Reagan: The Problem

I was hoping for more from the title: A Short Breakdown Of How Reagan Broke Our Economy, Killed Jobs, And Rewarded Greed A little more history perhaps, at least an explanation of how political polarization led to Reagan's election and subsequent policy ransacking. But no, all we get from Sarah Wood is an analysis of the symptoms and effects of monopoly on the American people.

Reagan’s abandonment of antitrust laws and the refusal of policy makers even today to start enforcing them again is what collapsed our economy and rewarded greed.

While this is true, there is much more to it and simply stating that the reaganites gave business the green light to make their greediest dreams come true ignores the context of the times. For example, there were republican presidents before Reagan, why did Nixon or Ford not take their hands off the wheel and allow big business to rip apart the social contract? Events outside the US? Or recent history of that time? History is rarely a simple "A alone causes B." Looking at the 1980s from the perspective of what followed is a fallacy. While you will get no argument from me that non-enforcement of antitrust laws played a great role in the economic polarization of the contemporary US; it is a major source of the vast inequality of wealth and income, the stagnation of the economy as a whole, and ever-growing poverty, one cannot argue that this phenomenon occurred in a vacuum.

What follow in Wood's essay is a fairly standard recitation of the collapse of civil society, the result of economic ruin for the middle class and ever-deepening chasm swallowing working people into poverty.

Here is the salient point of Wood's thesis:

consolidation of industry has stifled our growth. Jobs grow through small business, individual entrepreneurship, and actual competition. However we need laws to allow this to happen which keep markets and wages fair. This doesn’t make me a socialist, this makes me a person in favor of capitalism who appreciates competition, but also appreciates laws that protect the small from being devoured by the large. These laws also protect us from these giant monopolies dictating laws that may potentially harm us (food safety, etc.) so they can increase profits by cutting corners. (Emphasis mine)

 Ahhh, let's not even pretend to understand the difference between socialism and varying forms of capitalism. Make sure you don't think of any white elephants while reading her essay. Funny how inoculation only works one way, when the Children of Light try it they only end up activating the Children of Darkness' frames. However, somehow anytime a progressive CoL brings up Reagan or God help us George w. bush the wailing of trolls begins. "Oh, of course it is all dubya's fault." Those knee-jerk schmuck declarations that dare you to agree, but reflexively we know what is out-of-bounds. It is the same reflex that all but forces liberals to defend small businesses as bastions of goodness.

Indented and italicized for no apparent reason and with no supporting source is this gem:

Industry consolidation also cuts down on workers’ rights. This is why Republicans hate and demonize unions. Workers having a voice cuts down on the ability to be greedy. 

The trouble is, and obviously there are exceptions, but most big business prior to the Reagan "revolution" had made peace with organized labor. Consolidated industries, like steel, or energy, or manufacturing were too vulnerable to workers' resistance in the days before subsidized outsourcing. The treaty of Detroit, where management finally conceded labor's right to bargain, meant high wages but no say in how business was run and compared to the days before the treaty had brought relative labor peace.

It was small businessmen who irrationally feared and loathed anything that smacked of bargaining with "the help." It was the NFIB that freaked out so hard about the Clinton administration's healthcare reform proposals in 1993, over a portion that required providing bare bones insurance for all employees at a cost of about 10 cents an hour. Twenty years later the fight is still joined at that level. The so-called tea party, if it has any real existence beyond Astroturf, is a rogue's gallery of small business types so it does not matter how dead unions really are this merry band of idiots and racists are frightened beyond belief that their busboys and stockers are just waiting for their fellow minority in the White House to give the word to agitate for fair treatment. This of course will cause utter chaos, the ruin of tea partiers' cult of self-importance, and possibly the violation of our white women.

Sorry folks, but race is, was, and probably will ever be America's original sin. Reagan did not kick off his campaign by memorializing and standing by 'states' rights' in a southern town that murdered several civil rights' activists during the 1960s because he himself had Klansman hoods in his closet, but he knew how to play the game for those that did. Reagan did not let loose his many counterfactual descriptions of "welfare queens" without the certainty of what images these fairy tales would conjure up in the minds of his supporters.

There is so much more to the wrecking of the relatively stable, fair, and equal America built by the Greatest Generation and refined by well-meaning Americans for a half century. But that will have to wait... because dang, that is a big, big story. Historians and lots of very smart people are still in shock that America unraveled this quickly and how far we will continue to fall. I don't mean to knock Sarah Wood or Political Shake for printing her piece, monopoly is a huge problem, but to pretend that there is a silver bullet which can undo all the damage of the last three decades is just naïve.

Hope, but not holding my breath for good health reform

So President Obama is taking a page from my hero LBJ on getting the sausage made, good to hear. I often think that if 'ole Lame Brains, as my Dad used to call him, was still around we wouldn't be facing right-wing delusions of relevence, or the polarizing influence of vast wealth and income inequality of today. I do want to believe that President Obama is as tough and crafty as george will and others allege, actually willing and able to deliver on progressive, reality-based reform.

It has to be noted that LBJ's Great Society fell far short of what he really wanted, and due to the some of the same issues we face today. Johnson wanted to make people's lives better but did not want to fight a real fight with the business community. Medicare and Medicaid are tremendous programs that would work even better if republicans didn't constantly try to sabotage them, these initiatives had a definite positive effect on quality of life for seniors and poor Americans. In the 1960's there was a residue of regulatory cops on the beat, protecting the public purse from corporate greed and therefore good private health insurance could be had for most of us. Unions had fought for decades to achieve the social contract inch by inch from corporations and didn't want to lessen the need for continued organizing.

Now, if it weren't for class loyalty, the business community outside of the insurance companies would be screaming for single-payer health care for the simple fact that it is far too expensive for even big companies to deliver on what they had once provided for employees. The right-wing succeeded in gutting any limits on ripping us off, business responded by deskilling and outsourcing as many jobs as possible while forcing, little by little, those left to make concessions on their share of the income work generates. Consequently, economic expansions in the eighties and nineties meant skyrocketing corporate profits while workers just got to keep their jobs.

Right now, the best thing about the public option as it appears is that many of the people kicked out of private plans for actually needing coverage will actually get the care they need while executives can maintain their "gold-plated" coverage. In this guise, Obama and Johnson are similar as Medicare was intended for people who simply couldn't get private insurance anymore either. As it stands, the insurance industry will probably come out ahead with this plan despite howling from the loonies on fox, et al. And maybe for a change the US won't be the laughing stock of the industrialized world.

But, I'm not holding my breath.