Pool

Judgment has been rendered; the New Deal and The Great Society are unsustainable and they must go. The corporate and financial leadership has decided that if America is to be competitive, the social safety net must have bigger holes. Social Security, health care, pension benefits, everything must be on the table.

In the March 10, 2005 edition of the New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman in his brilliant essay and book review, America’s Senior Moment, mounts a great defense against the leadership’s judgment but it may not penetrate the national psyche (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17771).

The leadership has looked at our major competitors, The European Union, Japan, Russia, and China, and concluded that America must become leaner and meaner if it is to maintain its economic leadership. The Used Car Salesman in Chief, now that his military adventure in Iraq has come unglued, has found the great purpose of his second term and, I might add, his medium. He roars about the country selling his great vision of the ownership society that will be bought with borrowed money.

It has been determined by the leadership that the cradle to the grave benefits programs of European countries and Japan are not the way to go. While Krugman dramatically destroys many of the assumptions of the leadership’s new ideal in America, I fear that few are really listening to anyone but the car salesman.

I shouldn’t put this all on Mr. Bush. In the nineteen seventies under Jimmy Carter, it was decided that federal and military pensions were unsustainable, and both program were changed. The Federal Civil Service defined benefits program was cut by almost fifty percent, and employees hired after its adoption live in a hybrid world of reduced benefits and defined contributions. These are generous, but the government’s obligation is significantly reduced.

Similarly during President Carter’s administration, deregulation of major industries, including airlines, undermined the benefits programs of workers in these industries. Over the years since Carter, many other defined benefits programs in American industries have been under funded and are unable to meet their obligations.

So The Car Salesman in Chief has proclaimed Social Security to be in crisis, and he has stated that he has a plan to correct the situation, but, of course, no plan has emerged – nothing, it’s all problem and no solution, except that we must have private accounts and borrow trillions of dollars to get them up and running. As our Harold Hill traverses the boonies selling his trombones and cornets to save us from today’s version of `pool’, there is little but hot air to determine the necessity of the effort. But we’ve got to buy it.

As we enter into trade agreements that undermine the wages of American workers and that ship their jobs to low wage countries, we learn that our economy is doing great and will get better if we only we will continue to strip it of manufacturing jobs and capacity and still more robust when we reform – scuttle - the remnants of the New Deal and The Great Society.

It is amazing that this pitch is working more effectively in Red States than in Blue ones. Many Red States are far more dependent on New Deal and Great Society programs, yet these folks cheer loudest as our Harold Hill points to the future when we’ll all be playing Sousa on our new trombones and cornets. Franklin Roosevelt with Social Security and farm subsidy programs saved America, including – perhaps even especially – those states colored scarlet, and perpetrated a peaceful revolution that saved the American capitalism in the 1930s. But we don’t need these programs any longer, so preacheth Harold.

Wild Bill feels he’s watching a surreal version of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in which the Salesman is playing Lenny and assuring George that there’ll be bunnies and kittens. Well we all know how Lenny solved George’s problems. I don’t mind snake oil, but it really is those on the bottom who will be most adversely impacted. And they’re screaming for the changes at full throat.

Oh well, it’s Happy Hour.

Blog on!

Wild Bill