Damned If We Do and Darned If We Don’t
Look At the Mess We’ve Gotten Ourselves Into!!!
We’ve got a new (old) administration coming in, and the main reason they won is that people hate being gouged at the grocery store. They want the government to act.
But, Republicans have a problem with that.
The government can’t tell companies to lower prices.
‘That would be communism.’
The government can’t set prices.
‘That would be communism.’
The government can’t give people money to offset the prices.
‘That would be communism.’
The government can’t regulate the market to control prices.
‘That would be communism.’
The government can’t require increased wages to offset prices.
‘That would be communism.’
The government simply can’t tell business what to do with their money.
Because……
‘That would be communism.’
Actually none of that is communism, because it never allowed those aspects of the market which companies have abused. When the state owns everything, all prices and wages are at their behest.
But the US government doesn’t own the market and is obliged to protect it. Regulations are designed to guarantee safety and security to workers and consumers, and banking regulations (used to) prevent financial shenanigans.
Which is precisely why our corporate captains want to get rid of all that shit. They want no restraints, no taxes and government protection when they fail. Market stability has nothing to do with it, they want profits maximized now.
We’ve even heard online rumors of them looking at customer vetting through video with recognition. Prices don’t appear until check out, and if you drove up in a BMW, they charge you more.
Whether this is really going on or even possible or not- more than likely not- it spreads because the basic motive behind it rings true. It’s the same reason that prices continued to rise during the election. They knew that the economy had improved, wages were up, inflation was down, employment was up, the GDP was up, all signals that some people have more money.
That’s why.
No, that’s it.
“I see that you have more money than I thought. I’ll have to raise my price.”
The fact that it made Biden’s economy look disastrous to consumers was a side benefit for the corporations, but it was the main focus for Republicans, who successfully portrayed Democrats as ignoring workers and families, even as historic levels of aid for them was being implemented.
So, everybody knows that price-gouging hurts people. And you have to admit that it hurts poor people more. It just does. But it seems a great many people don’t know that the government can’t just tell them to lower prices, and would never tell them to raise prices just to hurt us.
Voters blamed Biden/Harris and Democrats for the price-gouging, and thinly elected a convicted corporate and political fraudster, who publicly plans to give the gougers everything they want.
See how this works?
The government is responsible when business abuses the market, but if the government tries to regulate it, it’s ‘communism’.
Riiiiiiiight….
Don’t forget, folks, it’s still the ‘tinkle on’ era. And, after a brief Keynesian respite, we’re going to back to hardcore supply side- tinkle, I mean, trickle down economics. No, definitely- tinkle.
From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letter From an American, 11-14-24;
“Those embracing that theory maintain that the government should let markets operate without regulation, concentrating wealth among a few people who will invest it more efficiently than they can if the government intervenes with regulations or taxes that hamper the ability of investors to amass wealth.”
That is literally what Reagan Republicans and their big business donors have been saying all this time to defend supply-side policies.
“If you don’t tax or regulate us, we’ll have more money to re-invest in our businesses.”
So, the idea is, they are supposed get unlimited profit because they will ‘invest it more efficiently’, eh?
When have they ever?
When have they ever invested in workers instead of dividends, executive pay and stock buybacks?
When have they ever used a tax break to lower prices or increase wages and benefits?
When have they ever raised wages without being forced?
When have they ever added benefits without a law requiring it?
When have they ever voluntarily made their workplace safer without being prompted by some kind of tragedy?
When have they ever cut prices or raised wages and took a cut in profit because the economy needed it?
When have they ever done a damn thing that helps everyone rather than just them?
Answer- never*.
(*Well, there is that one guy- Costco- who pays good wages and benefits and has profit sharing with employees, and an incredibly low turnover rate and good profits because of it, but nobody on the Street likes him or invites him to BBQs or beer and wings and football n’shit.)
Now, I also could have said ‘when have they ever’ supported unions. The difference in that equation is that there are some companies, including many European ones, that have been pro-union or neutral about it.
Case in point, Volkswagen was faced with a union vote in a southern state, and they were ambivalent. They agreed to support the workers’ choice. They already had both union and non-union plants in other states. They had several factories planned in more southern states. They knew this issue could affect all of them. The workers would set the precedent.
Republicans sent in a lobbying group, who flooded the area with anti-union ads and events, turning the tide against the union. Even a local state congressman blasted the union publicly. Seeing how the politicians were going to screw with them on this issue, Volkswagen promptly cancelled all of the other new plants in the US south.
Volkswagen, sadly is one of few exceptions. A majority of big business interests still fight unions on every level. Even seemingly progressively based companies, like Facebook and Tesla (don’t get me started!) do all they can to block their workers from joining unions.
Otherwise, the list still kind of stands.
This is still the reality of ’tinkle on’ economics- that all of the policies and assumptions are based on the completely fictitious idea that the 1% are going to ‘reinvest’ their profits in ways that are better than the government could do, and it’s communist to stop them.
Because the government would benefit everybody.
That’s the problem.
Remember, it’s capitalism if the rich get the money, but communism if anybody else does. Corporate policies only benefit them. To them, ‘wise investing’ only means ‘so we make more’.
The government should promote investment in wages, benefits, infrastructure, healthcare and education to improve things for everybody, which is basically their job. (“Oh, wait- didn’t Biden do all of that shit?” “Yes, but eggs went up, so…….”)
But our conservative industrial captains have never believed the the country deserves to be better off, that people deserve to be better off, only that they do.
They argue that they can better do privately what the government does with taxes. What they mean is they can make more money doing it than the government does.
Because they would monetize whatever government function or agency they were given, or shutter it if it wasn’t profitable. So, the Post Office, for instance, if privatized, would quadruple in cost to the consumer, and under-performing services and locations would be cut. It would make no financial sense to maintain a post office in a 500-person town.
But, the postal service is in the Constitution precisely because, like all government services, it is outcome-based, and while not a profit-driven enterprise, it nevertheless earns a decent net profit. People in those small towns are getting their UPS and FedEx packages dropped off through that post office that Wall Street would close.
And, that’s the biggest unseen issue- the pink elephant in the room, the…ok. I’ll knock it off. Private services may be profit based, but public services and projects are outcome-based. The success is gauged by how well it’s achieved its results- how many have been helped, how much improvement is made.
A vaccine program, for example, is judged not by the expense per dose, but by the reduction in cases of the disease. Polio, measles and smallpox were all but eliminated by vaccines. The profit to the government for doing it was that fewer citizens would become ill and need care, or worse, die.
All public services and programs are outcome-based. Because they are a tax-paid expense, they are run on a comparative shoe-string precisely because their budget is limited to their allocation. When that tax money gets to a local recreation board, they’re not looking for ‘how do we spend this gravy’. They’re looking at how many kids they can get into sports and activities. They usually have to be quite frugal and look for additional help from citizens and businesses.
Government, education, infrastructure, science, medicine and social programs are all primarily outcome-based. This is a grace we give ourselves through a self-governing democratic system- we decide to do these outcome-based things with our tax money because we all benefit.
But, for every taxpayer-funded expenditure, there is a budget- a pile of money- and it seems no one is making profit from it except the businesses they have to spend it on.
Well, we can’t have that.
If it’s a pile of money, oligarchs want a piece, and if it’s a competing lower-price service, like the USPS, they want to privatize it.
That’s exactly why we have conservatives instituting school vouchers, so that for-profit charter and religious schools can get that money that they know is in the education board’s till. Ultimately, it privatizes education even as its revenue stream comes almost entirely from the government. Double score! High five!
Remember- oligarchs don’t regard profit as a grace, but, as an entitlement. The first year they earn a billion, that’s great. The second year, meh. By the third year, they’re pissed because they aren’t making even more. Wall Street doesn’t judge profit by the amount taken in, only on the growth from the last quarter.
Stability is seen as stagnation. That’s why they scheme and gouge even more when they are already raking it in.
So, talking about all the good things that can be accomplished with higher wages, universal healthcare and improved education and infrastructure is not just irrelevant to them, it’s annoying as hell, which explains the vitriol we hear in their followers’ online comments about ‘those people’- who are also their workers and customers.
They don’t like us.
I mean, they really don’t like us.
Because we’re cramping their style with all of our bleeding heart, namby-pamby ‘feed my baby’, ‘protect my kids’, ‘save my job’, ‘communist’, ‘don’t shoot that black guy for jaywalking’, ‘no one above the law’ crap.
And, with an autocrat coming into office, who really, really hates us, oligarchs are getting a Christmas like no other. The Republican plan is to give them everything they want, and all they have to do is cheer the Project 2025 state and keep making donations and weapons for them.
The US government has never been communist, nor have Democrats, and communism rejects pretty much all liberal economic and social policies.
But, supply-side economics was always a scary thing, and now that it’s being supported by outright fascism, it’s going to become a bigger danger than ever.
Republicans can’t control it, nor do they want to. They’re willing slaves to it. They only value their piece of the pie. And it’s bigger when they help the rich than it is when they protect the poor. And, this is a pretty big slice, with lots of whipped cream.
But, they do have to tell the people something about their hands being caught in every cookie jar.
“Oh, Marxist Democrats made that up we didn’t do it it’s not against the law they did it too there’s nothing wrong here I can do anything I want it’s just those lying communist liberals using the government to persecute us because we love America they’re evil they hate babies we didn’t do anything wrong!!!”
So, this is where we are. The ruling oligarchy shouts ‘communism’ whenever the people call them to the carpet, and when we give them the breaks they want so they can ‘invest it better’, they invest it in themselves.
As long as the top looks rosy, they could care less what happens to the bottom.
And, now they will control the government.
Ultimately, they must fail horribly, as all plutocracies do, because, like last time- remember last time?- the very people they are gouging are only able to be gouged because of the regulations, laws, funding and outcome-based services provided by the government which guarantee safety, wage protections and benefits that allow people to survive.
This, in turn, feeds the billions the oligarchs rake in.
They are politically and financially destroying their revenue base by eliminating or profiteering all the things that enable people to buy things from them.
It must crash, as it did in 1929, when exactly the same nonsense was going on. And the same kind of autocratic oligarchs were running things. And the laissez-faire government they wanted was at its peak.
It blew up the world.
And, they want to do it again.
Damned if we do and darned if we don’t. Appease or oppose them, it’s a bumpy ride for us.
As my dad used to say- “that’s no way to run a railroad”.
c.2024 Cousin B
