While your critique is correct about the distribution of power away from the public and governance, to corporations and wealthy shareholders, there is an error in your thinking. We do not have the capacity for unlimited growth. We cannot have it all. The wealthy have way to much of a pie that is shrinking, not growing. The only growth on the ledger is based on a fallacy, that drawing down natural capital does not shrink the available capital. It does. We have gotten ahead of the ability of natural resources to regenerate, things like forests, fisheries, and soils. These have limits, and we have already exceeded them. What does this mean? We can and should have a "New Deal" program that taxes the rich heavily and spends on health care, education, natural resource regeneration, and a switch to alternative energy. These are necessities. However, we have to learn to do more with less. We cannot grow in a way that draws down the ability of life's essentials to stay healthy. We need clean water, clean air, fertile and chemically free soils, regenerating forests that capture and store carbon, and more. Expecting growth to cover the felt needs of those raised on Amazon, Apple and Google will kill the planet just a much as Trump's over the top corruption. This is the reality. The problem, if you espouse this position (realistic as it is) you will never get elected because it denies the legitimacy of the American myth.
In fact both you and the author are correct. He preaches the need for change, and change will come. You argue that the powers that be- the Political Class, the Intelligence Community (The Deep State), the Wall Street Financiers and the Tech Bro Billionaires- will never willingly accede to oversight and diminishment of wealth and power and you are right, because change will come.
We currently live in a system that has been rigged with the assistance of and under the direction of these four power bases over the last 80 years. They combined to take out JFK, Martin and Bobby and there’s strong evidence that the CIA also staged a quiet coup by creating WaterGate to stop Nixon from trying to promote peace by connecting with China. Since Nixon the country has deteriorated in its quality of life, in its democratic ideals and in the notion that the voter has any control.
We will not vote our way out of this debacle.
However, the Second Law of Political Dynamics suggests that everything that goes up must come down, and we are watching that occur in real time. With a sovereign debt crisis driving governments worldwide to overspend combined with a financial sector grasping at AI to carry the stock market and truly sketchy investment vehicles and practices to undercut the market, and as Trump prepares a Western Hemisphere sealed bastion while disrupting oil flow and dismissing an economically castrated EU itching to take on Russia, the likelihood of failure on the part of The Big Four increases daily.
And in the Big Four's likely failure, there springs hope. Hope in the possibility of building anew at the local level utilizing Brother Trent’s notion of community action.
As a baby boomer, born in 1950, I've reaped the benefits of the kind of New Deal economy you propose. Reagan was the turning point in 1980 when he convinced people that government bureaucrats were incompetent and everything needed to be privatized. And we could pay less taxes as a reward. The result, 45 years later, is extreme inequality and a billionaire class that controls the government.
You are always spot on in your commentaries. Thank you for your insight and your honesty. I just pray it is not already too late. I am not being pessimistic here, it's just the fact that the powers that be have extracted so much from us over the past 40nyears; there's just not much left to give. That was their plan and we helped them achieve it. I'm an old woman; I'll be OK the rest of my few days; but I do so worry about my great grandchildren and I pray every day that someone like you; many someone's like you; change things around, for them, before it is too late.
I grew up in those years when we believed the government could do things! I was 13 when we landed on the Moon! The Interstate Highway System was built along with all the things you mentioned.
The current government just wants to destroy government and privatize everything.
The Reagan administration and the K street project crippled the gains of a society that saw the Federal Government as a legitimate and powerful force for good. The give away to “Beltway bandits” successfully introduced bottom line profits as a substitute for governmental service. What had been handled by genuine “civil servants” has become a shell game to keep upping the bottom line. The inconvenience of reorganizing back to actual public service (where you KNOW what services cost and they are done by specialized, salaried government employees) will be a slog. And that, coupled with the calamitous interruptions needed to update basic infrastructure (sewage and water, as well as roads and bridges), will be a very tough sell to our spoiled and disengaged citizenry. The American spirit was forged in time of scarcity and by citizens with far more realistic expectations from normal life. (Dust bowls and bread lines.). We lost the ability to distinguish needs from wants and that turned us into children. It remains to be seen if there is the national will to grow up. Because THAT is what will be required.
In the late 80s I worked on a public employee union election in California, the state had a quarter million employees then. Something we heard over and over from state employees was that when they were growing up, working for the state was considered a great thing. You got good pay and good benefits but also dignity; people respected state workers because they valued what their tax dollars were providing them. But that changed. After Reagan and his famous Madison Ave ad men convinced first Californians, then the rest of the country, that government was the problem, that it was the reason for so many of America’s problems, working for the ‘state’ became a stain on your reputation. Can’t underestimate the power of a compelling narrative, especially when there’s no counter narrative or a less convincing one.
I agree about the health system — completely. But you do have one thing wrong. The NYC subway system was built, at least initially, by private companies, starting with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, or IRT, opening in 1904. It was bought by the public in 1940.
While your critique is correct about the distribution of power away from the public and governance, to corporations and wealthy shareholders, there is an error in your thinking. We do not have the capacity for unlimited growth. We cannot have it all. The wealthy have way to much of a pie that is shrinking, not growing. The only growth on the ledger is based on a fallacy, that drawing down natural capital does not shrink the available capital. It does. We have gotten ahead of the ability of natural resources to regenerate, things like forests, fisheries, and soils. These have limits, and we have already exceeded them. What does this mean? We can and should have a "New Deal" program that taxes the rich heavily and spends on health care, education, natural resource regeneration, and a switch to alternative energy. These are necessities. However, we have to learn to do more with less. We cannot grow in a way that draws down the ability of life's essentials to stay healthy. We need clean water, clean air, fertile and chemically free soils, regenerating forests that capture and store carbon, and more. Expecting growth to cover the felt needs of those raised on Amazon, Apple and Google will kill the planet just a much as Trump's over the top corruption. This is the reality. The problem, if you espouse this position (realistic as it is) you will never get elected because it denies the legitimacy of the American myth.
In fact both you and the author are correct. He preaches the need for change, and change will come. You argue that the powers that be- the Political Class, the Intelligence Community (The Deep State), the Wall Street Financiers and the Tech Bro Billionaires- will never willingly accede to oversight and diminishment of wealth and power and you are right, because change will come.
We currently live in a system that has been rigged with the assistance of and under the direction of these four power bases over the last 80 years. They combined to take out JFK, Martin and Bobby and there’s strong evidence that the CIA also staged a quiet coup by creating WaterGate to stop Nixon from trying to promote peace by connecting with China. Since Nixon the country has deteriorated in its quality of life, in its democratic ideals and in the notion that the voter has any control.
We will not vote our way out of this debacle.
However, the Second Law of Political Dynamics suggests that everything that goes up must come down, and we are watching that occur in real time. With a sovereign debt crisis driving governments worldwide to overspend combined with a financial sector grasping at AI to carry the stock market and truly sketchy investment vehicles and practices to undercut the market, and as Trump prepares a Western Hemisphere sealed bastion while disrupting oil flow and dismissing an economically castrated EU itching to take on Russia, the likelihood of failure on the part of The Big Four increases daily.
And in the Big Four's likely failure, there springs hope. Hope in the possibility of building anew at the local level utilizing Brother Trent’s notion of community action.
As a baby boomer, born in 1950, I've reaped the benefits of the kind of New Deal economy you propose. Reagan was the turning point in 1980 when he convinced people that government bureaucrats were incompetent and everything needed to be privatized. And we could pay less taxes as a reward. The result, 45 years later, is extreme inequality and a billionaire class that controls the government.
You are always spot on in your commentaries. Thank you for your insight and your honesty. I just pray it is not already too late. I am not being pessimistic here, it's just the fact that the powers that be have extracted so much from us over the past 40nyears; there's just not much left to give. That was their plan and we helped them achieve it. I'm an old woman; I'll be OK the rest of my few days; but I do so worry about my great grandchildren and I pray every day that someone like you; many someone's like you; change things around, for them, before it is too late.
I grew up in those years when we believed the government could do things! I was 13 when we landed on the Moon! The Interstate Highway System was built along with all the things you mentioned.
The current government just wants to destroy government and privatize everything.
Such a tragic waste!
The Reagan administration and the K street project crippled the gains of a society that saw the Federal Government as a legitimate and powerful force for good. The give away to “Beltway bandits” successfully introduced bottom line profits as a substitute for governmental service. What had been handled by genuine “civil servants” has become a shell game to keep upping the bottom line. The inconvenience of reorganizing back to actual public service (where you KNOW what services cost and they are done by specialized, salaried government employees) will be a slog. And that, coupled with the calamitous interruptions needed to update basic infrastructure (sewage and water, as well as roads and bridges), will be a very tough sell to our spoiled and disengaged citizenry. The American spirit was forged in time of scarcity and by citizens with far more realistic expectations from normal life. (Dust bowls and bread lines.). We lost the ability to distinguish needs from wants and that turned us into children. It remains to be seen if there is the national will to grow up. Because THAT is what will be required.
In the late 80s I worked on a public employee union election in California, the state had a quarter million employees then. Something we heard over and over from state employees was that when they were growing up, working for the state was considered a great thing. You got good pay and good benefits but also dignity; people respected state workers because they valued what their tax dollars were providing them. But that changed. After Reagan and his famous Madison Ave ad men convinced first Californians, then the rest of the country, that government was the problem, that it was the reason for so many of America’s problems, working for the ‘state’ became a stain on your reputation. Can’t underestimate the power of a compelling narrative, especially when there’s no counter narrative or a less convincing one.
Just remember Andrew Carnegie and his libraries
I agree about the health system — completely. But you do have one thing wrong. The NYC subway system was built, at least initially, by private companies, starting with the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, or IRT, opening in 1904. It was bought by the public in 1940.