It's (Still) The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!

It's (Still) The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!
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Yesterday I wrote that the President may have sacrificed his long-term vision on trade and economic/industrial policy to day-to-day concerns and politics. The tax-cut deal is another indicator that a big-picture vision has been sacrificed. But however much smoke gets thrown up to mask the real problem it's still all about the economic paradigm.

There is still a lot of forward-thinking work to do on our economy. The big picture is, of course, jobs. It is balance of trade, a coherent and especially comprehensive economic/industrial policy, education, infrastructure. But even more than those, fixing the real economic mess is about finding a sustainable and equitable formula, and changing the equations of who gets what for what. It is a bigger picture.

But now we are totally caught in the day-to-day fights over tax cuts for the rich, giving forever more and more to the big financial institutions, letting the big corporations get away with more and more while delivering less and less and making us work harder and harder. It seems that all we do now is just react to corporate/conservative assaults. We are trying to fight off attacks on everything, everything and on every, every front.

Instead of job-creation programs we are fighting over just giving unemployed people the same unemployment benefits that American workers have always gotten. Instead of doing something about climate change we are fighting to keep the big oil companies from killing rail projects and green energy initiatives.

The corporate/conservatives are using their "Overton Window" tactics to push the discourse ever further to the right and away from addressing the real problems. (I don't mean Glenn Beck's book. More info here and here.) And we are now living the result.

Step back, remember how we got here. Thirty years ago the corporate conservatives launched their assault on We, the People. They elected Ronald Reagan, who declared that "We, the People are the problem," and that decision-making by We the People (government) had gotten too big. Now the Reagan Revolution has come home to roost and we are living in the conservative dream. The rich ever richer with more and more power, the rest of us are "the help," just trying to get by, and our minds are under continual assault from a sophisticated propaganda barrage designed to keep us from doing something about it.

The basics have not changed. The fundamental changes we need are still needed. The corporate conservatives have all the money in the world and are so well organized but they can't fight off reality forever. The planet really is warming and the climate really is changing and it really is because of carbon. The conservative economic model really does not work and is draining the people and the planet for the benefit of just a few.

In my first post for the Campaign for America's Future, It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!, I wrote,

It is not just the economy out of whack. The business practices that brought us here -- overextraction, overextension, overleveraging, overconsumption -- have also whacked the planet's resources. The fisheries are increasingly depleted. The aquifers are increasingly drained. The forests are increasingly logged. The landfills are increasingly full. And, of course, the planet is increasingly hotter.

Our economic system has also taken a toll on the people. Too many hours at a stressful workplace with too little sleep have burned many of us out. Our thinking and identity are about our jobs, not our spirit and character. Our values are devoted to markets with many of us placing making money over loving and caring for families and others. And there's no time for that stuff anyway. We have become consumers instead of citizens and humans. Decades of falling wages, decreasing savings and increasing debt have tapped us out. Consumption has used us up. And we're fed up.

The problems are still the problems, only more so. And we're still fed up, only more so.

(*Please click the links)

(*Please click the links)

Previous: It's The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!Overton Windows links: Here, here and here.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

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