Month: July 2024 Page 2 of 4

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

David Sirota, July 18, 2024 [The Lever]

In 2008, I published a book with a straightforward premise: the upcoming era of American politics would be defined by a competition between the left and right to harness the working class’s intensifying rage in a society being pillaged by corporate interests.

It was the twilight of the Bush era, and the country was beginning its nose-dive into recession and turmoil, but hope and change seemed just over the horizon. I predicted that with elements of both political parties in a warrior stance, simmering conflicts over deindustrialization, financialization, and neoliberalism would soon explode and realign politics, birthing some American version of either social democracy or authoritarianism.

The 16 years since The Uprising was released have delivered much of the tumult I imagined. It has been a period of unrest, chaos, and flip-flopping control of government — and yet, amid all that volatility, the decline persisted. Whether medical bankruptcies, foreclosures, lower life spans, spikes in prices, mountains of paperwork, or endless junk fees attached to everything — life in America just kept getting more difficult, annoying, inhumane, painful, and seemingly impossible.

In the political arena, there was a sensation of change, but in real life, there was more of the same.

Donald Trump’s 2016 win was a reaction to the dissonance — a pressure cooker that finally exploded — but still possibly just a weird anomaly. For shellshocked liberals, the end of his first term felt like the conclusion of a roller-coaster ride, a reversion to a mean, and proof that the competition to harness the discontent had finally been won on the center left.

But as Trump surges and Democrats teeter in this blazing summer of discontent, it’s the 2020 election that seems more like the anomaly — a last rest stop on a wild Natural Born Killers-style jaunt. 2024 feels like the final destination in a journey bookended by two iconic roadside billboards: the “HOPE” poster featuring Barack Obama’s cool gaze, and now the photograph of a bloodied Donald Trump defiantly calling his armies to battle….

Can J.D. Vance’s Populist Crusade Succeed?

Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 07-19-2024]

On Monday, Donald Trump unveiled his choice for Vice President, and picked a young Senator from Ohio, best-selling author and populist J.D. Vance. Last night, Vance spoke to the Republican National Convention, attacking Wall Street barons, the war in Iraq, multi-national corporations, and trade deals like NAFTA. What he said was shocking for a Republican. “We’re done catering to Wall Street,” he said. “We’ll commit to the working man.”

But what he *didn’t* say was equally shocking. There was no talk of tax cuts, deregulation, or attacks on government, and while he levied plenty of fire at Democrats over immigration, environmentalism and overall weakness, he did not go after the substantially populist pro-labor and competition focused elements of the Biden administration. Vance’s fight is not just with Democrats, it’s within the Republican Party.

It’s hard to overstate the earthquake this pick has fostered in the citadels of power. CNBC, libertarians, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are in mourning. “Wall Street will be begging for the return of Lina Khan after two months of the Trump-Vance administration,” said one New York dealmaker to the Financial Times. CNBC is replaying clips of the Vance speech, with Jim Cramer analogizing it to William Jennings Bryan’s famous 1896 Cross of Gold oration….

At first, Vance bought into standard libertarian ideas, consistent with Thiel’s thinking. Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal with Elon Musk, and the alums from PayPal, the so-called “PayPal mafia,” are hugely influential in Silicon Valley today, though they are not entirely aligned with big tech. Thiel, for instance, hates Google, and this group is one of Vance’s core influences….

So what does Vance think? He is in agreement with the views of a rising set of younger conservatives, populists like Sohrab Ahmari and Oren Cass, who assert that libertarianism is a cover for private rule, most explicitly in Ahmari’s book Tyranny, Inc. It is flourishing of the family that animates this new group, not worship of the market. At Remedy Fest, Vance was explicit in his agreement with this notion, saying “I don’t really care if the entity that is most threatening to that vision is a private entity or a public entity, we have to be worried about it.”….

Musk, Andreessen, and the crypto world are aligned in their own ways with Vance, though the extent of the alignment isn’t wholly clear. The arguments of these venture capitalists and crypto purveyors deserve to be taken seriously. Fortunately, Andreessen and Horowitz laid them out in a recent 90 minute podcast describing why they are supporting Donald Trump with vast financial resources. It comes down to the basic thesis that they believe that Joe Biden, far from a do-nothing President, is an existential threat to the status quo….

Andreessen and Horowitz have a view of America in which our might, and thus the world’s peace and prosperity, rests on three pillars: a strong economy, world-leading technology, and a powerful military. American culture is, as they put it, “depraved” and full of drug addiction, but our strength is that talented people can build things. We are not, as they put it, Argentina, or the Soviet Union. In World War II, America won because we invented better technology – not the government – but the private sector, the ‘Little tech’ guys like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, whose legacy Andreessen and Horowitz see themselves as upholding….

[TW: Stoller summarizes what Andreessen and Horowitz believe: ” In World War II, America won because we invented better technology – not the government – but the private sector, the ‘Little tech’ guys like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, whose legacy Andreessen and Horowitz see themselves as upholding.”

Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On July 20, 2024

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Scratch A CEO, Find A Fascist

By Ian Welsh

On July 19, 2024

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Not that they require fascism, but they’re OK with it:

David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Tuesday:

Asked about the upcoming Presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which party wins, so long as the next president was friendly to business.

“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.”

One of the few things Biden has been good on is anti-trust, so this means Trump.

In a similar vein:

The pull quote:

“France’s corporate bosses are racing to build contacts with Marine Le Pen’s far right after recoiling from the radical tax-and-spend agenda of the rival leftwing alliance in the country’s snap parliamentary elections”.

The left, and real left, not the so-called “Center Left” will always be opposed by corporations, just as most of them opposed FDR. They want to get bigger and richer, whether that’s good for the country or not. High marginal tax rates, vigorous anti-trust and high corporate tax rates with laws forbidding stock options and other nonsense produced America and Western Europe’s best economy in history—the post-war states from 45 on.

Of course, during that time period the CEO/Worker pay ratio tended towards 30/1 or so.

But, as we all know, workers made enough so that a single wage-earner could support a family, and as for GDP growth rates, well:

These charts are pretty clear. Consolidation and deregulation do not lead to higher GDP growth, and that’s leaving aside redistribution.

This is important because the argument for deregulation and allowing consolidation was that it would make growth better and that there would be a “trickle down” which would leave everyone better off even if inequality soared.

Well, we did get trickled on, I suppose

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How Much Does Genocide In Gaza Effect The US Presidential Election?

By Ian Welsh

On July 18, 2024

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I’ve been saying it mattered a lot for quite some time, but, finally, some numbers:

Foreign policy debates rarely determine U.S. presidential elections, although polling suggests that 2024 might be an exception. Nationwide, nearly 4 in 10 voters (38 percent) say they are less likely to vote for President Biden because of his handling of the war in Gaza, according to a July 2024 Century Foundation/Morning Consult poll of 1,834 registered U.S. voters. Many core constituencies—including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic Party activists—are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.

The issue isn’t that people who hate genocide will vote Trump, he’s pro-genocide as well. Instead it’s that they will stay home or vote third party and that if they do hold their nose and vote Democratic, they’re less likely to donate or, more importantly, to volunteer.

In a close election, and Biden’s best case is a close election, that matters.

To put it simply, Biden decided that mass-murdering Palestinians in service to AIPAC and Zionism was more important than being re-elected, and in affect that all the things he claims to care about which might help Americans are less important than helping Israel commit genocide.

That’s a choice, just like his choice to run again even though he’s clearly in serious decline and obviously can’t act as President for another four years.

Biden has chosen to lose the election, and anyone who blames anyone but Biden for his loss is full of it.

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Get Out If You Can. If Not, Prepare

By Ian Welsh

On July 16, 2024

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Starting in 2009 and especially after Citizens United, I’ve been advising Americans who can get out to do so. I recognize that many people can’t: you have to “shelter in place”, but for those who are able to leave America and haven’t, well, the advice is the same, but more urgent.

The US is no longer meaningfully a Democracy. The funneling of wealth and income to oligarchs continues unabated and even accelerated during the pandemic. Official economic statistics from the US are now almost entirely fantasy based: completely unrelated to reality due to how inflation and other statistics are “calculated” and due to the over-reliance of GDP, which is no longer tracking welfare.

The massive increases in necessities like food is a very very bad sign.

The possibility of civil war is real, and so is the chance of collapse. Nothing is going to get better for the majority of Americans; everything is going to get worse.

So, at the least, if you can get a second passport, do it. If you don’t have any passport, apply for one. If you can go somewhere reasonable and make a decent living, consider it. If you’re rich enough to set up a second citizenship and home, get it done.

Where to go is difficult. If you speak Mandarin and they’ll let you in, China’s not a bad choice. Avoid the UK unless you have no other options: Britain is in terminal decline. In general Europe is in decline and the chance of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC) stopping makes it questionable for those who are younger or who have children, but while Europe is going down, the welfare state still exists and will take longer to go away, so long as you choose your destination carefully. (Obviously Greece is out of the question.)

Canada is trending right hard, and is “too close” to America, but if you can’t get anywhere else and have money or skills in demand, it might work for you. This is especially true if you’re healthy, younger and comfortable on the frontier, of which there is still plenty.

The truth is that there are no longer any completely “safe” choices. But there are places where government and society are more functional and more caring, and where the destruction of the welfare state (which includes, oh, universal healthcare, functioning power and sewage) is less far along.

If you have to stay and indeed if you’re in many countries, do what you can to improve your “grid collapse resistance.” Brownouts and blackouts and failures of water systems will become worse. A couple of big camping batteries + solar recharging may keep key electrical appliances running. Find some way to store or produce water and keep some surplus food around. If you’ve got power, water and a way to boil said water, something as simple as a lot of vacuum packed rice and beans can keep you going for quite a while.

In general, take measures. Assume that things are going to keep getting worse for the rest of your life. There will be some exceptions, but there’s no way the majority of people can or will avoid these trends.

Don’t sleep on this. Back in 2009 it wasn’t urgent, but we’re now at the point where local collapse or violence is a real possibility: we don’t know when exactly, but we do know the conditions have been met. Once that happens, when is hard to predict, but bad is dead simple to predict.

Dead being the operative word.

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 14 2024

By Tony Wikrent

On July 14, 2024

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by Tony Wikrent

The Trump Shooting: The Most Shocking Act of a Shockingly Violent Age

Michael Tomasky, July 14, 2024 [The New Republic]

This was not an abnormal incident. It’s a sign of the times….

ut whatever his motivation turns out to be, his act not isolated. There was the shooting of Republican Congressman Steve Scalise in 2017. The attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy, in 2022. Those are just the headline-grabbers, but political violence, or at least the threat of it, is now a constant in American life.

Threats of political violence against members of Congress have skyrocketed. The Capitol Police investigated 902 such threats in 2016. That jumped up to 3,939 in 2017, and by 2021, the number was more than 9,600, or 10 times the number from just five years before. Hate crimes in 2022 hit 11,288, which is up from recent years (the number was 7,759 in 2020.) Domestic terrorism is on the rise, with the preponderance coming from the political right; the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, reported earlier this year that since 1990, “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”

Strategic Political Economy

What Liberals Get Wrong about the Right with Corey Robin – Factually! – 236

[Youtube]

Rising Market Power Has Led to the Rise in Far-Right Political Parties

[ProMarket, via Naked Capitalism 07-02-2024]

Is the Heart and Soul of Trump’s MAGA Base Really the White Working Class?

Les Leopold, January 16, 2024 [Wall Street’s War on Workers Newsletter; Common Dreams]

The corporate media and all too many politicians are blaming working people for the rise of Trump and MAGA. Yet, if we open our (lying) eyes a bit more, we can’t miss the massive horde of lawyers and businesspeople who serve as Trump’s enthusiastic enablers….

Political scientists Noam Lupu (Vanderbilt) and Nicholas Carnes (Duke) definitively disproved the notion that most of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 were white working class. They showed that only 30 percent of the Trump voters could be considered a part of that group….

The 2018 Primaries Project, at the Brookings Institute, reported that those voting in congressional Republican primaries in 2018 were better educated and richer than the public at large. Again, the white working class formed no more than one-third of the Republican primary base.

What about the January 6th insurrection? Wasn’t that a white working-class riot? Not according to the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which analyzed the demographics of the 716 individuals who had been charged with various January 6th crimes, as of January 1, 2022. Fifty percent were either business owners or white-collar workers, and only 25 percent were blue-collar workers (defined as no college degree).

The research for my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, provides new data that confirms the white working class does not in any way pour into Hillary Clinton’s “basket full of deplorables.” In fact, most white working-class voters have become decidedly more liberal on divisive social issues over the last several decades, including LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racial discrimination….

Why Blame the White Working Class?

The attacks on working-class populism have been around for more than 140 years. Corporate owners and their newspapers viciously denounced the populist movement of the late 19th century, which aggressively challenged financial and corporate power. To counter that increasingly successful movement, newspapers, as well as pro-corporate politicians, depicted the populists as ignorant bomb-throwing radicals and worse….

Hard To Care About the Attempted Assassination Of Trump

By Ian Welsh

On July 13, 2024

Comments

Disputed if this picture is real, but it doesn’t matter, it’ll be the iconic picture.

Obviously it makes him more likely to be elected. Obviously you can’t call someone Hitler and a fascist and a threat to everything good without an increased chance for violence. If he is Hitler reborn, after all, killing him would be the right thing to do.

Blame will be apportioned, whether rightly or wrongly, and it increases the chance and amount of violence and repression down the line when and if Trump becomes President.

I don’t, personally, care much except as regards the consequences. I wouldn’t care if Trump or Biden was killed, not for them, anyway. They’re both mass murderers and Trump has spent the last nine months going on about how much he supports the Gaza genocide.

That said, I wouldn’t kill either myself or advise anyone to assassinate them, as it is counter-productive and pointless. Both of them are symptoms, not causes, and if Trump had been killed whoever replaced him would have been as bad or worse and likely won on a sympathy/vengeance surge.

America’s problems aren’t about any individual. If only it were so.

(Also, I don’t see why everyone’s so worked up. As Trump once said about a school shooting, “get over it.” This is the country the right and neoliberals wanted: all these weapons available + an economic and political pressure cooker. What did you think would happen?)

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