Real World Economics 1.1

Capitalists need consumers who both spend and save.  Consumers need investors for employment that enables them to both spend and save.  If not “either / or” (capitalists or consumers), then where is the middle ground?

For starters, let’s accept that we can’t go back to “Grapes of Wrath” America.  We’ve learned what happens when working people have to survive with neither bargaining power nor safety nets.  We’ve also learned we can’t rely on Capitalism to help when economic bubbles burst, or when we suffer periodic economy-wide melt downs. That’s what gave rise to assistance and annuity programs.  Our society gains nothing from lassiez faire poverty.  Capitalism should be allowed to make its corrections, but without starving, crippling or killing people.  

So as long as taxpayers are paying for corporate welfare, it won’t work for America to cancel unemployment insurance, individual welfare, and food and housing assistance, and eliminate instead of raising the minimum wage.  Closet benefit reduction schemes to voucherize social safety net programs may gain some traction, but depriving needy Americans while the deep state foxes gorge themselves on freebies is a ticket to serious social unrest—the evidence is everywhere. 

In case you haven’t noticed, good primary-earner jobs are getting harder to come by, especially for generalists without college degrees, and job seekers without technical training.  Let’s recognize that jobs are disappearing and will continue to disappear at an accelerating rate throughout the 21^st Century.  Technology and outsourcing will change the face of employment in this country.  If you don’t see that, you aren’t paying attention.

So proposals to achieve full manufacturing employment, a middle class boom, and college for every child by taxing wealthy citizens like it’s 1950 are both unlikely to succeed and beside the point.

Around here, it seems the bottom line is that we don’t need liberals and we don’t need conservatives—we need each other, as fellow citizens.  And that need will become more painfully evident as the 21^st century unfolds.