This video features Robert Reich discussing his new book “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future”, likening what we’re facing today with the Great Depression and holding out hope that we can reform our political economy before a more reactionary politics takes over.
In a new article called The Perfect Storm, he lays out the historic threat we are currently facing and warns that we are losing our democracy and slipping into plutocracy, or rule by the wealthy.
It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.
The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.
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Which gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few Americans are buying our democracy as never before. And they’re doing it completely in secret.Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and against candidates – without a trace of where the dollars are coming from.
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Here’s the third part of the perfect storm. Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings, and even homes are on the line. They need a government that’s working for them, not for the privileged and the powerful.
Yet their state and local taxes are rising. And their services are being cut. Teachers and firefighters are being laid off. The roads and bridges they count on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and public libraries are being shut.
There’s no jobs bill to speak of. No WPA to hire those who can’t find jobs in the private sector. Unemployment insurance doesn’t reach half of the unemployed.
Washington says nothing can be done. There’s no money left.
Reich goes on to point out that of course there’s money, but there’s no political will to redirect it. Presumably his vision for enacting the practical solutions he knows are waiting to be advanced rests with the Democratic Party. Though as one half of the corporate-funded duopoly, it seems clear that we can’t afford to wait much longer to throw all of our political muscle behind candidates and political parties who are standing up to the business-as-usual and standing for the kinds of straightforward solutions that Reich wants to see.
The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.
If you throw in a couple more of the converging crises that make this growing storm perfectly dangerous — like climate change and peak oil — it’s becoming increasingly clear that supporting the Green Party and its 2010 candidates can be the surest antidote to the reactionary politics of our time.
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and it seems to not even be on the radar during this campaign season. The talk is about jobs, jobs, jobs, which is indeed important, the talking points never seem to address the fact that even those with jobs, some with 2 or 3 jobs, can barely scrape by. That is so much the problem with our economy, no-one has discretionary dollars to spend. And I’m not even talking about the working poor, those who earn 20 to 30,000 dollars a year. I’m talking about the middle class, those who earn 55,000 and up. The cost of housing, utilities, food, health care, and more has risen so much that it takes every dollar from every paycheck every week. And prices continue to rise, yet pay checks don’t.
So while the Obama administrations and Governor Patrick are patting themselves on the back over job creation and keeping us from the brink of despair, they seem to have no idea that we are still very much on the brink of despair. One more rate increase in insurance premiums, or one more wave of commodity price increases in the market is all it will take to push many more people over the edge.
I can’t even begin to express how angry I am over this whole thing. We have all worked so hard all of our lives to try to get ahead and the plutocracy just keeps pushing us back at every opportunity. and the government handily keeps giving them the opportunity. It is, after all, a free market capitalist society. Apparently that gives license to pulverize the working middle class, and be applauded for it in their success.
I believe our current economy has essentially expired. The stock market is no longer related to the health of our economy, it is simply a tool for the wealthy to remain wealthy. It’s growth is based on job cuts and price increases, not investment and great new ideas. We can never go back to the debt based growth and faux prosperity that was the last decade. It’s over. No-one wants to believe it, but it’s over.
That is one of the reasons that Jill Stein’s campaign inspires me so much. She is ahead of the curve. We do have to create a new economy and I beleive it will be much like the one Jill talks about. We will have to go back to smaller local economies to sustain ourselves. We must find natural clean energy sources that can sustain us. Once the money is gone, so will be the corporations and the wealthy. Personally, I’m looking forward to a newly created American economy that works for all of us. It will be nice to see the sun shine again and to get out from under all of this oppression.
I love Robert Reich. He is one of my heroes. Thank You for posting this.