What to say

What’s left to say about the election, the economy, and the international situation. With Ayn Rand’s boy toy’s admission of shock yesterday, we are seeing the death knell of anti-Keynes-ism. Or, at least, the entry into the senior-year for the infantile Randians.

Rand is popular among the clueless and smug undergraduates. By the senior year, most have enough experience in life to see how shallow and misinformed her views are, especially when peddled as a “philosophy”. Some “serious” people are so unable to learn from experience that it can take years, or decades, or lifetimes (hello Mr Greenspan) to learn.

So the economic and social philosophy that was “edgy” and radical in the 30s and became the orthodoxy from the 80’s is dead. What will take its place?

Some might hope for a return to the orthodoxy of the 30s-60s. There is something very attractive to that. Things were pretty darn good for most people then. But, the danger with nostalgia is stagnation. The society and economy that arises to replace the crumbled orthodoxy must acknowledge today’s world.

I have hope that the model adopted will be successful, that it will take advantage of the strength and diversity of America. That is not a sure thing. Pain like we are and will continue to feel opens possibilities to healthy development as well as unhealthy development.

We developed a health social contract out of the mess of the 30s: other societies did not. Which direction will we take this time?

The days of right-wing rage

Please, please read this post.  I know that the author is right and I’m afraid as he is about the future.  Not only the crappy economic future that seems assured, but the response to it by the alienated.  The right will be rallying the alienated (even though the policies of the right created the conditions that lead to the alienation – might as well take advantage of the situation).  Times like these are very very dangerous; if the next president doesn’t act forcefully and successfully to turn things around quickly, the future could be very very ugly (think of the European responses to the bad economies of the 20s and 30s!).

Income

Today Bob Herbert correctly points out the underlying problem facing this country.  It’s not that Americans want too much, though we are tremendous consumers.  It’s that we aren’t paid enough.  How have Americans kept up over the past four decades?  First, women went into the job market.  What were single income families became two income families. The right tries to make this a sexist issue: those crazy feminists, but it is fundamentally a fairness and economic issue.

Women should be allowed to work and paid equally because it is fair and the right thing to do.  Women should be allowed into the work force because it is the right thing to do.  But, the massive upsurge in female employment since the ’60’s wasn’t only, or even primarily generated by equal rights; but by economics.  As prices increased and male wages stagnated, families made up the difference with a second income.

That kept the family going for a while, but by the 1990’s that wasn’t enough.  How to pay rent, tuition, etc?  Borrowing.

Now the right-wing myth (and it is a myth like the welfare queen is a myth) is that Americans are weak and are wasting their money on fast cars and other crap.  Not so.

So what do we do?  Raise incomes.

Important

This is hugely important and not thought about enough.  The reason that the “free market” folks have been able to have any pretense for claiming that their vision is efficient or effective is that they ignore externalities.  They calculate costs and benefits in a closed environment: as though the corporate books have all necessary data.  They benefit from all of this non-calculated cost; cost that the government is left holding.  That is why they can paint  government as bad because govrenment comes to the taxpayer with the bill for the crap that the corporation gets away with.  The corportation looks good because they avoind the drag on their books and the government looks bad because they are the holder of last resport.  No one likes to have topay for something that they didn’t incur and the corporations are excellenmt at avoiding paymrnt even if the causation isn’t so attenuated as to make legal responsibility unlikely.