affordable basic healthcare in some form similar to a single-payer system; paid family leave; partially subsidized public higher education; reasonable social safety nets; wealth-building programs like universal savings accounts; government accountability and protections for undocumented people; aggressive adoption of clean energy policies and related robust job growth, then so be it. Welcome to California where the state has been working hard to set and enforce the right, regulations, rules, ethics, transparency, and accountability to insure an equitable sharing in societal investments both short-term and long term.
In contrast, Trump and the conservative right apostles of the “unregulated market” are out to dismantle or in any event nullify the institutions making the rules that counteract the excesses of the free market, while considering human-induced climate change a costly scientific hoax (or conspiracy), a waste of government time and money. Over the last few decades, our nation has become frozen and blinded by the dogma that "the best government is the least government" - fostering a deeply polarized country caught in laissez-faire, self-interest-first, destructive capitalism that has stirred up the ugly economic, political “Mess” and divisive culture of “Class Tribalisms” we are now living in.
Pure capitalism without restraint, sensible laws, regulations, rules, a strong code of business ethics and environmental responsibility is little more than a license to exploit. Exploitation has consequences. As does the “lying trickle down” economic con-game that maximizing the wealth of the wealthy few will also maximize the well-being of all. The dark reality today is that technology (digitalizing, computerizing, robotisizing) is eliminating jobs far quicker than it’s creating them – while at the same time worker hours are brutal and worker wages continue on a trend of being squeezed or stagnant at bare survival levels.
The income/wealth gap inequality and political inequality is also magnified with the dismantling of public services and provision of a myriad complex mix of tax benefits enriching the already rich top 1%. Presently, 400 Americans have more wealth than 61% of the population. That’s 195 million Americans living in 74 million households – an accelerating, obscene wealth concentration that exceeds any conceivable need!
Survival of the fittest in an unfettered free market system was NOT Thomas Jefferson's governmental doctrine. Prudence balanced with social concern for the common man's welfare were among his prima facie governmental values. As he said, "Some men look at institutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of covenant, too sacred to be touched ... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind ... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
The responsible conservative Founding Father James Madison said it right: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary ... In framing government which is administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
In Jefferson's and Madison's time, there were no drugs, complex medicines, urban congestion with related multiple crime, health, social, infrastructure problems. There was no massive use of insecticides in food production nor resort to questionable food additives/preservative methods. There were no pervasively excessive eating habits and obesity problems. There was no exponential dependence on fossil fuels intensifying global earth warming. There were no global social-engineering in deadly sectarian wars taking place routinely with advanced weaponry. There were no issues of disappearing industrial production; of rapidly advancing automating, digitalizing, robotosizing, outsourcing of jobs in a "race-to-the-bottom Wal-Marting" of permanently destroyed blue and white collar jobs at a lightning speed that compensating new ideas and investments can’t keep up with – so far.
The excesses of “unregulated capitalism” are seldom cured by businesses whose primary goal is profit making for shareholders. The market rarely if ever dictates healthy changes in minimum wages, environmental protection, protection of organized labor, unfair trade practices, hopeless poverty, structural unemployment, rampant stock manipulation and fraud, etc., etc. Although recently, there has been some evidence of more top business leaders speaking up about the social-economic inequities occurring on a grand scale in our country (e.g., replacing people with machines, exploiting cheap labor, vacating plants so critical in small communities, etc.) … and saying that corporations must start doing something about it.
Normally, the public, through government, puts healthy changes in place. Problem is that we have had for some time now a corrupted by-money-and-special-interests governmental process of making changes that’s dangerously accelerating economic and class inequality among Americans; that's eliminating or neutering the only entities we have that are capable of responsible, fair regulation. Tragically, government, the public, and corporations seem incapable of reigning in the excesses of our pure, unfettered capitalism (not to mention our global social-engineering military adventures that are morally and money-wise bankrupting us).
And all this is happening while our infrastructure and pre-college educational systems continue to descend to 3rd world levels … while quality, affordable, decent basic healthcare coverage for everyone is a shameful failure compared to the successful and far lower-cost universal health care systems in other countries.
Frank Thomas, the Netherlands July 21, 2017
