In his column in the NY Times last Friday, Paul Krugman continued his journey of discovery about the Republican Party by saying, “To put it bluntly, the modern Republican Party is in essence a machine designed to deliver high after-tax incomes to the 1%.” He added that because most people are not interested in that goal, “the party has prospered politically by harnessing its fortunes to racial hostility, which it has not-so-discreetly encouraged for decades.” To be more accurate, he might have referred to hostility towards women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and anyone else who is not a white male, rather than to just racial hostility, but let’s not be distracted by that. Nor is there much point in suggesting that Dr. Krugman might well have figured all this out some time ago. At least he has, and even better, he has shown the courage to say so publicly. For this he deserves a great deal of credit.
All the more so because he appears to be all but a minority of one of those with the ability to speak to the public more-or-less at will, virtually all of whom have been unwilling to point out these historical facts. The Republican Convention starts on July 18 and the Democratic Convention on July 25. That should give the pundit class, not to mention lots of Democratic Party members and Democratic candidates for office at all levels of government, numerous opportunities to repeat Dr. Krugman’s facts with illustrations from history and the Republican Convention. I would propose that we have a drinking game where every time one of those people makes one of those points, in whatever form, we all take a drink of beer. However, I’m dead certain that all of us would remain very sober which would make the game much less fun.
It’s been clear for years that the economic theories of the Republican Party and the practical effect of the laws it has passed and its judges have made has been to make the 1% richer and the rest of us poorer. It was always clear as a theoretical matter that making the rich richer would not make the rest of us richer also. It was always equally clear that rich people and big business are not “job creators”, since jobs are created as a result of demand for goods and services, not because people or businesses have extra money in their bank accounts and, therefore, always decide to hire someone to do something that doesn’t need to be done just to use up the money.
This is made clear as a historical matter by merely looking at the growth of economic inequality since the start of the Reagan administration, when the Republicans had the ability to put their phony theories into practice. What has happened, as anyone can see by looking at the economic statistics, is that the rising tide of money to the wealthy allowed their yachts to float higher and higher and then to buy bigger yachts. The rest of us turned out to have rowboats in a lake which was being drained to float the yachts. Further, as the rich got richer, jobs kept getting more scarce and paid less, in fair part because Republicans created regulations and non-regulations which encouraged CEO’s to cut jobs, send them overseas, pay employees less, cut employee benefits and provide lower quality goods and services to customers. All while being protected by Republican judges from any fear of being sued for mistreatment of other people.
Any pundit or Democratic politician could have seen this. Some presumably did, but none of them dared challenge the economic theories of the Republicans, the effects of those theories as put into practice by Republicans or the fact that the Republican Party had been taken over by its richest contributors and was being run for their benefit. Even after Trump, Sanders and Brexit, outside of Krugman, no one seems willing to point any of this out in response to anything said or done at the Republican Convention. Neither will any Democratic politician at the Democratic Convention. Democrats will concentrate on mud-slinging rather than putting forward a rational discussion of the economic problems of our citizens and how to solve them. After the Conventions are over, the Republican economic theories will remain unchallenged and the adverse effects of their policies will remain undisclosed.
I also predict that, even more puzzling, no progressive organization will, either before or after the Conventions, dare to point out to their members or the country at large that the Republican Party has sold out the 99% in order to get the political contributions of the 1%. They’ll fuss about big money in politics, but will shy away from pointing out that the best way to get big money out of politics is to vote out Republicans and then change the laws and judges. Why this would be presumably presents multiple opportunities for psychology dissertations.
Finally, during the Conventions, I’m sure that no one will challenge the Republican’s long running assertion that loss of jobs and lower income in the results of liberals giving away money to women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and other non-white males. No one will point out that the economic data makes very clear that since the start of the Reagan Administration, it’s the 1% that gets richer and richer, not women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians or anyone else. Likewise, no one will challenge the Reagan lie of welfare queens or that lots of people live like kings on welfare or some other kind of government hand out, other than the 1%, of course.
Clinton most likely will be elected President because Trump is so clearly unqualified and dangerously unpredictable, but it will be a pyric victory for the country unless Clinton, Democrats, progressives and the pundit class try to establish a public policy dialogue based on reality and sound economic theory.