Calvin Coolidge, January 1925: "The chief business of the American people is business."
Then as now this quote sums up the mythology of what rules the American society and why things have gone unbalanced. Then as now America was ruled by illusion of laissez faire economics, as if economics was a form of Earth's nature instead of a consequence of politics---better understood as a political economy.
The outcomes like before are extreme income inequalities, deregulation to a level where it is neither or a form of semi-veiled cronyism. Wall Street bankers dominate government and business elite and only serve to maintain that domination. Global interests dominate national or societal interests. Adjunct de-unioning of the work force, and the uncoupling the employer responsibility covenant through abuse and use of non employee. The psychological conversion of having social classes support the system against their economic and social interests.
And now today; President Obama and candidate Romney meet; on a historical moment. President Obama will have a national audience openly speaking about what Romney said should only be whispered in quiet rooms, (since I grew up the son of an affluent attorney and knew those rooms as Country Club dining areas and worse, Men's locker rooms, I know what he is talking about), income inequalities. Even JFK understood income inequality as the tapes released today illustrate.
The Daily Beast: In a conversation with aides that could come straight out of a modern White House, Kennedy worries about income inequality and the difficulty of appealing to young voters. “What is it we have to sell them?” Kennedy asks an aide in November 1963. “We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil. He’s not unprosperous but he’s not very prosperous; he’s not going to make out well off. And the people who really are well off hate our guts.”
Understand financial panics happen from time to time in our form of political economics we call capitalism often a precursor to "recessions". It is the consequence of human nature in the course of political economies that "bet on the come" where it imposes inexact and unequal discipline, but panics and recessions do punish the reckless, while imperfectly usually rewarding the prudent. We call this an economic or financial crisis and in most cases the financial elites are bruised. But when the reckless (the financial elites, 1%er's and their toadies) are rewarded and the cautious penalized (us the 99'er's and middle class), this produces---"A Political Crises" -
Franklin Roosevelt July 1932: We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.
This crisis made by a marriage between Wall Street and Washington is self evident that those who were reckless are now greatly benefiting from the financial crisis they in fact caused, while the rest of us are burdened and even greatly harmed by their recklessness. It is then that the panic and recession ceases to be an economic crisis, it is a political one. Just look,
the last two years Mitt Romney made $46,000,000 and only paid $6,200,000 in taxes.
This political crisis will either go the way of the New Deal or it will go more vicious but those harmed must see genuine retribution and the deconstruction of the Reagan Revolution or this road will go deeper towards a revolution of the system. This reform must address the following:
Roll Call, November 1, 2011: Members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion in 2010, a nearly 25 percent increase over the 2008 total, according to a Roll Call analysis of Members' financial disclosure forms. Nearly 90 percent of that increase is concentrated in the 50 richest Members of Congress...According to financial disclosure forms filed by Members of Congress this year, the minimum net worth in the House has jumped to $1.26 billion, and Senate net worth has climbed to at least $784 million, for a Congressional total of $2.04 billion.
Finally JFK summed it up as to the real underlying problem and what really needs to be fixed in the US society where even 50 years ago the president worried over the disconnect between Washington, D.C., and the rest of the nation.
“We’ve got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn’t have much identity where these people are concerned,” he told aides.
So let us first kill this Reagan Revolution and fix the immediate situation. Second fix the system and get after the money between or inbetween the republic working for society and not merely the privilege and cronies, and third change the idea what the business of America is....and it is not merely business.