Earlier on Tuesday, Kossack Dartagnan published an excellent and very highly-recommended post (see: “Brutal Op-Ed in NYTimes on Romney's So-Called Mormon ‘Values’") within the community (and still on the Rec List as I write this, well over 18 hours after it was published) about Columbia University journalism professor Thomas Edsall’s piece from Monday over at the NY Times’ Campaign Stops blog, “Embracing Sheldon Adelson.” It’s well worth the read.
IMHO and quite simply, Edsall is one of the very best people working in journalism/ communications academia in this country, today. (And, I’ve been following Sheldon Adelson, whom George W. Bush has referred to as “that crazy Jewish billionaire,” for many years. Adelson deserves to be called out for his perverse political transgressions on a constant basis. The fact that Romney's embraced him is beyond the pale and it tells us how far to the right of even Chimpy, himself, the GOP has gone in just the past four years.)
To give the audience further context to Edsall’s brilliance, and since we’re already reading about the ongoing efforts of those at the top of the one percent that are at the forefront of buying up corrupt politicians both here and abroad, regardless of their stated party affiliations, I wanted to bring to your attention what I personally feel is the most important thing I’ve read in awhile which, coincidentally, is also authored by Edsall. It’s from this past Sunday’s NY Times’ Book Review section: “Separate and Unequal,” a review of “The Price of Inequality,” by Joseph Stiglitz.
Joseph E. Stiglitz’s new book, “The Price of Inequality,” is the single most comprehensive counter-argument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories. While credible economists running the gamut from center right to center left describe our bleak present as the result of seemingly unstoppable developments — globalization and automation, a self-¬replicating establishment built on “meritocratic” competition, the debt-driven collapse of 2008 — Stiglitz stands apart in his defiant rejection of such notions of inevitability. He seeks to shift the terms of the debate.
It is not uncontrollable technological and social change that has produced a two-tier society, Stiglitz argues, but the exercise of political power by moneyed interests over legislative and regulatory processes. “While there may be underlying economic forces at play,” he writes, “politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.” But politics, he insists, is subject to change…
…
… The collective argument of these dissidents is not only that inequality violates moral values, but that it also interacts with a money-driven political system to grant excessive power to the most affluent. In short, those with power use it to insulate themselves from competitive forces by winning favorable tax treatment, government-¬protected market share and other forms of what economists call “rent seeking.”
…
… The importance of Stiglitz’s contribution (and that of other dissidents) to the public debate cannot be overestimated…
As you’ll note above from some of my links in the second paragraph of this post, more than two years
before we heard the news about the SCOTUS’
Citizens United v. FEC decision, the reality was the über-rich, such as Sheldon Adelson, were already buying elections in this country and elsewhere. So, while overturning that decision is a noble goal for any self-respecting Democrat, the truth is it’s going to take a lot more than overturning one SCOTUS decision if the ninety-nine percent are ever going to take control of the future of this country. And, Edsall recognizes this, as well:
“The calculated and purposeful shaping of public discussion allowed conservative analyses to dominate debate in the years before the collapse of 2008, and in the years since they have been dominant as well.”
Edsall notes that, in his book, Stiglitz demonstrates that inequality doesn’t just affect democratic (with a lower case “d”) politics, but “…excessive inequality amounts to sand in the gears of capitalism, creating volatility, fueling crises, undermining productivity and retarding growth. Just as discrimination results in the failure of a nation to make the best use of all its citizens, inequality, when it leads to inadequate schooling, housing and neighborhood conditions for large numbers of people, acts in a similarly destructive fashion.”
He continues on to quote the Nobel Prize-winner from his June 10th piece at Slate.com: “What Land of Opportunity?”
“Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset — its people — is not being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income, use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth. . . . Most importantly, America’s inequality is undermining its values and identity. With inequality reaching such extremes, it is not surprising that its effects are manifest in every public decision, from the conduct of monetary policy to budgetary allocations. America has become a country not ‘with justice for all,’ but rather with favoritism for the rich and justice for those who can afford it — so evident in the foreclosure crisis, in which the big banks believed that they were too big not only to fail, but also to be held accountable.”
Edsall references Stiglitz’s bleak observation that our society’s real chance to turn this all around — our “moment in history” — was in the election of 2008, and then into 2009; quoting the economist…
“where most Americans had the audacity to hope. Trends more than a quarter of a century in the making might have been reversed. Instead, they have worsened. Today that hope is flickering.”
Edsall notes that Stiglitz points out the inconvenient truth that, with Republicans standing a fairly good chance of gaining control of both branches of Congress this November, “Prospects for programs boosting public investment are virtually nil.”
And, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index hit 1,400 over the past few days, Edsall observes that even with an Obama victory this year, “…the American political system does not appear ready to respond to Stiglitz’s call to arms…Except for a brief period in 2008-9, when the stock market decline hit the wealthy the hardest, the trends would seem to be moving toward Stiglitz’s pessimistic vision of the future, with little prospect of change no matter who wins office on Nov. 6.”