So, as someone who has certain ideas of what the 7th party system should look like, it should not come as a surprise that my own ideals are actually an economic counter to the ideals that dominated the 6th party system, like trickle down economics. And the trickle down economics of Reagan is a counter to the 5th party system that was the New Deal.
Currently, the left is kind of trying to come back, but their brand of politics as embodied in people like Harris comes off as milquetoast, and ideologically just...weird and all over the place. it isn't the answer to our ills. And I do want to explain why my ideals are the perfect foil to Reaganism
Explaining Reaganism and trickle down economics
So, as I would see it, the big defining aspects of Reaganism are a rejection of the state, and an all encompassing embrace of the market.
For Reagan conservatives, government isn't the solution to problems, government is the problem. We should get any and all government out of the system and allow everything to be left to markets, private entities, and so called voluntary exchange. Welfare is bad. Taxes are bad. Regulations are bad. Greed is good, rich people are good, job creation is good.
Reagan conservatives want government out of everything and hate government interventionism in any and every form, at least economically.
They believe in supply side economics, aka, trickle down economics. The philosophy is if rich people do good, the wealth will trickle down. Businesses are job creators. They create "opportunities" for people, and workers should just accept whatever "opportunities" that businesses create. They should have good work ethic and be willing to do whatever work is required of them, for whatever pay is required for them. And they should be grateful for the oppootyunity, since without them, they would be poor.
What a system! Just spend your days working for some rich "job creator" and maybe, just maybe, one day, you will be rich too. It's basically slavery with extra steps.
My answer: jobs are not the answer
We are a society that is obsessed with work for its own sake. We think jobs are the answer to all social ills. When we talk about creating jobs, we're doing it so we can justify giving a paycheck to people, because that's how how we do it for some reason. After all redistribution is bad, property is a natural right, taxation is theft, and everyone must work for their bread. It makes sense in an era of scarcity where if people arent working, evryone starves, but in a world like today, it just seems irrational. Like we're just enslaving people.
Both sides, republicans and democrats, are obsessed with jobs. And yes, that includes democrats, democrats are obsessed with jobs. During the great recession, Obama pushed shovel ready jobs in the form of infrastructure and most jobs created were low wage jobs in service industries. Romney talked about how we need to create jobs by giving more money to rich people. In the more modern era, Trump promised to bring back the jobs, while now Biden and Harris talk about how democrats have a stronger record of creating jobs. our political system is obsessed with this issue. It's insane. We gotta realize at some point jobs arent the answer. We cant give everyone a job anyone since if everyone had a job, we would have massive inflation. Capitalism literally requires unemployed people existing to function. What we are doing here, having a system where everyone needs a job, not everyone can find them, and both sides just obsess over who creates more jobs. IT DOESN'T MATTER. BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS, IT DOESN'T WORK IF EVERYONE HAS A CHAIR!
Not that we should aspire to work anyway. Work sucks. Work isnt some noble endeavor, especially if forced on people. Most work doesnt exist for human fulfillment and self actualization. Work exists to make things. It's soul crushing. It's cruel. If we could automate the jobs tomorrow and no one would have to work any more, we would be better off for it. But that would mean we need to make a new system to provide for people. Which I am all for doing. But I see work as slavery. I reject this idea that life should just be the masses seeking to do labor for rich people in exchange for barely enough money to meet their needs. Our system is cruel, it's messed up. We should evolve past it.
Government is the answer!
Republicans are the party of small government, and democrats, since bill clinton, have ceded the issue to them. And for all the talk of how Biden and Harris are some massive progressive ideological shift, I dont see it. For Biden, work has dignity, and all the dude has done is bloviate about how many jobs he created and how we have the best economy ever. And now Harris is kind of doing the same thing, basically doing this "promise of america" nonsense and virtue signalling about "hard work" all convention, and it's BS. Like, democratic solutions to the economy are band aid fixes that just amount to "treat your slaves better". They dont argue against wage slavery, they just argue in favor of not beating your slaves as bad.
I honestly believe we need to move away from work and jobs as the end all be all of provide for people. Work is fine if it does useful things, but we shouldnt force people if not necessary. i dont want more work and more jobs. I do believe we should have a system where government provides for people. I believe in universal basic income and medicare for all. I believe that we should tax rich people, and redistribute the wealth to everyone else, so they don't have to work. I believe that in the long term, we should just abolish work.
And before people think im a communist, no, not even close. Those guys want to sieze the means of production and give everyone a government job and force everyone to conform to their will. I have no issues with markets and am an ideological capitalist to some degree. Im just not indoctrinated into this "spirit of capitalism" that is the work ethic. I beleive in humanist, human centered capitalism where the economy works for people, not people for the economy. I believe we should give everyone their basic needs in order to LIBERATE from from work and allow them to pursue their own interests. However, I do understand some work is necessary, and some people genuinely do WANT to work, so I do believe in keeping capitalism going. I just dont believe in forcing people into it. Yes, taxes will be higher if you participate, to pay for the people who don't. Some might have an issue with that. But most shouldnt. Because here's the mathematical reality of capitalism and income inequality. Even if you work, odds are, you'll still benefit from UBI and Medicare for all. You will be financially better off even if you do work. You literally would need to be in the top 25% or so of income earners to even start paying into my ideas in net.
With my ideas income inequality still exists. It would just be a more reasonable level of inequality closer to what people think the economy is, and not what the economy is. Rich people will still be hundreds or even thousands of times better off than the rest of us. They would just have to pay more taxes to ensure the rest of us can live without being enslaves to them.
It's not even communism. It's just, as Scott Santens would say, capitalism that doesn't start a 0.
You know? I say we take back this narrative that government is bad from the right. It's not. Government is the servant of the people. It exists to serve us, and we should use its powers to do so. What my brand of social libertarianism accomplishes is it expands the size of government, while also making it less tyrannical than ever. Because like it or not, despite all of this talk of big government, who do you think enforces the rich's property rights? Who do you think puts down strikers? Who do you think forces us to work in the first place? It's the government. The small government narrative is really just socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the rest of us when it suits them. It's time to see through the facade, America, and make government and the economy work for us.
Conclusion
And yeah, I just wanted to write this. My ideals actually exist as a counter to reaganism and trickle down economics. Some in the basic income movement have even called these politics to be "trickle up" economics, or demand side economics. My ideas for how the economy work are a counter to the right, but they also reject much of the existing left.
The liberal left has, since 1992, ceded the narrative to the right. WHile some argue Harris and Biden have pushed the party left, in a lot of ways, they still kind of operate in the paradigm of "well we cant be for big social programs because it will alienate our stakeholders". Which is why Biden and Harris still have such a work fetish. They explicitly reject the idea of raising taxes and giving people things like a UBI or healthcare. They're still pretty much "new democrats" in a way. Just this more mildly progressive form that abandons the full on centrism of the clinton years. but when I really look at them through my own ideological lens, Biden and Harris are still "new democrats" through and through on my core issues.
If anything, the left seems to have a desire to go back to the new deal paradigm that never actually worked super well. Because keep in mind, those guys were pro work too, they just believe in work that payed. And I guess thats the direction biden and harris stepped into. Going back a step to the new deal era and stuff like unions, but avoiding discussions of taxes or welfare or so called "socialism" (defined as "government doing things). It's weak, and they still advocate for a system where most people are slaves of rich people. They just support the slaves getting treated better.
It's only until we realize that work doesnt work, and work is the problem, that we will finally evolve as a species. Until then we're just debating this nonsense of which side creates more jobs and which side ensures that the slave class gets treated and paid better. And yes, democrats are better than republicans, but democrats still suck and still cede way too much ground ideologically to the republicans.
No comments:
Post a Comment