I just finished watching the republican convention a few minutes ago for the second night. Like last night, I did not watch every minute of it, but I watched enough to get an idea of what's going on. Tonight, they formally nominated Trump as the nominee, and they had a lot of speeches, most of them about how bad Obama and Hillary are.
Now, as you guys can imagine, I can appreciate some well thought out criticism of Clinton, I'm not a fan of hers, but so much criticism the right throws at her is extremely low brow and just lies they repeat often enough that they believe them. They still go on about Benghazi. They made some jokes about her emails. Most of it was again, about issues like foreign policy and how weak Obama and Clinton are. Christie's speech sounded like a mock trial, in which every evil in the world is Clinton's fault, and it really had a creepy witch hunt vibe to it. The only speech I could relate to was Paul Ryan's speech, which seemed far more substance oriented and actually spoke to some of the issues I care about that Clinton and Obama have failed to address like poverty. The only problem is, I know Ryan is full of crap too and has no solutions. I mean, for all the good lofty campaign rhetoric here, the republicans have no better solutions. Heck, they're far WORSE. I'll get to that in a moment. I want to finish my line of thought on the Clinton bashing first.
One thing that stood out to me was how, if only we supported Sanders, a candidate without all this baggage and scandals and character issues, this would be a totally different game. The democrats really did choose a weak candidate here. They chose a candidate with severe character flaws, who wants to continue the status quo. When the republicans talk about change, this is going to get people to listen to them and vote for them. Now, I'm smart enough to know the republicans are full of crap here. They have nothing to offer America on the more legitimate issues they attacked. But honestly, I saw this coming. It's a huge reason I didn't want Hillary. No one is happy with this status quo. Not the right, and not much of the left. But, as I've discussed before, the democrats have a propensity to defend their legacies, even when imperfect, shut down criticism, and alienate people in doing so. When your message going into 2016 is "you better vote for us even if you're unhappy with us or you get Trump", that's not very inspiring or motivating. Not that the republicans have much more to offer other than lies and attacks on Clinton, but it really does alienate people from the democrats. The democrats could be a far better party if they were more left wing, if they thought more systemically, and if they would keep redefining what progress means, because progress is...well...progress. A constantly evolving state of affairs that trends toward making life continually better. But instead, we're stuck with Hillary, she's about as inspiring as a slave driver ("the beatings will continue until morale improves"), and it gives the republicans a platform on which to act like they're going to be the good guys changing everything. Smooth move, democrats, smooth move.
Now, to go back to their IDEAS. I discussed most of them yesterday, and the themes were common today too. There was talk about Trump being a Nixonesque "law and order" candidate. Talk about how we're so unsafe and our military is so weak, blah blah blah. But today brought a new idea into focus. Yesterday was about making America safe again, and today was about the economy ("make America work again"). You could barely tell since the convention was 75% Hillary bashing, but yeah, that's what was largely being discussed.
While the republicans have the democrats' number on some of their weaknesses, they totally misdiagnose the problems. They think the problem with the economy is too much government. Meanwhile, I think it's not enough government. They talk about crushing regulations and Obamacare and taxes, and here I am like, no, it's the whole capitalistic paradigm. The republicans want to be the party of jobs, but honestly, more trickle down economics will never give us the jobs we need. Look at other posts I've done, especially the one on the labor market I did a while back. The economy will always be rigged against the little guy, it's not in the self interest of the rich to create jobs or pay them well, and there will never ever ever be enough jobs to go around as our system would not allow it. Giving the rich more money and fewer regulations will not help you. The problem is corporate greed, and the problem is insisting the way to make an income is to have a job in the first place. I know this is a controversial concept, but it's true. Jobs, for these people aren't just about the income either, they're an inherent moral good. This is true in democratic philosophy too, as I've mentioned, but these guys want to bring back coal jobs for the sake of employing people, even though coal is a dirty unsafe fuel. I mean, it's crazy.
But let's say we did want to stick to the whole job oriented paradigm. Who do I trust more, republicans or democrats? Democrats, without a doubt. Democrats are more Keynesian in their outlook. Look, if you want to understand employment on a macro level, you need to understand monetary policy and the federal reserve. The fed plays an important role in regulating this policy, which regulates unemployment and inflation. Since the 1970s, the republican party has been extremely anti inflationary, because of stagflation, in which we saw runaway inflation combined with full employment, oil shortages, and recession. The solution for the republican party, and this became the foundation of modern economic thought post Reagan, is to undercut worker bargaining power. They slashed unions, reduced taxes, reduced regulations, and set a strict inflation target by the federal reserve at around 2%. What this does is it keeps unemployment relatively high, and it keeps wages down, and bargaining power down. Because if workers have too much bargaining power, what do you get? Inflation! Since the recession, the fed has lowered its interest rates as low as they go and we've been expanding as an economy with unemployment slowly going down. The only way to stimulate the economy more is directly injecting cash and that could cause too much inflation. Still, liberals, democrats, they have a history of supporting more Keynesian style economic thought. This involves stimulating the economy, increasing aggregate demand, improving worker bargaining power, and pushing for full employment. This is the secret of the economic successes of the 1960s. Keynesian thought was in full swing. Unions were strong, bargaining power was strong, unemployment was near its theoretical minimum, and the fed intentionally stimulated the economy. But because it overstimulated it a little bit too much one time, we abandoned this economic thought in favor of trickle down.
And what do the republicans offer? More trickle down. You see, my problem with the democrats is they are not aggressively progressive enough. It's not that liberalism isn't good, it's that they're too conservative for fear of being perceived as too liberal. They tend to implement liberalism in half ***ed, incremental ways, and then people get unhappy when it doesn't go far enough. But then the republicans spin it as going too far, and they get voted back in, only to mess everything up even worse. Thus is the cycle of our current party alignment, and will continue to be the case until either the republicans screw up so bad they're toxic for decades, or until the democrats move to the left and push a real progressive alternative with a better understanding of the problems and how to fix them. You know, like Bernie or something.
So yeah. All things considered, tonight's convention was a lot of Hillary bashing, and not a lot of alternative to show for it. A lot of promises more or less implied that if only we try trickle down economics again everything will be great, but that's flat out false, it will only make things worse.
On a side note, if anyone is interested in reading more about the economic theory described above, here's a free ebook I read once by a guy named Dean Baker called "The End of Loser Liberalism." I don't agree with everything this guy says ideologically since he seems largely opposed to safety nets, but he does a lot in making a strong case for liberal approaches to the economy, even with the concept of job creation, over the republicans. While I don't believe we will ever fully solve our problems as long as we see jobs as the solution to them, if we were going to see them as the solution, I'll trust liberals over conservatives in managing the economy, thank you very much.
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