According to realistic macroeconomics, as opposed to the politically tainted economics of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the hysteria about our public debt is way overstated and wrongheaded.

1. The $14 trillion US government debt is significantly different from family debt.
2.”Families have to pay debt back.”
3. “Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base.”
4. We largely owe the debt to ourselves so the interest on the federal debt goes to us.
5. “Debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. The debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history – the same is true today.”
6. “It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners.” Neither the Chinese nor any other country owns us.
7. “That doesn’t mean that the debt is harmless. Taxes must be levied to pay the interest, and you don’t have to be a right-wing ideologue to concede that taxes impose some cost on the economy.”

But today most wrongheaded Republican House Representatives and Senators, who are beholden to corporations and wealthy people, have signed a pledge to oppose any form of tax increase. And some misguided democrats agree.

“Debt does matters. But right now, other things matter more. We need more, not less, government spending to get us out of our unemployment trap.”

The solution is to raise taxes to a maximum marginal rate of at least 70% on those earning $250,000 or more per year.

IN 2012 VOTE FOR THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THAT CRITICAL MESSAGE.

While this blog argues that in the long run Americans will have to accept zero growth in order to reduce global warming and preserve scarce resources, I recognize that for the next few years we will need economic growth, coupled with wealth redistribution, stiff anti-trust policies and regulation. Once that is accomplished we can adopt a strict zero growth stance with policies that discourage polluting and waste of natural resources, while preserving a reasonable life style for all citizens.

Wishing for America and its people a Rational and Just Economic Policy in 2012,

Kelly M. Harrison, PhD
Political Economist

In his Market Watch essay, Paul B. Farrell observes:

“… the facts about the coming catastrophe are so obvious. Just apply a little grade-school math and economic common sense: Our planet’s natural resources can reasonably support about 5 billion people. That’s a fact. Another: Today we have 7 billion. That’s a problem, 2 billion too many. We’re consuming commodities and natural resources at a rate of 1.5 Earths, according to estimates by the Global Footprint Network of scientists and economists.”

By 2050 the earth’s population will reach 10 billion, guaranteed, no matter what we do . But worse still citizens all over the world expect the miracle of capitalism to improve their life styles, meaning even greater pressure on the already inadequate natural resources. One environmentalist, Paul Gilding in his new book, ““The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World” has given up the hope that the world will deal with climate change. He now sees global economic crash of incredible proportions as the inevitable consequence. He says: “We tried. We failed. It’s time to stop worrying about climate change. Instead we need to brace for impact.”

I am an optimist by nature. I normally believe that human beings have the ability to deal creatively with almost any catastrophe. But at the same time I have also had a fascination with and capacity to see the future better than most. When I started this blog on December 31, 2008 I was full of hope, not so much that it would make a difference but in the belief that this tiny effort coupled with many others around the globe would bring decision makers and average citizens to an understanding that drastic changes had to be made. In 1972 I was moved by The Club of Rome warning through their book entitled “Limits to Growth”. In 1992 I read “Beyond the Limits to Growth”. And in 2004 I read what will undoubtedly be the last in the series: “Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update”. In each of the updates, there was little indication that the world had seriously considered the looming catastrophe. In fact, the exact opposite occurred as growth mania spread around the globe through globalized capitalism. As a development economist I made my small contribution to the movement, believing that poverty stricken nations had a right to begin improving their economic situation in an effort to lift citizens out of grinding poverty, sickness and despair. Now I admit that all we can do is moderate the horrible impact of growth mania on ourslelves and the poorest of the poor around the world.

We are in the beginning stages a zero growth world, we can still take actions to make the adjustment less painful than it will be if we continue with our heads in the sand. This eternal optimist cautiously hopes that the now global Occupy movement will be a platform for learning to deal with a zero growth world.

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

I wholeheartedly agree with George Lakoff, Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He suggests the Occupy Movement must properly frame itself and remain true to that framing as we move to change the political and social landscape in America and other countries that pursue social justice.

First lets explore the moral basis of the Conservative movement that for centuries has essentially dominated the American scene, as well as many other nations around the world, as interpreted by Lakoff. The most basic characteristics are:

PRIMACY OF SELF INTEREST

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY BASED ON WEALTH

MORAL HIERARCHY OF WHO IS DESERVING DEFINED AS SUCCESS

The Holy Grail of the Conservative movement, since the days of Adam Smith, has been the principle that large numbers of individuals pursuing their own self interest will result in the most efficient allocation of scarce resources to provide the greatest benefit for all. Smith called it “the invisible hand”. Yet David Ricardo, a contemporary of Smith, clearly pointed out Capitalism’s fundamental flaw. He called it “The Iron Law of Wages”. It simply states that capitalism by its very nature will eventually end up driving wages down to the subsistence level. I call it “the invisible foot”.

The USA has reached that point and the Occupy Movement is proof.

Lakoff suggests fundamental framing principles for the Occupy Movement. It is all about a social focus rather than pure self interest.

WE LOVE AMERICA. WE ARE HERE TO FIX IT.

DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE ABOUT THE 99 PERCENT

STRONG WAGES MAKE A STRONG AMERICA

WE ARE GLOBAL CITIZENS – A BEACON OF JUSTICE TO THE WORLD

WE ARE PART OF NATURE AND WE WILL BEHAVE ACCORDINGLY

Thus far the Occupy Movement has insisted it must be totally non-partisan. The movement could easily be co-opted by the Democratic Party just as the TEA Party has been absorbed by the Republican Party.

Why is the principle of non-partisanship so important? The Occupy Movement should replace, rather that be absorbed by the Democratic Party.

Chris Hedges has neatly answered the above question in an article on Truthdig. The following is a series of direct quotations from that article, elegantly answering the above question. The Democratic Party has characterized itself as a liberal alternative to the Republican Party. Hedges explains why it has never been a truly liberal movement correctly focused on social justice.

• “The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.”

• “Tinkering with the corporate state will not work.”

• “But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along.”

• “The Occupy Wall Street Movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power.”

• “This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings.”

• “The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation’s children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized.”

• “What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line?”

• “The liberal class functions in a traditional, capitalist democracy as a safety valve. It lets off enough steam to keep the system intact. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. This is what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism.”

• “The liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state, has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power.The best it can do is attach itself meekly to the new political configuration rising up to replace it.”

• “Liberals lack the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. They have no ideological alternatives even as the Democratic Party openly betrays every principle the liberal class claims to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy to a demand for quality and affordable public education to a return of civil liberties to a demand for jobs and welfare of the working class.”

• “We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money. They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power. And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.”

Yes unfettered capitalism has finally consumed itself. The Occupy Movement in these United States will not follow Marx’s communism, nor will it copy the welfare capitalism of northern European states. It will be a brand of social justice tailored to the realities of the majority of citizens of our country. Similarly the Egyptian form of social justice will be tailored to the people of that nation, and in like manner other countries will pursue their own form of social justice.

I believe one thing is certain. If the people of this planet are to survive in any civilized manner, the world can no longer be governed by the principles of the Conservative movement.

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

As a result government statistics place the current unemployment rate at 9.1% and the inflation rate at less than 2%. But over past decades the methodology for those numbers has been jiggered to make the situation seem better than it is. Economist John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics explains how that was done and offers realistic numbers: current unemployment 23.1% and inflation 11.4%. The average citizen knows from his own experience that Williams is more nearly correct than the government.

Even before the Great Depression enlightened Europeans recognized that the rights of workers needed to be protected and income inequalities redressed. The result was the social welfare state, a mixture of socialism and capitalism. Even so, European countries fell victim to the worldwide credit bubble that now threatens countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and even France with credit defaults that could destroy the European Monetary Union.

Roubini notes: “ The result is that free markets don’t generate enough final demand.” Why? Because credit has dried up and besides consumers are already drowning in it; and because of the high rate of unemployment, coupled with stagnant wages for those lucky enough to have a job.

Roubin then observes: “The problem is not new. Karl Marx oversold socialism, but he was right in claiming that globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct. As he argued, unregulated capitalism can lead to regular bouts of over-capacity, under-consumption, and the recurrence of destructive financial crises, fueled by credit bubbles and asset-price booms and busts.”

Roubini observes that both European welfare capitalism and the laissez-faire Anglo-Saxon model have failed miserably. “To stabilize market-oriented economies requires a return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of unregulated markets and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.”

As I noted in my last post, we don’t know what changes will be made or how long it will take but capitalism as we have known it has reached the end of its rope.

The OccupyTogether movement will result in a major defeat for many elected officials as the first step in redressing the inequalities.

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

A recent Bloomberg/Washington Poll indicates that 80% of Americans favor increased tax rates for those earning over $250,000.

A recent Hart Research Poll indicates that a whopping 95% of Americans believe that corporate interests are buying excess influence over elected officials through campaign finance and lobbying efforts.

The Occupy movement will continue to grow and I predict the Democratic Party will see a rise of House of Representative and Senate candidates who proclaim support for House Bill HJ Resolution 78, a proposal to amend the constitution to declare that corporations are not people too. They are also likely to support other issues that are surfacing in Occupy debates, like increasing taxes on those earning more that $250,000, excessive subsidies for large corporations, support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and bringing the troops home while drastically reducing military spending.

I guess we’ll soon see if that prediction is realistic.

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.”
A senior sociology scholar at Yale University, Immanuel Wallerstein, says capitalism is collapsing. “Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope. It cannot survive as a system,” Wallerstein said. “And what we are seeing is the structural crisis of the system. The structural crisis goes on for a long time. It really started more or less in the 1970s and will go on for another 20, 30, 40 years. It is not a crisis of a year or of a short moment, it is the major structural unfolding of a system. And we are in transition to another system and, in fact, the real political struggle that is going on in the world that most people refuse to recognize is not about capitalism – should we have or should we not have it – but about what should replace it.”
As I see it the rapidly burgeoning grass roots movement inspired by Occupy Wallstreet is the beginning of a movement that somewhere in the future will dramatically alter the system of capitalism in America.
Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

“America is at War.  The socially costly war I’m talking about is a war by the wealthy (who represent only about 1% of the population) and their corporate employers against the rest of us. We must now mount a national non-violent movement of civil disobedience, disrupting the business of corporations until they agree to redress the ever growing injustices. Will you join the national struggle against the tyranny of the wealthy?”

Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in America agrees, having said: “Actually there’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won. We’re the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically.”

I suggested to progressive democrats in Austin, TX that we should mount a movement to block the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange, the symbol of corporate America and their greedy executives, who have been been waging a financial war against the other 99% of us.

About two weeks ago a small group of young people came to the same conclusion and began a movement to challenge the oligarchs with a Tahrir Square-like movement on Wall Street.

That movement is gathering steam with similar protests popping up in other major cities.

In an essay posted today Chris Hedges eloquently states the case:

“There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.”

I urge you to read the moving essay and decide. What will you choose?

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd

Political Economist

Throughout our history Americans have seen this country as a beacon of morality and democracy, led by a congress that mediated the interests of individuals and groups from the extreme left to the extreme right, producing what our people considered to be fair and reasonable governance that reflected the Christian values held by the vast majority of our citizens. Now we see only bitter conflict and legislative paralysis as incomes of most Americans fall amidst high unemployment while the most wealthy see their incomes rising and their tax bills declining. Corporations are now legally considered to have the same rights as citizens They can now channel unlimited dollars to help elect politicians who are at their beck and call and to hire lobbyists who hound legislators to pass laws favoring those corporations to the detriment of rank and file citizens.

I am reproducing below an essay that succinctly expresses my sentiments. I wonder if America will be able to restore the morality the authors extol?

Kelly M. Harrison, Phd
Political Economist

Why Democracy Is Public
By George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith, Reader Supported News
29 July 11

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/6804-why-democracy-is-public

Why Democracy is public: The American Dream beats the nightmare.

emocracy, in the American tradition, has been defined by a simple morality: We Americans care about our fellow citizens, we act on that care and build trust, and we do our best not just for ourselves, our families, and our friends and neighbors, but for our country, for each other, for people we have never seen and never will see.
American Democracy has, over our history, called upon citizens to share an equal responsibility to work together to secure a safe and prosperous future for their families and nation. This is the central work of our democracy and it is a public enterprise. This, the American Dream, is the dream of a functioning democracy.
Public refers to people, acting together to provide what we all depend on: roads and bridges, public buildings and parks, a system of education, a strong economic system, a system of law and order with a fair and effective judiciary, dams, sewers, and a power grid, agencies to monitor disease, weather, food safety, clean air and water, and on and on. That is what we, as a people who care about each other, have given to each other.
Only a free people can take up the necessary tasks, and only a people who trust and care for one another can get the job done. The American Dream is built upon mutual care and trust.
Our tradition has not just been to share the tasks, but to share the tools as well. We come together to provide a quality education for our children. We come together to protect each other’s health and safety. We come together to build a strong, open and honest financial system. We come together to protect the institutions of democracy to guarantee that all who share in these responsibilities have an equal voice in deciding how they will be met.
What this means is that there is no such thing as a “self-made” man or woman or business. No one makes it on their own. No matter how much wealth you amass, you depend on all the things the public has provided – roads, water, law enforcement, fire and disease protection, food safety, government research, and all the rest. The only question is whether you have paid your fair share for we all have given you.
We are now faced with a nontraditional, radical view of “democracy” coming from the Republican party. It says that “democracy” means that nobody should care about anybody else, that “democracy” means only personal responsibility, not responsibility for anyone else, and it means no trust. If America accepts this radical view of “democracy,” then all that we have given each other in the past under traditional democracy will be lost: all that we have called public. Public roads and bridges: gone. Public schools: gone. Publicly funded police and firemen: gone. Safe food, air, and water: gone. Public health: gone. Everything that made America America, the crucial things that you and your family and your friends have taken for granted: gone.
The democracy of care, shared responsibility, and trust is the democracy of the American Dream. The “democracy” of no care, no shared responsibility, and no trust has produced the American Nightmare that so many of our citizens are living through.
Nightmare it is, but there is no denying credit to Republicans for their skills at framing. The recent Republican “Contract from America,” for instance, begins with a statement of their moral principles. The recommendations are special cases of those principles. It is a strategic initiative. Instead of a laundry list, each recommendation is a special case of a general strategy – to defund our American government.
Furthermore, they understand that about 20 percent of the electorate consists of people who are conservative in some ways and progressive in others. These are biconceptuals, sometimes referred to loosely by political professionals as “independents” or “swing voters.” Republicans know their job is to activate the conservative part of the brains of the biconceptuals, and they do that by sticking strictly to conservative moral principles and a clear conservative strategy. They never make the mistake of ignoring biconceptuals.
Progressives too often fail to clearly state the moral principles behind the American tradition. Our arguments often sound like an abstract defense of distant “government” rather than a celebration of our people, our public, and the moral views that have defined our tradition and the real human beings who work every day to carry them out.
There is a distinction between government as the administration of what we, as a public, provide each other, as opposed to government control. The Right wants to focus only upon control, not upon all that our tradition has given us. They do not just hide the vast positives, but they also hide the fact that governmental control, control over our daily lives, is more private than public. Private government for profit runs our lives – the health care we receive, the food we eat, the cars we can drive and the gas to fuel them, the news we get, loans for our homes, and on and on. Public government is for the benefit of all of us. Private (especially corporate) government is for the private profit of top management and stockholders. If you are concerned about your life being controlled for the benefit of others, look to the private sphere.
The institution of government, however, is not the point. We must instead defend the moral principles we seek to advance through our American government – and through ethical business practices, voluntary associations etc. The traditional view of American democracy sees government as embodying these moral goals, to protect and empower everyone equally.
If we are to successfully overcome the Republican demonizing of government and shared responsibility, we must restore faith in the mutual enterprise itself. Rather than simply defend government or government programs, we must positively advance the moral values of American democracy and the Dream, not the Nightmare.
That is why we support a renewed focus on public life, a public life that includes all Americans. We should focus on the public nature of our shared responsibilities.
Public life means meeting our shared responsibilities, caring for one another, and building the mutual trust upon which democracy depends. The recommendations below are special cases of these moral principles. They also represent a special case of a general strategy – to restore public life to American democracy.
We must return the public to our political system and end the corrupt influence of selfish interests that have abandoned our shared responsibilities. This means public finance of campaigns, strict enforcement of the highest ethical standards in public life, and protection of the sacred right to vote.
Our nation has vast national wealth: a huge continental landmass with wealth in minerals, agricultural land, forests, cities, beautiful places, as well as its public wealth, that is, the creative wealth of its educated citizenry and the collective wealth of all its citizens and corporations. We, the public, can put our nation’s vast wealth to use in creating jobs that make the lives of all better: building, educating, curing, and imagining. That is the Dream.
To realize the Dream, we must end the Nightmare.
We must turn back the Right’s assault on public and higher education and meet our traditional commitment to education. Our children are tomorrow’s public. The future of democracy depends upon them.
We must rebuild our public infrastructure, a fancy term for the necessities we share: roads, bridges, dams, parks, fair grounds, water mains, sewers, and the power grid; public agencies that monitor disease, weather and food safety. Government that works for all of us can and should create jobs that serve us all by rebuilding our shared necessities.
We must come together publicly to mutually ensure the health of all America. Health is not a private matter. It is public one.
We must protect the prior earnings of American workers set aside in Social Security or private pensions. They have been earned through hard work and discipline. Taking these earnings away is theft, despite the Right’s use of the word “entitlements.”
A public of unequal voices is not a democratic public. We need a progressive tax system through which all Americans pay their fair share and a business ethics that fairly rewards those whose work creates productivity and profit.
We must put the American individual above abstract corporate entities. We must end “corporate personhood,” which gives transnational corporations a greater voice than individuals in our public deliberations.
We must end the move to “privatize” institutions through which we meet our shared responsibilities. When the public is removed, the private sphere takes over, charging more, and often creating unaccountable monopolies that bilk the public. Privatization of the public typically means that most citizens just pay more, often a lot more.
Discrimination of all kinds must be overcome. Public life depends upon recognition of our equal humanity.
This is why Democracy is, and must remain, public. This is why America has traditionally been a beacon to the world. This is the example America has set. We dare not give it up. The alternative is the Nightmare.

If Democracy means “One Person – One Vote” — then we have to face it:  We have lost our democracy!

It has been bought, right out from under us.  Now it is “One Dollar – One Vote.” 

Congress is a millionaires club; the Supreme Court is a corporate rubber-stamp; the President and his administration are tools of too-big-to-fail banks; the “revolving door” spins with nary a squeak.

We must take money out of politics – NOW!  Otherwise we might just as well skip voting altogether.

Why NOW?  Because every year it will become harder; indeed, it may already be too late. Some impediments:

• Photo-ID laws • student prohibitions • purging voter rolls • harassment • long lines • equipment shortages

Yes, we still can vote – but our choices are limited to candidates who have already been selected by big money.

Increasingly, honest citizens choose not to run for public office.  They believe they would have to sell-out in order to raise enough money – and are reluctant to put themselves and their families into the political swamp.

Let’s mobilize and demand a Constitutional Amendment under the banner: Save Democracy / Save the Earth!

Craft one amendment with as many sections as needed to correct various problems and to gain popular support:

• Provide for public funding of all elections to be paid by a 1.5% tax on all advertising sales
• Place severe restrictions on lobbyists, including punishment of office holders who accept financial favors of any kind
• Provide that corporations are not persons and that they have none of the rights of a human being
• Provide that no business entity is “too big to fail”; tax money may not be used to bailout a private company
• Provide for a minimum wage not less than 12% of the salary of a U.S. Representative
• Provide that all workers have a right to organize into a union to bargain for wages, work rules, etc.
• Provide that universal government-paid health care is a right of all citizens
• Set term limits on all patents and copyrights, such that ownership passes to the federal government
• Social Security retirement for everyone; option at age 63; no cap on tax; additional .1% tax on both employee and employer for each $100,000 over $500,000 per year; maintain survivors provisions
• Establish a Department of Peace; budget 7.5% of Defense budget; five members chosen by The National Council of Churches, two each by the Speaker and Majority Leader; they set their rules and choose the Chair.
• Establish a Scientific Board; budget 5.7% of Defense budget; members chosen by associations, etc.
• Stop Taxation Without Information: (spell-out rules for classifying and term limits; protect whistle-blowers; no documents needed in a trial may be withheld from a federal judge
• When 25% of the U.S. House of Representatives sponsor Articles of Impeachment on any officer of the federal government, the House must begin public hearings within five days to determine the merits, and must hold a recorded vote whenever 33% of the Members call for a vote and at the end of the hearings
• Nuclear disarmament is a top priority; all nuclear power generation is to be stopped within one year; all nuclear ships will be disabled and dismantled within 10 years
• No torture, no military tribunals, all human beings are entitled to human rights in a proper court system
• Rulings under treaties that favor corporations over humans are null and void – etc.
• Feel free to add more sections – suggestions?? – this is our opportunity to correct many ills
• Implement a carbon tax policy to reduce harmful emissions
• Mandate executive branch cooperation with other nations to facillitate cooperative programs for overcoming global warming

CAUTION:  Be careful to stay off hot-button issues that could lose critical support

We must get as many groups to join the Save Democracy / Save the Earth Movement as possible, such as: MoveOn, Public Citizen, People For The American Way, Gray Panthers, Greenpeace, AFL-CIO, AFT, NAACP, MALDEF, Common Cause, National Council of Churches, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, etc.  Unless we regain control of our various governmental bodies these groups will not stand a chance of accomplishing their agendas.

Before the filing deadlines of 2012 find candidates for every statewide and every national office – including President and Governors – who will publicly endorse our amendment and pledge in all of their campaign ads to make every effort upon assuming office to enact the Save Democracy / Save the Earth Amendment quickly, by any method or combination of methods provided in Article V of the Constitution.

2012 must be a One-Issue Election.  Vow NOT to vote for any candidate who has not pledged to this effort.

Stansberry points out that the result of Roosevelt privatizing the publicly created mortgage bank ended up producing the situation of risks being socialized while profits are privatized. Another example is related to federal funding of higher education loans that have created an incentive for the creation of over 2800 for-profit education companies that thrive on subsidized loans to students that are guaranteed by a government institution. When large numbers of students default on loan repayments the government takes the loss while the private corporations walk away with profits.

Stansberry gives other examples that most of us are not aware of, illustrating the principle of socializing risks and privatizing profits.  He sums it up well:

“The problem is New American Socialism. It’s that government spending (and government power) has so warped our economy that little gets done without a government racket/protection scheme in place. Quite simply, our country has bought into the idea that it’s OK to rob Peter to pay Paul, as long as the profits in the transaction go towards certain well-connected corporations, lobbyists, and congressmen.”

“The New American Socialism is perfect for a society that’s organized by special interest groups and believes its economic power is eternal. After all, the entire structure is fueled by debt that individuals inside the system believe someone else will have to repay. The New American Socialism is founded on an institutionalized belief, across our country, that Vice President Dick Cheney had it right: Deficits don’t matter. As a result, debt continues to grow faster than it can even be accurately counted.”

“Sooner or later, these debts will bankrupt all of us. The only question is when.”

Well said.

But I keep comparing US policies to Northern European Welfare Capitalist states. After two devastating wars and runaway inflation those countries combined some aspects of capitalism with socialism while avoiding the mistakes the USA has made of permitting politicians to become so heavily dependent on campaign contributions; and limiting lobbying of special interest groups. Their economies have weathered the current crisis much better. Their people on average are much better off. They have less extremes in income, better health care systems, higher life expectancy, and generally score higher on happiness indicators. They have even more expensive welfare assistance and higher tax rates yet their economies are sounder than the USA.

A Dutch friend explained how their education works. They start testing students in public schools to see what their intelligence and aptitude indicates for their future employment. They then channel some students into vocational education in high school and others into higher education. All education expenses are paid by government and students learn skills that prepare them for work at their level of capability. The students are better prepared and have less illusions about their capabilities. And when they finish education programs those in vocational education get jobs with minimum wages and benefits (e.g. 3 weeks vacation, free health care, etc.). According to him the economic and social difference between college graduates and vocational graduates is not nearly so great as in the USA. So everybody is happier and there is less envy and bitterness that in the USA works itself out as crime and incarceration.

What is the fundamental difference between European Welfare Capitalism and New American Socialism? I believe the difference is that our people have insisted on maintaining the illusion of “pure” capitalism while lamely implementing a hodgepodge of welfare programs that are funded with debt instead of tax rates that cover the costs.  And at the same time our stupid politicians have become slaves to big corporations and other special interests, giving them more and more benefits.  As the Bible says we are luke warm, so figuratively speaking “God will spew us out of his mouth”.

Today I have added a guest post by Bill McAfee with suggestions for correcting the situation through political action. I have to admit that while I agree with most of his points, I doubt that voters understand the gravity of the situation well enough to overcome the power of corporate donors and other special interests in league with corrupt politicians.

Rather I have come to the conclusion that the electorate will only be awakened, as the Europeans were, by a combination of major catastrophes like another great depression, a world war, a series of monumental environmental disasters.

Kelly M. Harrison, PhD
Political Economist