Occupy Wall Street and voodoo economics
- By Harvey Dzodin
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China.org.cn, October 28, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading faster than a forest fire after a summer-long drought. And the flames have reached all over America and beyond. Some people have been surprised by this and the anger the participants feel. I am not at all surprised. I think the deadlock in Congress is helping to fuel the frustration and is part of a plan hatched a generation ago by extreme right-wingers to castrate the federal government and to reward the rich at the expense of the poor and working class.
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A slogan is seen during the "Occupy Chicago" protest in Chicago, the United States, Oct. 15, 2011. (Xinhua/Zhang Baoping) |
A Congressional Budget Office study released Tuesday says that income inequality has increased over the last three decades. The share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent of the population more than doubled from 1979 to 2007. As for the middle class, their share actually declined by 2 to 3 percentage points in the same period. This is no surprise and well according to the playbook devised years ago.
I have never believed that the recent gridlock in Washington and lack of cooperation were an accident. In past times of crisis, both parties pulled together. This time they haven't. The U.S. is definitely in crisis with national debt approaching $15 trillion and rising. To close the deficit Democrats insist on eliminating tax breaks for the rich, as well as spending cuts. The Republican position is zero tax increases and that any deficit reduction would have to come from solely from spending cuts. They refuse to deviate from the playbook devised by right wing and libertarian ideologues a generation ago.
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In the 1970s some Republican theorists saw that the Democrats got to play Santa Claus when they passed out benefit checks as well as when their "big government" public works projects were built giving a healthy union paycheck to construction workers. The Democrats kept raising taxes on businesses and rich people to pay for more spending programs, and that made them a party of Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to fund programs for the poor and the working class. Americans loved it. And every time Republicans railed against these programs, they lost elections.
Several right-wingers thought that Republicans could play Santa by cutting people's taxes. Most workers would get a few hundred dollars but the rich would get hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and use that money to bring more things to market, increasing supply and stimulating the economy. And growth in the economy would mean that the people still paying taxes would pay more because they were earning more.
Democrats were checkmated. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes or by cutting spending. Either would lose them elections. This is what they called "supply-side economics." George H. W. Bush called it "voodoo economics." And so it was.
When former President Ronald Reagan implemented supply-side economics, dramatically cutting taxes and increasing spending, disaster resulted as the budget deficit ballooned and the country fell into the worst recession since the Depression. Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, rationalized this saying that they were "starving the beast" of government by running up such huge deficits that Democrats would never in the future be able to talk again about national health care and improving Social Security.
From 1980 to 1988 Reagan ran up more debt in eight years than all American presidents since George Washington combined, both "starving the beast" and forcing Democrats to commit political suicidal by focusing on deficits rather than benefit programs. That is what happened to former President Bill Clinton and now President Barack Obama. It's been the Republicans who have cut taxes and financial oversight while increasing spending, which produced the recent bubble that almost melted down the U.S. and the global financial system.
America has never done well with third parties, and I don't think that this time is any different. It's Halloween now and I hope that the Occupiers can help break the evil spell of voodoo economics and help convince Americans that the budget needs to be balanced by a reasonable combination of both significant budget cuts and tax increases on the richest Americans, together with restored government oversight of the financial industry. Otherwise I fear both an economic catastrophe and a more polarized and, indeed, violent country. It's almost 2012, you know!
Harvey Dzodin currently is a senior advisor to Tsinghua University. He was director and vice president at ABC Television in New York from 1982 until 2004.
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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