The linked article
http://alternet.org/workplace/74262/ is just about the best exposition of Reagan/Bush economics in plain language that I have seen in some time. It's rather lengthy so below are the conclusions of the article for fixing the mess we are in:
The real solutions are pretty obvious and pretty simple.
First, we have to make a choice: Do we want a sound economy for all of us and a strong America? Or do we want to have a few people of unlimited wealth who use that wealth, among other things, to control the government so that it helps them milk more money from the rest of us?
By the way, this is not a call for socialism! Or other ism! Except a call for sensible and effective capitalism. Based on what we've seen work and seen fail.
In the real world, there are no such things as free markets. In the real world, business people manipulate and conspire to control markets, and governments both control and collude with business, while tax policies and government spending have a major affect on the economy. Let us accept that, and then the argument is only over how best to do it.
Simply giving money to rich people doesn't work.
Bob Novak, the conservative commentator who calls the investor class "the most creative class," is flat out wrong. As we've seen, outside of their ability to buy influence in politics, the media and the law, the rich are like the rest of us, relatively passive and unimaginative, prone to putting their money in the easiest place that promises a return, in whatever bubble is in fashion at the moment and wherever some salesman who gets their attention tells them.
Money has no mind of its own. It has to be directed toward areas that will generate and support business and good jobs at good wages. As it happens, our economic goals are on the same road as the social good.
The No. 1 target has to be alternative energy.
Energy that can be produced here, in the United States, renewable, nonpolluting, and not, like corn-based ethanol, requiring as much petroleum to produce it as it replaces. One-third of our balance of trade deficit is oil, year in and year out. If the United States can become the world leader in alternative energy and conservation technology, we will, at last, have something to export.
The No. 2 target is infrastructure.
By it's nature, infrastructure has to be largely produced here with local labor and it stays here.
Hard infrastructure, like roads and bridges, cleaning up New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, protecting our coasts from future storms, internet and phone service as good as Europe's, Japan's and Singapore's.
Soft infrastructure, like education, youth services, parks and recreation programs, public safety, and a saner criminal justice system. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the incarcerated population. That's expensive. And wasteful. Unsafe streets and high crime are expensive and wasteful.
Infrastructure makes doing business easier, quicker and cheaper. It becomes an invisible subsidy for all businesses. Try to imagine, for example, Fed Ex, that entrepreneurial triumph, without a national web of airports, flight controllers and roads.
The No. 3 target is health care.
Health care in the United States costs at least 50 percent more than the next-highest spending country and double what it does in most other modernized countries. All of them have better health than we do. They live longer and in better condition.
The difference is that they have national health plans. Mostly single-payer, usually tax-supported. Our plans are based on a hodge-podge of a thousand private insurers.
A single-payer national health plan should cut the costs of our health care by at least 25 percent, possibly 50 percent. That's an astonishing number. That money could go to more productive things. Or to even more health care.
American businesses who supply health care to their employees claim they are noncompetitive with companies from countries that have national health. This will make them more competitive. This will make American labor more competitive.
The No. 4 four target is a balanced budget.
There are, in fact, times for deficit spending. Just as there are times in our personal lives to borrow and times for business to borrow.
This is probably not one of them.
There is an ocean of money sloshing all around the world, looking for a home. If there are real business opportunities in America (like taking the lead in alternative energy, bio tech, and whatever is next around the corner), it will come. Especially if there is a sound business environment and dollar investments return to being the most reliable in the world. That means paying down our debt.
How can all this be done? Raising taxes.
On the wealthy. And on corporations. That's not class warfare. That's simple practicality.
After your first $20,000, how much of the next 20 do you need, to live, thrive and survive? Damn near all of it. After your first 20 million, now much of the next 20 million do you need? Not a nickel.
The rich will whine, writhe and scream that they won't do business, they'll be driven out of business, that business will collapse. Bullshit. If they dislike keeping 20 or 30 or 40 cents of each dollar of profit so much that they won't take the dollar, someone will come along who gladly will. That's how markets work.
All of this is pretty straightforward and common sense.
The illogic of Bushenomics is obvious. The results were foreseeable. After all, similar effects took place under Reagan and Bush the Elder, until they reversed courses.
The alternatives are equally obvious. The facts bear out the theory. Go back to Hoover and Roosevelt, then look at the down, up, down, of Bush the Elder, Bill Clinton, and Bush the Lesser. (We do note that there are minor industries dedicated to proving that Franklin Roosevelt was, in the words of CNN's Glenn Beck, "an evil son of a bitch," that the New Deal really, really, really didn't work, and that Bush the Elder was really, really, really responsible for the boom of the Clinton years and that Clinton was responsible for the first recession during the reign of Bush the Lesser. But they are like people who see the image of the Virgin Mary in bread sticks and crullers.)
None of our politicians, pundits or economists are addressing the fundamentals. The last time we switched from the nonsense of worshiping unmitigated greed, disguised as free marketeering, it took a market crash and the Great Depression to move us out of our public relations-manufactured delusions and make us understand that when we all do well the rich get richer too, so let's start with the common good.
Based on the dialogue as it stands now, we will go with tinkering and twaddle, doing more of what doesn't work. And only if the whole things collapses will we address the real problems.
