Over and over again, I keep hearing Republican pundits talking about how unlucky McCain was:
"His bar was lifted too high because of the timing of the economic meltdown. No Republican stood a chance after the economic events of mid September. Poor Johnny did remarkably well given the circumstances."
(I paraphrase.)
How convenient, though, that they limit their analysis to the near past. By framing their thoughts in that manner they have eliminating any need to reckon with the idea that the economic collapse was already baked into the pie -- by a flawed philosophy of economic governance.
Thus they allow themselves to posit that McCain's bad luck was merely one of bad timing. Indeed, it even prevents them from seeing that we as a country actually had some good luck! Because that timing may have prevented much more damage to occur. Damage which could have ensued had the collapse been scheduled to happen early in 2009; had McCain won; had the country been required to endure four additional years of the same counterproductive medicine that has been poisoning us during the last eight years.
Because in truth, wealth is buoyant: it simply does not like to trickle down! Whenever it can't go up anymore it floats sideways, -- to China, India and the oil rich states of the Middle East.
Americans with too much wealth and American companies with too much capital want to invest it. They do not use it mainly as a source for spending like the middle class is wont to do. But the greatest rates of returns are now found overseas. China, India, Russia, the Middle East Oil Barons grow GDP at rates approaching ten percent while the west grows at two to three percent. That's why the supply side, "build it and they will come" meme has lost its relevance.
This has been the case more and more often over the last several decades. That's why the "Laffer Curve" is no longer valid and why "Supply Side Economics" does not work as well as it once did.
Instead of looking that fact in the face, however, right wing pundits repeated their "trickle down" ritual like a rosary prayer, said over and over again, without real thought, meaning or relevance to our present conditions. The Middle Class became starved of their wealth.
That wealth no longer exists in sufficient quantities to be capable of "floating up" like it once did -- straight into the purses of the upper classes. And there is not enough additional wealth at the government's disposal, or even at the governments ability to create safely, in order to keep giving any additional shots of dope into the veins of capitalists. There is little left for them to mainline anymore.
Their major supply of wealth began to dry up when the national savings rate began to close in toward zero. And it has all but disappeared now, since the savings rate became negative early in this century. Everybody suffers now, including the banks, including Wall Street.
This collapse was preordained by a philosophy that had outlived its usefulness, probably sometime before the decade of the 1990s started but at least before that particular decade was ending Those extra doses of dope, the extreme supply side economics of the second Bush era finally cratered this economy.
Thankfully it happened just soon enough for us to be able to put a new philosophy in place. We need to prime the pump from the bottom half of the well now, not from the top, where it can no longer do us any good at all.