The big surprise Tuesday night was not Donald Trump’s wins. “Trump losing momentum” stories have been written so often that when we see one we automatically rewrite it to read “Trump on a roll!” No, the big story was Bernie Sanders’ big, big win over Hillary Clinton, a victory won almost entirely on the basis of Bernie’s vociferous/idiotic opposition to free trade. And, jumping back to the Republican side, surely the best explanation as to why golden boy Marco Rubio is getting beaten like a drum, just like Jeb Bush before him, is that the right considers him soft on immigration.
Fifteen years ago, global capitalism was sweeping the globe. Now it’s in retreat around the world. What’s a billionaire to do?
The past thirty years have seen wealth accumulation on a scale unimagined in the past. Unfortunately, for the past fifteen, the cash almost all been distributed on a “to those that have it shall be given” basis. If you aren’t in the top ten percent, it’s likely that you haven’t benefited at all. If you’re in the top one percent, it’s likely that you’ve benefited more than anyone beneath you. And ditto for the top one-tenth of one percent, and the top one-one hundredth, and so on up.
So how are the rich, the very rich, and the very very rich responding to these passionate outbursts of fatuous ignorance on the “left”1 and vicious ignorance on the right? So far as I can tell, the same way they’ve responded to the Great Recession, by demanding tax cuts for themselves and benefit cuts for the poor. Rich people make the world go round! And the richer we are, the faster it goes!
Well, a lot of people have noticed that the rich keep getting richer, but the world keeps getting slower. What can the rich do to speed things up?
As I’ve already remarked, rich people should stop making it more expensive to live where they live—in San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, and other happening places, and not just in the city itself but in the outlying suburbs. Stop worrying about your view, or the environment (aka “your view”), historic preservation, etc. If “creative destruction” is good for the economy, and it is, it ought to be good for your neighborhood as well.
But let’s get beyond that. What about a deal, a big deal? Why not give up something that “they” want to get something that you want? How about a major cut in the corporate income tax, which you say is so, so important, in return for an increase in the application of the Social Security tax from the current maximum of $118,500 to whatever it is that you make, and apply it to your beloved bonuses as well? Yes, you’ll be paying more tax. That’s the point. But you’ll be making so much more money because of the reduction in the corporate tax (plus investing more in the U.S., in theory) that you won’t mind. At least you shouldn’t.
This isn’t a “Grand Plan” that will fix Social Security for the next seventy years. I don’t believe it’s possible to forge such plans, in large part because I believe it’s impossible to predict the future.2
Okay, that’s Social Security, for a while. What about Medicare and Medicaid? In France, medical costs are much lower than here, but outcomes are comparable if not higher. It isn’t the wine, or the snails. How do those crafty Gauls do it?
They pay their doctors much less than we do, they pay much less for drugs, and they don’t allow multi-million euro claims for pain and suffering. Let’s start with doctors.
Have you ever noticed, Dave and Charlie Koch, and Peter G. Peterson, and the rest of you billionaire busybodies, that the AMA has sort of a monopoly on doctors? And aren’t monopolies supposed to be sort of a bad thing? Isn’t it about time for a little creative destruction in the medical profession? Or do you just feel more comfortable getting tough with ordinary people, as opposed to rich folks?
Ditto for the drug companies. Can’t we re-examine the patent laws that allow these companies to flourish to see if we can’t make things just a wee bit more “efficient”? Yeah, maybe the FDA could stand some reforming as well? Who knows?
As for lawsuits, well, I guess you would love this, since you don’t like lawyers, except for the ones you own. So maybe we’ve got a win/win here.
Global capitalism is an enormous blessing. But a dangerous number of people don’t see it that way. It’s time for the rich to realize that the current tide isn’t floating all boats.
UPDATE
Meanwhile, over at the Times, Wall Street Exec Steven Rattner says it’s all the governments’ fault. Either they do too much or too little, which sounds just a wee bit like blame-shifting. In particular, Steve urges a “more robust fiscal policy"—that is to say, increased spending—which is the opposite of what Koch & Company have been urging on us. If "Wall Street” had gotten behind President Obama’s stimulus package back in 2009—and stayed there—instead of whining about their multi-million dollar bonuses (and comparing themselves to the Jews under Hitler), maybe things wouldn’t be so tough now. But they refused to take sides against the Republicans, who were, after all, offering them lower taxes. It’s difficult to achieve an enlightened economic policy when all Wall Street execs care about is their own personal bottom line.
- As a card-carrying liberal, even though of the neo variety, I find it deeply embarrassing to have to label Bernie Sanders’ deeply ignorant economic nationalism as “left”. ↩︎
- John Von Neumann, one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, who invented software, among other things, notoriously predicted that in the future computers would be so expensive that only governments could afford them, and that they would be used, not to predict the weather but to control it. Not even close! ↩︎
