How the Democratic Party became a tool for Wall-Street

[pbrower2a]

Obamacare is FAR from perfect, but at its core, it is still a wealth distribution system that primarily benefits the poor and working class. So why is it that working class people are not rallying around this law and punishing the Republicans who unanimously opposed it (in fact, they rewarded them generously in 2010)? It's because people don't divide themselves politically by class, but by their ideology and political party. "The working class" is not a cohesive unit of voters.

Some working class are better educated than others, and they've realized they are the victims of wealth redistribution. Perhaps the American people could accept wealth redistribution away from young working class to elderly retirement class if our entitlements were properly managed. Unfortunately, our entitlements are not properly managed in even the loosest interpretation of fiduciary administration.

Therefore, this group of well-educated individuals is highly skeptical of the people who invoke the term wealth redistribution to chase the nebulous concept of social justice. These people have already done great damage to our nation.

Education and income, once reliable proxies for partisan identity and voting, are no longer so.

The Democratic Party has become a conservative party as the Republican Party has become a semi-fascist party. As the Republicans make harsher demands on social issues they offend profit-minded interests  who can imagine those interests being threatened. The Religious Right may be anti-abortion, but once it starts demanding prohibitions on alcohol and pornography it will hurt the profitability of business.

Democrats have paid attention to the revenue side of business -- that Big Business needs well-heeled customers unless America is to become a Hell-hole of cheap, brutally-managed workers paid so little that they no longer form a market and that such prosperity as America has depends upon exports. That asks for too much. The Republicans have paid attention to the expenditure side, which normally looks good on paper to wealthy industrialists.

What Democrats have sacrificed is any support of competition in industry.     

[pbrower2a]

Real hate of working people implies a reversion to the 70-hour workweek and 40-year lifespan of industrial workers as was once the norm. That they are in the more 'socially advanced' retail or food service business is hardly an improvement. All that is necessary is that the social norms mandate that wages be so low that people must work to exhaustion just to get the most basic needs and pay off the grafters.

 

[pbrower2a]

Real hate of working people implies a reversion to the 70-hour workweek and 40-year lifespan of industrial workers as was once the norm. That they are in the more 'socially advanced' retail or food service business is hardly an improvement. All that is necessary is that the social norms mandate that wages be so low that people must work to exhaustion just to get the most basic needs and pay off the grafters.

The only change since the 1960s is that the rest of the world is tired of being agricultural peasants and Europe has grown tired of endless counterproductive wars. The United States is no longer alone at the top of the economic pile.

Lazy half-wit American Democrats can no longer dictate how the world should or shouldn't work anymore. Sadly, Dems still try to command the market to pay more money and deliver more services to their constituency, which makes the rest of the world looks like a more attractive place to do business. Americans suffer, particularly those at the bottom end of the income spectrum.

For real half-wits, try some Republican pols who vote as puppets of the Koch syndicate.

The GOP wants America's economic elite at the apex of power and personal indulgence with the rest of America driven to the worst in wages and working conditions. Such would allegedly create economic growth -- but that only a few could enjoy.

Few people want to lick the boot attached to the feet of the owner who has every right to kick one. Besides, who in his right mind would want to be a helpless peasant?   

[pbrower2a]

The conspiracy is not the success of commercial enterprise or the material wealth and intellectual property it generates. The conspiracy is incompetent politicians and ignominious bureaucrats who take the citizens money and make it disappear.

I'm not sure how anarchy solves any problems.

Normal business has constraints. Raw deals, no matter how initially lucrative for a devious or corrupt operator, fail. The business that hurts its customers typically sets up its own ruin. I have seen people argue that Wal*Mart, which has sought to undercut its competitors by importing instead of buying American-made stuff, has done great harm to American blue-collar workers that were its core of customers. Wal*Mart isn't a particularly corrupt or devious operator. Wal*Mart now faces a saturated market. It is no longer a growth investment.

Political corruption creates its own problems. The people who do corruption are typically above average in income, so graft ordinarily intensifies the concentration of wealth and income. To be sure, the grafter almost invariably spends what he gets  dishonestly, but such might not always be the case (the grafter sends the corrupt gain to a foreign bank account) ; what the grafter buys could easily be luxury imports that mess up the balance of trade. Consider the Marcos family when it ruled the Philippines; it bled the country and spent heavily on its own indulgence, often in imported luxuries (like Imelda's collection of shoes). If the workers and peasants of the country had gotten a fair share they might have eaten better and been able to wear shoes.

Entities profiteering from corruption are likely to fund the corrupt pols who create the dishonest gain.   Such money finds its way back into the economy -- in an objectionable way for an objectionable purpose.

Money may be transferred from where it does good to where it does no good, but it is unlikely to be destroyed as a reality (barring an effort to destroy currency that might otherwise feed an inflationary tendency). Governments typically replaced damaged currency.