I have no love for our current corporate state. But what really amazes me is that the plutocracy can be so short sighted.
The last time the rich had free run we called it the Gilded Age. There were no constraints on corporations and they were free to rape and pillage the schmucks, to squeeze every last penny and hour of labor all for their own enrichment.
But all things must come to an end. The US was fortunate that FDR was in office to channel the frustration into moderate and sensible programs. Without FDR, I believe that Huey Long would have risen to fill the outrage.
More about Huey and "Share our Wealth" on the flip . . .
There has been an absence of true demagogues in US politics. Part of this is because of the strengths of the US system, which allow opportunities for everyone to follow their dreams and live a comfortable life. But by the turn of the 19th century they system was broken.
Wealth and assets had been concentrated in the has of a few, there were no worker protections and states were prohibited from passing any economic regulations (this is the Lockner decision you hear everyone talking about, holding that NY state could not limit the working hours of bakers or demand overtime pay)
Huey Long channeled this anger so well he became a virtual dictator in Louisiana. For example in 1928 he was elected governor by a margin of 92,941 votes to 3,733. He campaigned against the private utilities and corporate privileges. The slogan was "Every man a king"
He later was going to challenge FDR in 1936 before he was assassinated. He called his platform "Share our Wealth". The highlights:
1. Nobody should be allowed a personal fortune of more than 100 to 300 times the average family fortune, which would limit personal assets to between $1,500,000 and $5,000,000. Annual capital levy taxes would be assessed on all persons with fortunes exceeding $1,000,000.
- Every family to be furnished with a homestead allowance of not less than one-third the average family wealth of the country.
- A guaranteed annual family income of at least $2000 to $2500, or not less than one-third of the average annual family income in the U.S.
- No person would be allowed an annual income in excess of 100 to 300 times the average family income. Income taxes would be levied to ensure this.
- An old age pension for all persons over 60.
Even FDR thought that Long was a dangerous radical - and he was right. When a majority of people have no stake in the status quo, they become more likely to embrace demagogues like Long.
In the last two decades the corporate powers have been working overtime to bring back this age from eliminating worker protections and busting unions to the bankruptcy bill which aims to make us virtual debt slaves, forfeiting income to corporate interests. With each and every step average workers lose some of their stake in the existing system. Now with that friend of the corporate interests, Roberts, on his way to the SCOUS workers' stake in the system will decline even more.
Despite all their rantings back in the day, the Gilded class was extremely fortunate that FDR was in power because the alternative was Huey Long. Today however there is no FDR to be found. The Vichy Dems (not all of the dems, but a surprising number) are happy to sign on to whatever the corporate interests want. After the housing bubble bursts (and it will, make no mistake about that) there will be a lot of angry people. And when they discover in bankruptcy that they will have to kick back a huge chunk of their income for the next five years for a house that they no longer own, they will become radicalized.
I have no answers, I do believe that a Huey Long presidency came with a lot of perils, and I'm not sure that he would have been successful in his program. But angry people don't think about that and it seems that, like so much else (the national debt, government cronyism) the corporate state will continue on their way, not forgetting to whistle on their way past the graveyard. I'll close this entry with a quote from that firebrand Huey Long:
So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about 10 men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. They either own directly everything or they have got some kind of mortgage on it, with a very small percentage to be excepted. They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other, until there is not any kind of business that a small, independent man could go into today and make a living, and there is not any kind of business that an independent man can go into and make any money to buy an automobile with; and they have finally and gradually and steadily eliminated everybody from the fields in which there is a living to be made, and still they have got little enough sense to think they ought to be able to get more business out of it anyway.