Economics 101 or Why Capitalism Sucks

So, I received an email the other day from a friend of mine from high school. He sent the email to me and to the younger brother of another classmate of ours. Somehow, even though we all went to the same high school and graduated from the same magnet program (International Baccalaureate), Tue turned out moderate, Jared turned out a super conservative, and, well, I think that Sweden is a little too far right.

Tue was struggling around the upcoming election and had a question about the repeal of the Bush tax cuts and specifically whether or not it was cool to return to pre-Bush tax cut tax rates for high income earners while allowing the tax cuts to remain for those making less than $250,000. With all due respect to Jared, his response was something directly from the Rand Paul Bible. He believes that all taxes are wrong and that pure and unadulterated free market capitalism is the answer to all the ills of the world. Jared also suggested that businesses have fled this country because of our tax rates. I almost gagged on my own vomit.

Why thank you Adam Smith! Luckily for us, we have 500+ years now of various incarnations of capitalism that disprove that there little theory.

When I first read Tue's email and then Jared's response, I saw little flashes of red and almost burst a capillary. So, I waited a week before responded.

This was my response:

Dear Tue and Jared:

Actually, businesses left this country because it was easier for them to abrogate their responsibility to the working people that created the wealth that they want not only to maintain but to grow without regard to the social, community, political, or human cost.

I am not a communist, but I do believe in a collective responsibility both to each other and to the means of production. Bill Gates, for example, should reap the benefit of his brilliance. But, without hundreds of thousands of employees, he would not now be the second richest man in the world. His wealth is in direct relationship to the individuals, humans that assisted him in creating that wealth. How then should he have no responsibility, which, in civil society is expressed through wages and benefits to the individual and to the broader society as taxes, to balance his personal benefit against the means by which he acquired his wealth in the first place?

In a purely capitalist system, which has NEVER existed, capitalism will, eventually, create such a disparity in social well being that even if it does not, as Marx suggested, eat it self, it will be destroyed (the good along with the bad) by those that rightly detest the unfair, illogical, and downright idiotic division in wealth.

The idea that those that are wealthy have acquired their wealth through perseverance, self-sacrifice, and by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps is as much a myth as Santa Claus, and like Santa Claus grown ups shouldn't believe it.

Show me a single major corporation in this country that did not acquire its massive wealth through generous subsidies from local, state and federal governments. Show me a corporate that is older than 70 years that did not acquire its wealth through massive oppression of workers that included state sponsored terrorism of workers. Show me a corporation that is over 150 years old that did not directly or indirectly benefit from slavery. Taxation is fair because the means of wealth creation are, in general, inherently unfair.

Further, if you'd like to discuss the social contract and political security, how then are people who relate to one another in a society based on capitalism and not small, localized barter communities supposed to pay for and sustain collective security while also dismantling despotism and watching out for the human tendency for exploitation? The honor system just doesn't work, and without a social structure to protect it neither does capitalism.

To answer your question, Tue, I believe that since the wealthy rely on the government to maintain their wealth that they should have to pay a proportionate amount of their income to sustain the systems that allow them to remain ridiculously wealthy. In the 70s, the marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket was somewhere around 70%, it is now around 36%...the income gap between the richest and the poorest has increased the largest it has been since before World War II which would lead me to believe that, perhaps, there is a correlation. Oh, and to be even more specific, the income gap began to widen drastically in the 1980s when the marginal tax rate for the most wealthy citizens was greatly reduced WHILE at the same time the Reagan administration began systematically dismantling the Great Society programs. No economist that believes in peer reviewed research and is credible will suggest that the two are unrelated.

We have seen what massive deregulation has done to industry. We saw it under Reagan (trickle down my ass), and we saw it under Bush (gotta love a complete reversal of the U.S. economy).

One of my favorite lines is...if you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got.

So, if you believe the Bush economic policies were good for America, if you believe our country is more economically healthy now than it was in the early to late 90s, then, by all means, vote for the Republicans.

Democrats are not much better but they are better. I pray to Heaven every day for a real change and a multi-party system but that may be too much to ask.

Yours,
Brandon

The State of the Union Is Tore Up

Last night, I sat on the bed with David. David was playing Scramble on his iPhone, and I had my computer on my lap, iTunes tuned to WNYC, and my Twitter open. As President Obama gave his State of the Union address, I live Twittered the experience, and I joined thousands of others that were giving their responses, analysis, and transcription of/to the address.

I have to say that there were a number of times during the speech that more than one "hell yeah" came out of my mouth. Obama had some great things to say, with some witty one liners, and some pointed jabs at both the left and the right. I am behind him with putting his foot in the asses of banks. I am with him on fixing health care. I am with him on job creation. I am even with him on closing the gap in import/exports. I do not advocate militarism, but I do advocate for the right of queer folks to serve openly in the military, though I would prefer that the military, as we know it, would be disbanded and reconstituted using a just defense framework.

I can not get behind Obama on some of the relativist imperialism that espoused. I don't believe in the actions, policies, and necessary oppressive actions that are necessary for the USA to remain #1 in the world. I lamented the lack of a more harsh criticism of the Supreme Court's recent decision on corporate personhood, and I really wish Obama would have stopped his speech, left the podium, and punched Justice Alito in the face when he had the nerve to mouth, "that's not true."

I wish that Obama had spoken about New Orleans and demanded that Congress commit the money to really rebuild the entire Gulf area. I was listening for an acknowledgment that we are not post race or class or sex or gender or oppression. I wanted to hear something about the rebuilding of our social safety network, which the current economic crisis has exposed as a colander and not a net.

I am happy that Obama owned that clean energy and green jobs and industry is the way of the future, but I reject the notion that there is anything such as "clean coal" technology, and I stand firmly against any expansion of nuclear power. How many Chernobyls and Three Mile Islands to we have to have before we understand that nuclear energy is never and will never be safe.

And there was too little about foreign policy. What about Israel and Palestine? What about Afghanistan and Iraq? What about Haiti? What about the climate change treaty? What about IMF reform and World Bank reform?

In the end, I think that Obama did well in his speech. I wasn't looking to agree with everyone he said. And I know that the State of the Union is political positioning at its finest. I think that Obama put some fire under the Republicans. Now, I can only hope that he will use the bully pulpit and channel his inner angry black man and get some real shit done or at least go down in a glorious ball of righteous flames in the effort to make real change and create real hope in the USA.

Sotomayor, Kim Jong Il, Prop 8, Oh My!

Yesterday was a hell of a day.

1) North Korea aka Kim Jong Il Amusement Park thumbs nose at the world after detonating a nuclear bomb and lobbin’ missiles into the sea of Japan
2) Pres. Obama keeps the history making going by nominating Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court
3) The California Supreme Court upholds Prop 8

Where to begin?

I am no foreign policy expert…and I am no advocate of violence, but, perhaps, the CIA should do what it does best and take out Mr. Kim. I get nervous when crazy dictators have the ability to take out whole cities if they should get their panties in a twist. This whole thing is starting to look like Team America. Where is Janeane Garofalo when you need her?

Obama showed, again, just how brilliant he is by picking a Latina woman for the Supreme Court. This will solidify the Latin@ community behind his presidency, and, at the same stroke, push the Latin@ community solidly in the Democratic camp for a generation. It also makes it impossible for the GOP to even think about filibustering Sotomayor’s nomination. Latin@s from left to right are doing high kicks y dando vuletas over this nomination. The GOP can not afford to alienate anyone else and hope to inch back towards the White House. Obama's nomination of a Republican appointed federal judge was like kicking the GOP while its down. I almost feel sorry for them…not really…I am actually gloating inside…hell I am gloating right here in this blog. Once again, I take my hat (and my draws if you’d like) to you, Mr. Obama.

That just leaves us with California. Now, anyone that believed that the California Supreme Court was going to overturn Prop 8 was being foolish. I understand the feelings of frustration of queer folks in California. At the same time, I will repeat what I wrote months ago. This victory goes to the Right because they deserve it. The entire queer community paid scant attention to the Prop 8 battle until it was too late. We entered the organizing game late because we thought…gee…its Cali…they love the gays. While we were sucking on the tit of complacency, the Right was in black churches and Latin@ congregations, at town hall meetings, and in the streets organizing their asses off to get folks to vote for Prop 8. They had years of work behind the campaign, and the LGBT folks organizing around the issue failed to realize the impact of people of color voters, regressive faith communities, and the massive turn out because of Obama (how they missed the turn out factor is still, to use David’s favorite term, bewildering).

The real enemy in the Prop 8 battle is not the Right…nor is it the Supreme Court of California…it is the proposition system itself. Basically, the Supreme Court ruling, by failing to overturn Prop 8, has established mob rule in California with no system of checks and balances. It is, frankly, direct democracy at its very worst. It is democracy without real debate. It is the height of dollar democracy: those with the best and biggest and brightest budgets are the ones that carry the day on whatever issue is at hand. It is a system that burdens the legislature with mandated expenditures that has led California to a monumental budget crisis. It creates three strikes laws that have stuffed California prisons to the breaking point. To be sure a very few good propositions have been implemented, but, overwhelmingly, the Right has used the prop system to create a hellacious mess that is slowly eating away at the core of California political life. It is ridiculous. And, frankly, think of all the good that could come if the tens of millions of dollars spent on proposition battles were invested in the community.

California is teetering on the edge of ridiculous.

In the end, Tuesday was a reminder that there is so much work to be done. It was also a hard object lesson in the price of complacency. Justice is not a destination; it is a state of being that requires constant vigilance, effort, and engagement.

Gov. Pawlenty is an Asshole

The MN race for U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent(and asshole) Norm Coleman and DFL challenger (and winner) Al Franken could have been written by George Lucas. It's a bad script, with an over the top villain, and hokey special effects (aka TV ads).

Let's be clear: Al Franken is the U.S. Senator from the Great State of Minnesota.

Norm Coleman is an opportunistic, party changing, flip flopping jackass loser that is clinging for dear life to the senate seat that once belonged to Sen. Wellstone and now has shit smeared all over it by the current office holder.

On November 4, 2009 the ballots were counted and Franken had won.

There was an official recount that included previously discarded or uncounted ballots and Franken won.

A three panel appeals court in Minnesota entertained a lawsuit by Coleman and, yesterday, they declared that Franken had won.

Here's a joke..."How many electoral and/or judicial bodies have to declare a person the winner before he's won?"

The answer? It doesn't matter as long as an arch-conservative asshole sits in the governor's mansion and is entertaining misbegotten ideas of being the 2012 Republican Presidential nominee: Tim Pawlenty.

Tim Pawlenty inherited a fiscally healthy state and drove it into the ground. Thank God the DFL took over both houses of the state legislature and have been able to keep most of his moronic initiatives in check. But, in this instance, a winner in a statewide race can not be declared unless the election is certified by the governor. The governor (a Republican) is ignoring the fact that after two ballot counts and a judicial order and by all indicators Al Franken is the winner. Pawlenty has declared he will not certify any election results until all appeals run their course.

Coleman is now preparing an appeal to the MN Supreme Court. It is my GREATEST and most fervent hope that Justice Alan Paige gets the appeal, rolls it up, and smacks Norm Coleman in the face with it and says, "Bad ex-Senator. Sit." and then tears the damn thing down the middle and says politely, "We decline to hear this bullshit appeal. Go back to St. Paul and fade quietly from view. Or it's the sausage factory for you."

I love Minnesota. It is the greatest state in this country (even accounting for subzero temperatures for a quarter of the year). But, lord have mercy, Norm (WHO IS NOT A MINNESOTA NATIVE!) is an embarassment. Most of us learn in kindergarten to play nicely and to not be sore losers. Obviously he skipped that day. Unfortunately, it is Minnesota that suffers and is looking at an additional two months without a second U.S. Senator. Norm could give a shit about the voters of the state. But who needs a constiuency when you've got an ego the size of Lake Superior.