Summary: The media overflow with hysterical predictions about the next four years, but few well-grounded visions. Here is a brief look at some of what we can expect, and why, and what these events reveal about ourselves.
What makes America great? Great for whom?
Investors have pushed US stock to near-record valuations (record valuations on price to growth basis) on the belief that the Trump administration will enact a massive fiscal stimulus — tax cuts (mostly for the rich) plus infrastructure and military spending — resulting in another round of fantastic fiscal deficits. Just as hard-rock conservatives Reagan and Bush Jr. did.
Skeptics’ rebuttal points to the eight years of Republican criticism of Obama’s deficits — deficits which prevented the 2008 crash from starting a depression and supported the economy during its long, slow recovery. How could the GOP justify massive deficits now, during an expansion? Conservative’s beliefs and history help us better predict how the conservative majority in Congress will vote. Start with their beliefs about deficits, easily stated.
- Vast military spending and tax cuts are good; the resulting deficits are bad.
- Tax cuts are good in both booms and busts, no matter how large the resulting deficits.
- Deficits don’t matter for Republican Administrations, only for Democratic Administrations.
To see how this works we turn to one of America’s most influential presidents, whose administration radically changed America and set the patterns we still live by: George Bush Jr. The pivotal moment when fiscal policy change is described in this excerpt from The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill
“The package of post-Waco tax proposals, led by a 50% cut in the individual tax on dividends, had been all but buried since O’Neil took his stand in early September. It came up infrequently, and always in the past tense — what we were thinking of doing but couldn’t afford. After the {2002} midterms, though, {Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil} could sense a change inside the White House, from Rove, Lindsey, and others. … Now Cheney mentioned them again … O’Neil jumped in, arguing sharply how the government was ‘moving toward a fiscal crisis’ and ‘what rising deficits will mean to our economic and fiscal soundness.’
“Dick cut him off. ‘Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,’ he said. O’Neil shook his head, hardly believing that Cheney — whom he and Greenspan had known since Dick was a kid – would say such a thing. He was speechless. Cheney moved to fill the void. ‘We won the midterm elections. This is our due.'”
The magic of tax cuts for the rich is quite bogus, as explained by economic theory, as shown repeatedly in history — definitively by the Bush Jr. tax cuts. But conservatives have come to power in America, waging a slow revolution, by creating a new form of politics. Dick Cheney Karl Rove understood events more clearly than the rest of us.
”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors …and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
— From “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush” by Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, 17 October 2004.
Now the Republicans have gained control again. Even stronger this time than during the Reagan and Bush Jr. years, with a president even bolder and less bound by expert opinion. So we might get a repeat of the Reagan and Bush Jr. deficits. But there are alternative paths. The GOP majority in Congress might have other priorities – such as tax cuts for the rich and cutting services to the middle and lower classes. Or Team Trump might over-reach and destroy the confidence of both America’s elites and citizens in their leadership.
What about public opinion?
How does the GOP plan to deal with public opinion? That’s a trick question! Why should they care? Americans will believe what we are told and do as we are told. Just we as passively accepted the Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the rich — financed by massive debts — by Republicans who have hysterically warned for decades about government debt.
Just as Republicans will ignore public opinion in pursuit of another of their major policy goals: repeal of Obamacare, stripping or reducing health care coverage for tens of millions of Americans. Slightly more than half of Americans approve of Obamacare. A larger majority believes that the government should make sure that all Americans have health care coverage. Big majorities, both Republicans and Democrats, support Obamacare’s key features. None of that matters to Republicans, any more than it mattered during the original debate about Obamacare.
“…coverage of the actual content of the bill is by necessity more favorable to the bill than the hokum that’s dominated the conversation thus far. After all, most of what people have been talking about is either straight-up lies — death panels — or hysterical mewling about the death of freedom and the gulag. Any time you have medical doctors on television talking about new insurance rules, or newspaper writers drawing up charts showing what kinds of people will be impacted in which ways, you’re into the universe of sober-minded discussion of an importance series of tweaks to people’s existing care, and the expenditure of a bunch of money to make insurance affordable to those who don’t have it. …{but} the evidence suggests that once misconceptions get into people’s heads they’re hard to dislodge.”
— “The changing tide“, Matthew Yglesias, posted at ThinkProgress, 22 March 2010.
What will slow the destruction of Obamacare are the vested interests that benefit from it, most especially hospitals, doctors, and drug and medical device corporations.
Why should they listen to us? They have seen our gullibility (see the Big List of Lies by Our Government). They have seen our passivity, show by reaction to the increasingly intrusive but pointless “screening” by the Transportation Security Administration. We patiently wait in long lines, like sheep, with our shoes off. We, especially pretty women, have their breasts and genitals “patted down”. Now that we have become accustomed to this indignity, TSA plans to make the pat-downs “more invasive”. They are warning police to expect (and ignore) complaints about “abnormal” frisking.
Just imagine what comes next, as TSA works to teach Americans their place in this New America.
Why should the elites ruling a powerful nation listen to such people? We have become a rabble, as shown by the contemptuous crushing of Occupy’s peasant protests. We should expect to be treated as such.
What comes next?
Left and Right will continue to move against us. Eventually one side will tip the balance enough to made substantial changes to the American political regime — as FDR did in the New Deal. My guess is that time comes near. It might be like a singularity in astrophysics, beyond which we cannot see. But we can prevent it.
Being a peasant is a choice in America, as is being a citizen. Look to our past for inspiration. Look at this post for ideas about things to do.
“Choice. The problem is choice.”
— Neo, in The Matrix Reloaded.
For More Information.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about politics in America, about Trump and the new GOP era, about reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these…
- Four views of America (Left & Right) showing that we’re ripe for realignment.
- Trump’s win revealed the hollowness of US politics. Stronger leaders will exploit this.
- Politics in modern America: A users’ guide for journalists and reformers.
- 2016 revealed the true nature of America’s left & right. It’s bad news.
Recommended books about the weakness of the Republic.
Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
