The WAWG Blog

Many Americans can’t see it coming – Some are unwittingly glorifying it.

I’ve been reading, viewing, and writing about authoritarianism in America since 2005.  I’ve watched it take control of the Republican party and infect the Democratic party.  I’ve come to understand it’s built into our 400 year old predatory economic system.  That our authoritarian economic system is remaking our democratic political system into its own authoritarian image.  That our authoritarian policing system was created by our authoritarian economic system to punish those who threaten the wealth of the profit looters.  That our authoritarian military system, as a mega-expansion of our internal policing system, has become another punishing tool of our economic system to obtain and protect foreign economic resources.  That we now have an authoritarian (DJT) executive branch of government supported by its authoritarian legislative branch, i.e. the US Senate.   Both branches are working to convert our federal court system into another authoritarian system to protect and empower the profit looters, CxOs of the world.

I’ve also learned about the history of America as seen from the eyes of the American worker.  Workers have been abused by our authoritarian economic and policing systems for over 140 years.  This abuse rises and falls depending on worker/citizen interest, resistance, and interest/abilities to participate in the political system.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy of WWII, and other countries since, were run by authoritarian political systems that also created their own authoritarian policing systems and that coerced their complementary authoritarian economic systems into financing their political and policing systems.  

In America, our march to an authoritarian state has taken a different path.  Unlike Germany and Italy, where the political system used the economic system to enforce its hegemony, America’s movement to the extreme right has been driven by our centuries-old authoritarian economic system, which is described as Inverted Totalitarianism.   This economic takeover of our government was first attempted during our Civil War and again in 1933 by the “Wall Street Putch,” with Prescott Bush, when the oligarchs tried to replace our elected President with a military coup of disgruntled WWI veterans led by Marine General Smedley Butler, who actually exposed the plot. 

That violent, failed, fascist takeover of America in 1933 has been replaced by a decades-long stealth approach detailed in Democracy In Chains by Nancy MacLean, which under current national leadership has become more blatant .  The goals of our current profit looter American fascist leaders are to have a constitutional convention in order to rewrite the US Constitution to give corporations veto power over new government laws, eliminate majority rule with national voter suppression, and neuter the Federal government by eliminating agencies, services, and social programs which were set up to protect and empower citizens.  The new constitution will cast in concrete what has mostly been put in place and will finish off what remains like privatizing Medicare and Social Security.

In my lifetime I’ve lived under two opposing forms of government:

• Post depression/post WWII and pre 1980s government was closest to “of, by, and for the People.”  It was a government with the moral purpose of equally protecting and empowering ALL the People such that 1) People’s individual freedoms are maximized and 2) Economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices are minimized.  In other words, a government with a goal of maximizing equality.  
• Now our government is closer to one whose focused purpose is protecting and empowering only successful white men (blue eyes, blond hair) such that their individual freedom and wealth are maximized without concern for any resulting injustices inflicted on the majority of citizens.  In other words, a government focused on maximizing inequality.  Economic inequality is now at levels not seen since the late 1920s and Time reports the theft of $50 trillion since 1975.  

What follows is my description of our current broken and interrelated political, economic, and policing systems as the right-wing authoritarian extremists push us closer to complete Inverted Totalitarianism.  

The economic and policing systems were authoritarian at birth.  Capitalism grew out of the authoritarian feudalism by replacing the lord/surf structure with the employer/employee structure.  As we have seen during the pandemic, capitalism is oriented to protect and empower the profit looters at the expense of all others.  

Protecting the profit looters required goons to stop unionizing in North America and protect their slave property in the south.   They needed a policing system for protecting their property (human or brick & mortar).   The policing system has advanced into legalized abusing and killing with “qualified immunity.”

Empowering the profit looters required an end to government oversight and regulations intended to protect and empower their customers.  That was going to take some planning, including some favorable SCOTUS rulings  in 1976 and 1978 assisted by the justice who wrote the Lewis Powell Memo and a lot of money.  They had lots of money but needed more.  Then comes Reagan’s Neo-liberal, trickle-down, economics that provided tax breaks, lucrative war contracts, and large corporate welfare subsidies.  This self-enrichment by the wealthy is called legalized looting   Profit looters (DJT) now occupy the White House, own the US Senate and, together, they are stacking the federal courts with corporate lackeys.

In summary, a 400 year-old authoritarian economic system gave birth to our authoritarian policing system to put property – and state’s – rights over human rights. This legalized massive profit looting that has stealthily stolen ownership of the citizen’s government and is maneuvering our government to turn it into a fascist-like totalitarian state.

Many are well versed in authoritarianism as it relates to Nazi Germany and what can be said about its growth in America.  Professor Altemeyer has studied it, helped John Dean write about it, and wrote about it himself,     Progressive Thom Hartmann provides a review of the book They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, by Milton Mayer and then suggests reading the book:

“We must not allow it to happen in our nation. Read “They Thought They Were Free” and awaken as many as you can.”

“For What It’s Worth“

There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop
Children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking’ their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying, “hooray for our side”

It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

We better stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?

Failed Systems

The combination of

1. a growing inverted totalitarianism in our political system as funded by our predatory economic system and
2. a pandemic which has exposed the innate failures of both systems,

has nurtured a multigenerational group of Americans who now have “nothing left to lose” and are rising up.

These newly exposed political and economic system failures are on top of a decades long implementation of a stealth plan resulting in:

• stagnant wage growth and wage theft,
• families forced into multiple incomes just to eat and pay bills,
• growing tax breaks since the 70s for the excessively wealthy, and
• massive national, commercial and personal/student debt to make up for the loss of real income.

Our failed political and economic systems have moved from equally protecting and empowering all citizens to only protecting and empowering the excessively wealthy and their “qualified immunity” policing forces. Our excessive military budgets are replicated at the local level with excessive policing budgets. Right-wing authoritarians need such tools to keep their control over the less pure surrounding them.

Depression Maximizes Worker Abuse

We are at the beginning of this century’s Great Depression. Forty million unemployed and without healthcare during a pandemic. Half of commercial businesses were unable to pay their rent to the commercial property owners who in turn can’t make their loan payments to the banks that financed the property purchase. This depression has quickly reached levels of unemployment that took years to reach in last century’s Great Depression.

With such massive unemployment, the abusive employers have an unbeatable upper-hand. Employees going back to work will be seen as powerless and if an employee refuses to accept the new, less-supportive, circumstances, the employer will find some other worker from the new enormous pool of unemployed.

Just as the authoritarian police forces “kettle” citizens to teargas and pepper spray them at will, corporations will “kettle” workers into unsafe, unhealthy, work environments to abuse them with exposure to COVID-19, lower pay, and benefit reductions. It’s too expensive to create a safe and healthy workplace, but some might try . There is insufficient COVID-19 testing for anyone, much less employees returning to work.

Revolution Is All That’s Left

People with nothing left to lose are left with few options – taking to the streets, refusing the abuse of their labor, and voting. They feel, witness, and experience the abusive cracks of our failed systems. Cracks that protect the wealthy property owners with local police. Cracks that protect the police who are granted “qualified immunity” by SCOTUS. This gives them freehand to attack peaceful citizens, crack the skulls of old men, take personal property, and target, literally, the free press, after murdering another man for being black.

This revolution will grow as the failed systems take more and more desperate steps to stop it. Fearful abusers become more abusive when resisted – just look at all the videos of self-motivated police attacks on citizens. The Liar-in-Chief can’t control himself – two hundred tweets in one day. He and his lackeys will abuse as needed, stage property damage and blame citizens for it, and will attempt to divide this unified response with racial/political dog whistles.

Recent suppressive actions to quell the revolution were learned in our recent foreign wars. Police are not only equipped with military hardware, they are trained in military tactics to suppress unruly citizens – bring in the military helicopters to hover just overhead.

Don’t expect the local police to join the revolution. Their history as slave patrols and corporate goons does not give much hope for that. They know who protects/empowers them, have a military background that reinforces their authoritarian nature, and will continue to protect their right-wing authoritarian leaders: DJT and their city mayors who put curfews in place to provide cause for arrest.

The videos of police abuse we are now seeing is normal police practice. It’s only news to those of us who don’t live in the communities where police use these tactics on a daily basis.

Conclusion

To conclude, this rapidly growing depression (except for investors), the failure to minimize citizen deaths during a pandemic, state sanctioned abuse of citizens by extreme policing – including the free press, the massive unemployment, and over 110,000 premature citizen deaths, have exposed the massive systems failures and show that fixing what’s broken can only happen from the bottom up. Top-down approaches, like trickle-down, have failed fantastically. Our once democratic, now authoritarian, political system, empowered by our centuries-old authoritarian economic system, must be rescued by removing the billionaires as employers. Employees must become the owners/managers of companies. They will not decide to send their jobs out of country. They will not poison the communities they live in. They will not abuse their coworkers by exposing themselves to unsafe workplaces. They will keep profits in their pockets.

Tens of millions of citizens have nothing left to lose! The knee of our right-wing authoritarian oppressors are on the necks of all citizens/workers. Removing that knee of our failed systems requires historically massive public action (Revolution) and political participation.

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Five member panel discussion on the revolution/depression (skip ahead to about 2:55): https://www.youtube.com/embed/AQJkOl92sbw

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The Vote In November MUST Be Historic

We need democracy in the workplace to disempower the one percent.

What it took to defeat the evil of those who started WWII, is what we need now to defeat the same kind of evil that now runs our America.  

This recurring evil that goes back across world history for centuries is driven by right-wing authoritarianism (RWA).  The RWA personality, which can be tested for with a psychological test, has been the subject of psychologists looking at history to better understand what drives humanity to self-destruction.  This testing showed that the authoritarian personality is correlated strongly with the political right and is almost non-existent on the political left.  The research also showed that German citizens were more susceptible to its influences.

There have also been studies of the human brain to understand why people operate differently.  This has led to the establishment of two opposing family models which in turn define opposing politics.  On the one hand there are families that fit what is called the strict-father family model.  On the other hand, is the nurturant parent family model.  This brain research shows that most of us are a mix of the two models.  Based on recent voting history and other research referenced below, RWAs now represent at least 28% of the voting populace or 20 to 25% of the total population. (Post script: The results of the 2020 presidential elections correlate with these numbers. The now accused (91 indictments/four cases) loser, P01135809, got 30.9% of the votes of 2020 registered voters. That in turn represents about 22.4% of the total 2020 population.)

Other research efforts by Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo show that since most of us share some elements of  authoritarian traits, these traits can be exploited.  The subtitle of Zimbardo’s book, The Lucifer Effect, is Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. This book was written after the Abu Ghraib evil events were revealed and was supported by Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford.   

A concept Zimbardo developed in his book, The Lucifer Effect, was the “bad barrel.”  In other words, your environment can override your personal inhibitions under the right influences.    Consider the possibility that citizens, hunkered down in their homes with vast stores of weapons and ammo to protect them from the less pure among us, who are also watching Fox News and listening to hate radio, are in a nationwide bad barrel.  How else can you explain all the viral videos of RWAs (Karen and Ken) doing evil things (mass shootings)?

The strict-father model produces the RWA personality and the moral values system behind the policies they support.  This family model is based on a social hierarchy with one, most perfect, group at the top and all other groups at progressively lower levels based on their degree of imperfection as defined by those most perfect.   This leads to a strong belief in inequality and absolute individual responsibility.  They support government policies that protect and empower only those most perfect individuals.  They also have a strong belief that each human is prone to evil at birth and what they define as evil can’t be allowed to grow.  The basic tool used, within this family model to maintain their imaginary social hierarchy and minimize the evil they fear most, is severe punishment.  Punihment starting at less than two years of age and extending to outright murder of adults of lesser perfection and war with nations with less perfect citizens.

For the nurturant parent family model, both parents use a moral values system based on equality, compassion/empathy, and responsibility not only for oneself but for others.  They believe in equality of opportunity and accounting for life’s unpredictable misfortunes driven by the circumstances of birth.  They teach compassion for their fellow man.   They nurture our hardwired ability to empathize.  They believe and expect every child has great power to do good.  Their moral values drive them to support family and government policies that equally protect and empower all their fellow citizens and all family members.  

In addition to Zimbardo’s “bad barrel” impacting otherwise good citizens to act in evil ways, there is also the research that shows the stress of a strict-father family on the fetus of a pregnant wife increases the possibility of RWA tendencies in the child as an adult.   This stress actually changes the brain of the fetus to become receptive to the authoritarian worldview they are born into.  

Restating what I said at the start of this article, the native RWA tendencies in Germany, Spain, Italy, and other countries since, led to staggering levels of death and destruction for the sake of protecting and empowering the most perfect (wealthy, Chistianist, hterosexual, cisgenter, men).  The United States of that time included a small minority of RWAs who supported Germany: companies, Lindberg, The German American Bund.   However, the vast majority of Americans agreed to sacrifice for the greater good.   Capitalism was replaced with rationing.  Sons and daughters joined the military.  Those at home agreed to sacrifice personal gain now for gains after the war, like through the GI Bill.  Citizens, with very few exceptions, were UNIFIED against RWA evil, internal and abroad!

Well, now we are battling a new enemy, RWAs, which are allowed to directly attack us all.   Unfortunately, the RWAs are dividing/distracting us while tens of thousands are dying prematurely.   We have a larger portion of RWAs blindly supporting a psychopath and a few of these RWAs have become wealthy enough, through excessive tax cuts, to take advantage of changed telecommunications laws and regulations to purchase our media and create a nationwide bad barrel of television and radio.  The double-high authoritarian leaders use this bad barrel as a direct line to manipulate and unify their RWA followers with repeated, formulated, identical, fear and hate based, messages against those who are less pure.  

We need to counter this well organized RWA unity with a unity that goes beyond the Democratic Party.   We need massive voter participation by all those left of the RWA GQP Party.  We need to elect every Democrat on the ballot.    We need a Brand New Congress with a plurality in both houses.  We need to support our local candidates with donations and labor.

As we did during WWII, we need to replace our predatory economic system with a more democratic economic system that eventually disempowers the psychopathic, excessively wealthy, double-high, RWA social dominators so they can no longer buy our government by controlling their RWA followers with their RWA media.   We need to pass laws that reverse decades of economic, social, racial, environmental, and disenfranchisement perpetrated by the RWAs.  We need to pass laws that discourage lying by public officials and news media.

Party unity is critical and necessary, but we need even more.  We need voter turnout we haven’t seen since the late 1800s.  Turnout as in 2018 provides a hopeful sign for 2020 and 2024.  But don’t use that possibility as an excuse to say you don’t need my vote. Make sure progressive Democrats run for office.  Vote for progressive Democrats.  Vote and support all your local candidates.  Vote to stop the growing hate/violence we see in videos of RWAs exercising their freedoms while abusing and ending the freedoms of others.   

Since WWII, the enemy of the United States has grown from within from a seed left over from that time.  We must all unite as The Greatest Generation did to take out the Kreepy, Krawly, Kudzu that has infested our land.   We must unite to bring down the wealthy, double-high, RWA traitors who are stealthily stealing our government from us.   They have produced and new plan for creating a permanent, minority-controlled, authoritarian future in 2025.

The A-Team for winning WWII was a united citizenry.  The A-Team for winning in 2020/2024 must be a united citizenry in spite of all the new divisive forces at work.

????Rescuing America starts in November, 2020, and WE are ALL the A-Team!!!????

Do you now see what America has become: An Inverted Totalitarian State of, by, and for the capitalists? Would you like to know more about a system that puts people-before-profit, democratic socialism?

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing out the worst in our predatory economic system: 

• at a personal one-on-one level, some are abusing their freedom by spitting on someone protecting others with their mask, and
• at the state and national level, government leaders are abusing citizens by pushing us to shop ’safely’ during a pandemic while others are yelling and spitting.

The ignored, hidden, and inherent short comings of authoritarian, predatory, capitalism have been exposed: hoarding, scarcity of TP and medical equipment caused by “just-in-time” supply chains (minimize inventory at the supplier), price gouging, increased denial of medical care and virus testing, explosive medical bills, bankruptcy and homelessness from massive unemployment, farmer/doctor suicides, profit-over-people, and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from a new virus, much of which could have been avoided.

Something else that has been hidden and suppressed is the alternate to this abusive, authoritarian, economy.  This alternate has been attempted in the past and failed, but unlike the ignored failures of capitalism, this alternate system has been subject to open, critical, self-analysis.  Lessons were learned and reformation applied to remedy its failures.   Solutions for this alternate economic system have been continuously reviewed, tested, and changed.  Solutions now include democracy at work, not just in government.  This democracy takes form as coops.  Employees decide how business is conducted.  They won’t be shipping their jobs overseas or under paying their real profit makers, themselves.  They won’t be poisoning their host community – their neighbors.

If you’re receptive to learning more about this alternate, more democratic, economic system, democratic socialism, watch this video:

I’ve read Nancy Maclean’s book and used it in my blog and just watched the video of her talk in Seattle at the Fix Democracy First event where she expanded on her book, Democracy In Chains, to further reveal the “THE DEEP HISTORY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT’S STEALTH PLAN FOR AMERICA.” Professor Maclean is the William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy.

Another author and professor I reference is Richard Wolff.  Professor Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. Both authors are pointing out the problems that are plaguing our democracy/economy.

What I understand from Professor Maclean is that the more we know about this stealthy, authoritarian, political Koch plan, the better we can recognize and defeat it.   What I understand from Professor Wolff is that our auuthoritarian economic system is also contributing to the destruction of America.  And the goals of  both authoritarian manipulated systems overlap to empower and protect the excessively wealthy.

What this becomes for me is this.  Our political system, which is under stealth attack as Maclean’s book documents, is founded on democratic values which are being destroyed.   In addition, as Professor Wolff has documented in books, articles and video, our economic system is founded on authoritarian values – master/slave, lord/serf, employer/employee – and we need to recognize it’s also a broken economic system that is being used to fund the conversion of our political system into an authoritarian one owned by the capitalists. They are both describing a future for American that is also described by Sheldon Wolin in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.  

The Kochs, other right-wing authoritarians, and libertarian thinktanks are all key authoritarian destructors for both our political and economic systems.

The antidote for our authoritarian political future that MacLean promotes is recognition of the authoritarian subterfuge and massive democratic action.   The antidote for our current authoritarian economic system is also massive democratic action.   Professor Wolff envisions this democratic action as democracy@work by replacing the employer/employee system with a purely employee driven economic system commonly called coops.  

Both our political and economic systems are broken and making our economic system more democratic would enhance Maclean’s antidotal recommendations to help save our political system by disempowering the wealthy authoritarians/employers who are using our authoritarian economic system, capitalism, to fund the destruction of our democratic political system.

Our moral values inform and provide the foundation for our political choices. My political choices have changed over the decades as I’ve evolved my moral foundation.

As I’ve stated many times, including in my email signature, “The morally right option is the one that maximizes equality by equally protecting and empowering the greatest number of citizens.” That means I have moral qualms when politicians compromise on social programs that exempt any number of citizens from these programs. Here are some historical examples that I consider immoral compromises. The compromise got the programs implemented, but their impact was minimized on a racial/wealth basis and that was morally wrong.

Social Security Compromised:
Two groups of employees were exempted from Social Security as a compromise to get it past the bigots in Congress: farm workers and domestic workers, which were both large groups of people of color.

Union Organizing Compromised:
A similar exclusion exempted farm workers from union protection of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.

Building of Hospitals Compromised:
In 1946, the Hospital Survey and Construction Act passed by including a rule that allowed states to allocate resources locally, so that they could drive new hospital construction away from African American communities.

GI Bill Benefits Compromised:
Then there were the Jim Crow policies that limited accessing benefits from the WWII GI Bill difficult for black GIs.

Affordable Care Act Compromised:
There are still tens of millions of Americans without healthcare coverage or high co-pays and deductibles. The ACA left health insurance tied to your job. If you’re unemployed, you can’t afford coverage. It left some coverage up to the states and their uneven application of healthcare through insurance exchanges – “state-level recalcitrance will leave two-thirds of poor blacks, two-thirds of single mothers, and half of all uninsured low-wage workers ineligible for Medicaid and therefore unable to afford coverage offered by the insurance exchanges.” ACA is still beholding to private insurance and private insurance profits from reducing coverage.

Medicaid Expansion Compromised:
When right-wing authoritarians can’t force a compromise to limit social program coverage from the start, they work to dismantle and limit the social program. For example, with the Affordable Care Act they won a SCOTUS ruling that made expanding Medicaid a state option. This ruling is limiting healthcare coverage and forcing the closing of rural hospitals.

Incrementalism, extending social programs little-by-little is a form of compromise that is just as immoral as outright exemption from policies meant to equally protect and empower all citizens. Letting those who already have protection and power decide who cannot have the same protection and power until later is immoral.

Therefore, I favor a national commitment to stopping the Sixth Great Extinction, healthcare for all, student debt forgiveness for all, publicly and fairly funded, lower (mandatory) and higher (optional) education, including civics, for all, new legislation to advance democracy at work, and progressive taxation similar to before President Reagan including property taxes on ownership of corporations.

Quotes from “Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success”

The world’s right-wing authoritarian, self-enriching, gobble-up, neoliberal, abusive, form of capitalism is based on never ending growth and has birthed massive inequality and the 6th Great Extinction. A major change in this economic system to improve quality of life and end the climate crisis is needed.

“Mainstream economics still thinks growth is essential, but this blind belief in GDP is just enriching the rich and killing the planet. We don’t need more growth to improve people’s lives. By working less, buying and producing less, and investing in public services, we can improve quality of life – and fight the climate crisis.”

“Think about it: we’ve built up a global fossil fuel infrastructure over the past 250 years, and now we have to completely overhaul it in only 30. Everything has to change in a matter of decades.

“The old fantasy that market mechanisms will somehow magically solve the climate crisis has been thoroughly dashed, and a new consensus is emerging: we need coordinated government action on a massive scale. “

Only government action can force corporations to change business as usual. Without government intervention, energy use and CO2 production will never reverse, and life’s quality will further deminish.

“The evidence is mounting: if we want a decent shot at climate stability, high-income nations will have to shift to post-growth economic principles. This would have been unthinkable in mainstream circles only a few years ago, but there’s now a striking consensus forming. In 2018, 238 scientists called on the European commission to abandon growth as an objective and explore post-growth futures. In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists from over 150 countries published an article stating that ‘We need to shift from pursuing GDP growth and affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving well-being.’

“Post-growth thinking is starting to trickle into policy, too. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, captured headlines in 2019 with her promise to abandon GDP growth as an objective in favour of wellbeing. The leaders of Scotland and Iceland have indicated that they will follow suit. With each announcement, social media erupted with excitement. People are ready for something different.”

What people want and need is economic, social, racial, and environmental justice and that is incompatible with endless growth in inequality under authoritarian capitalism. Quality of life in America, as measured by life expectancy, has dropped as per capita GDP has risen. “Spain spends $2,300 per person on healthcare, which is enough to secure one of the highest life expectancies in the world (83.3 years). The United States spends four times more to get worse results.”

Another measure of quality of life is education. America’s per capita GDP is failing to educate its citizens. “Finland has one of the best education systems in the world, despite having a GDP per capita that’s 23% less than the United States. Estonia ranks highly too, with 66% less GDP per capita. Poland outperforms the United States with 77% less.”

The reason America’s per capita quality of life is so low is because of massive inequality. It’s only available to the 1% who have far more wealth than is necessary to provide their own cadillac-level of health and education. The lower quality of life for the 99% drags America’s average down.

“ … it becomes clear that growthism is little more than ideology – an ideology that benefits a few at the expense of our collective future. We’re urged to step on the growth accelerator with deadly consequences for our planet, all so that a rich elite can get even richer.

“The truth is we don’t need more growth to improve people’s lives. We can accomplish our social goals right now, without any growth at all, simply by sharing what we already have more fairly, and by investing in generous public goods. It turns out justice is the antidote to the growth imperative – and key to solving the climate crisis.”

The policy objective of switching from the inequality of growth to the justice of universal wellbeing will require massive, near-term, change. This includes significant scaling back on energy use along with massive conversion to renewables. Growth drives energy consumption and planned obsolescence is what drives growth – this has to stop. Advertising also drives energy consumption by driving consumption of more stuff that goes obsolete.

“We like to think of capitalism as a system that’s rational and efficient when it comes to meeting human needs. But in some respects, it’s exactly the opposite. In pursuit of constant growth, firms resort to intentional inefficiencies. This might be rational from the perspective of profits, but from the perspective of human need, and from the perspective of ecology, it is a kind of madness. It is madness in terms of human labour, too. Think about the millions of hours that are poured into producing stuff that’s designed to break down, or that people don’t actually need in the first place.”

Making such massive change must be forced by the federal government. That requires a massive change in government and wresting control from the growth oriented corporations. Then legislation is possible that promotes universal wellbeing:

• Reorganizing dirty energy businesses to clean energy production
• Expanding the use of clean energy for product transportation
• Ending planned obsolescence
• Reducing the workweek to handle the slower growth while maintaining employment with a living wage
• Universal basic income and retraining programs as needed for those who become unemployable
• Replacing authoritarian corporations with democratic coops
• Expanding mass transit
• Eliminating ecologically destructive and socially unnecessary pro-growth industries like manufacturers of WMDs
• Providing healthcare and education for all
• Implement Green New Deal

“What’s exciting about this move is that it has a substantial positive impact on wellbeing. Studies in the US have found that people who work shorter hours are happier than those who work longer hours, even when controlling for income. And it has a big impact on energy demand, too. If the United States were to reduce its working hours to the levels of western Europe, its energy use would decline by a staggering 20%.

“Public interest in post-growth economics has soared over the past year as the climate crisis worsens. With fires blazing through Australia and the Amazon, floods swamping northern England, droughts driving migration, and record heatwaves searing across Antarctica, people realise that the status quo has us hurtling toward disaster, and they’re increasingly open to new ideas. In the 2020s, we can expect that the climate movement will rally around the Green New Deal and a vision for a completely new economy. “

The openness “to new ideas” is demonstrated by greater acceptance of democratic socialism, , especially by those born or growing up in this century and who have and will suffer the most in a growth oriented economy.

Quotes from The Virus and Capitalism.

America’s unique, right-wing authoritarian, self-enriching, gobble-up, neoliberal, form of capitalism is helping it’s wealthy owners again while ignoring and abusing most citizens.    Back in 2008, the neoliberal puppets bailed out the banks and screwed families out of their homes.  Today they are trying to bailout companies who just got huge tax breaks and failed to create their own rainy day funds while leaving citizens to self-quarantine, “social-distancing,” or die prematurely in a profit-over-people healthcare system.

“The U.S. is in the midst of a full-blown public health crisis made worse by systemic political dysfunction.”

Millions of fellow citizens may die due lack of a “robust government response.”  National emergencies can only be responded to by our national government.  The critical question is will the response help the 1% or the 99%?  

And who we elect to national leadership will be critical to changing America’s uniquely ugly form of capitalism.

“The official plan to date is financial, to bail out Wall Street and the airlines, a payroll tax cut and token checks to the masses, and hope that it all works out.”

The “payroll taxe cuts” will help defund Social Security and Medicare.  These right-wing authoritarian capitalists always defund public services to end or privatize them, like public schooling and creating mass student debt.
The “token checks” are a one time placation in a long-term, abusive, crisis.

“In lieu of providing an adequate level of healthcare to address the pandemic, which even hardened D.C. hacks know can’t be conjured out of thin air in a timely enough fashion, what is left is ‘social distancing.’ This is polite speak for quarantines variably undertaken.

“The strategy of ‘flattening the curve,’ of slowing the spread of the virus so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed at any one time, could bring the mortality rate in the U.S. down by matching healthcare need to capacity.  But implied in the structure of the economic stimulus is a couple of weeks at home watching Netflix and then it’s back to the races. This is a low probability outcome. Eighteen months, the anticipated duration of the pandemic if effective action to mitigate it is taken, means that a radically changed world will emerge from the other side.”

Question is who will we elect to be there with those of us who survive the pandemic?  Someone who perpetuates our uniquely, deadly, authoritarian, protect-the-rich, economic system or someone who would make it more democratic and fair for all?

“ … here we are ten years later and the previously bailed out are once again telling us that the Federal government has to bail out corporations and the rich to ‘save the economy.’ ‘The economy’ is indeed in trouble, but it is in trouble because of the fragility created to benefit corporations and the rich, not because stock prices have fallen.

“ … The problem is that four decades of neoliberalism have instantiated the ethos that the role of government is to make rich people richer.

“More broadly, through the self-serving mythology of rugged individualism, capitalism has been used to shape and reshape social relations. This makes its dependence on serial bailouts both ridiculous and pathetic. [Capitalism,] Conceived several centuries ago to shift power from Aristocrats to a burgeoning business class, without a large and intrusive government to prevent consolidation and self-dealing, it quickly creates a new Aristocracy to close the door behind it. What is left is the privileged, remote and self-dealing oligarchy that now stands before us.”

In normal times, this uniquely American, authoritarian, economic system creates massive inequality.  It times like this, it accelerates that creation of inequality.  Its immorality becomes even more depraved.

“During ‘normal’ times, when this oligarchy isn’t acting to destroy other nations and the world, malgovernance for its own benefit is made the ordinary working of government. For instance, the U.S. military is wildly overfunded while the healthcare system is structured to let the people die at a politically acceptable pace. During ‘not normal’ times, a hierarchy of privilege is set in motion. First, save the wealth of the rich through bailouts. Second, secure the rights of corporations to profit from catastrophe. Last, let the people die at a politically acceptable pace.”

The massive mismanagement of the pandemic in America could produce politically UNacceptable numbers of  American deaths before the November election.

“The risk for the rich is that the logic of the guillotine begins to make sense. The risk for the rest of us can be counted in the sick and dying.”

Minimizing premature deaths has always been part of healthcare for all.  The absence of such healthcare means even more unwarranted premature American deaths are likely during this mismanaged pandemic.

“Donald Trump’s clumsy effort to corner the market in virus test kits for ‘American’ corporations has meant that we simply don’t have them. Obamacare certainly hasn’t produced any. The strategy that is unfolding of ad hoc quarantines and wishful thinking will either be converted into a robust response or the existing political order will end.

“The question of bailouts is fundamentally different from that of taking care of people. An adequate response to the pandemic will require years of dedicated effort, not tossing a trillion dollars at ‘the economy’ and hoping for the best. Social distancing and quarantines might require income and material support for tens of millions of people for as long as eighteen months.”

To change our uniquely authoritarian, American economic system that maximizes inequality into a more moral system that will work, long-term, for the 99% and one that will minimize premature, unwarranted American deaths will require significant voter turnout to significantly change who runs the federal government.  

Saving American lives can’t morally be done incrementally.

You and I, our local city and county governments, and our state governments all need to operate, as fiscal conservatives, within a budget. Our expenses all need to be covered by some form of income like wages, tips, selling a product, issuing bonds, or collecting taxes. The main reason for balancing income and expenses is because individuals, businesses, cities, states have no authorization for creating money. We all need income, government created money, to pay expenses.\

The federal government’s power to create money gives it unique power to focus on balancing the national economy instead of its budget. It can add money to the economy to make it grow or help fix a national (natural or man-made) disaster. It can remove money, through taxes, from the economy to slow it down. Keeping the national economy balanced between jobs and inflation is the responsibility of the federal government and using fiat money to do that.

Keeping the economy balanced may require deficit spending. As long as the additional money results in a growing economy, more jobs, and the deficit remains small relative to the nation’s total economic output, or gross domestic product (GDP), i.e. low inflation, the additional spending is responsible and the economy remains in balance.

This responsibility to balance the economy with deficit spending is not what most of us consider fiscally conservative. However, it is within the power of the federal government to do so when needed.

This federal power can be used to fix national economic catastrophes as it did in the Great Recession of 2008/9. Quite suddenly the national economy, via risky banking activities, was coming up vastly short of cash. Only the federal government had the power to replace what was lost. It created hundreds of billions of dollars to replace the cash shortage when the bottom fell out of the artificially bloated/securitized home mortgage market.

Thankfully, there was no requirement for a federal balanced budget, fiscal conservatism, to prevent this federal action. The federal government was thus able to log into a federal bank computer terminal, enter the primary account number for each bank that needed rescue and key in the billions each bank had lost to make them whole again. They also bought ownership in the auto industry from the same computer terminals by purchasing company stocks with more money created out of thin air.

This same kind of federal money magic happens each time Republicans increase our military spending while also reducing federal income with massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. However, this kind of deficit spending has negligible impact on balancing the national economy. There is no real job growth or better wages for workers to spend and grow the economy. Economic growth is anemic. The magic money just keeps the existing defense industry running to replace equipment used for fighting our unnecessary wars. Our GDP is little changed from all the new money given to defense contractors who reward their executives like Dick Cheney with bonuses. It becomes money chasing money and some is used by company board of directors to buy back company shares and artificially inflate share value. The market looks great as the extra cash inflates stock prices, but the national economy isn’t browing.

Obviously, there has been no fiscal conservatism at the federal level for some time, nor should there be. The question is, if the federal government can create money to solve national problems like the Great Recession and the Great Depression, how can new money be better used such that there is actual growth in the GDP and real problem solving by creating jobs with living wages?

Most Republican deficits protect and empower the wealthy and create massive economic inequality. Reps believe only those at the top of their imaginary social hierarchy deserve government welfare. These deficits don’t create jobs, don’t grow the nations’s GDP, and tend to boost the stock market that is 80% owned by the one percent.

A better way to use the government’s magic money is to fund programs that grow the nation’s GDP. How about an initiative to reverse our growing climate crisis? The federal government could buy controlling interests of dirty energy companies, as they did the auto industries, and change the industry goal from fossil fuel extraction to expanding clean energy sources.

In addition, let’s stop increasing defense spending and reverse tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. This may not be good for the stock markets, but who is mostly impacted by this? The wealthy and don’t they have far too much wealth to start with?

If the federal government were forced into fiscal conservatism and had to balance its budget instead of balancing the economy, our economy could not be rescued or protected from another financial crisis nor could it help solve national problems like it did after other Great Recessions, or needs to do now to minimize the Sixth Great Extinction.

Read The Deficit Myth for more details.

Economic Democracy must replace Economic Authoritarianism – What Does Economic Democracy Look Like?

Over the centuries oligarchs have created economic systems for enriching and keeping the oligarchs in power:

• Slavery with one owner who has total control over one or more slaves who are provided for only minimally for their labor and are subject to severe physical abuse.
• Feudalism with one lord who has less control over one or more serfs who get to keep part of the fruits of their labor and may have to sacrifice family members to the lord’s pleasure.
• Capitalism with one employer and one or more employees who get to ‘negotiate’ a fee for their labor as long as it is less than the sale of the fruits of their labor.  And the less the employer has to pay the better.  Prisoners, undocumented residents, cheap overseas foreign laborers, union-less gig ‘entrepreneurs,’ are a favorite source of minimally-paid, maximally-abused, workers under capitalism. 

There are variants of these systems based on who the oligarchs are, private individuals or public officials. Private control could be an individual oligarch or a group of oligarchs such as a board of directors. Public control is the state or government that represents the state and that state could be elected or self-appointed. The USSR and today’s China used/use state capitalism as their economic system. Over the last century, the United States has shifted from state-capitalism controlled by laws and regulation to private capitalism where the state is run by and for capitalists. Regardless of who’s in control of capitalism, state or private, citizens are suffering varying levels of economic abuse.

Where can we go from here? Surely smart people have been thinking about what has come before and comes next. Hopefully, they are considering how a democratic system could replace the current authoritarian system, capitalism, created by the oligarchs for the oligarchs? Yes they, the socialist economists, are proposing what comes next: Democracy in the workplace to better fit, protect, and empower our democratic political system. Whether it’s state or private capitalism, it’s still authoritarian and abusive to citizens. Democracy embedded in our current economic system is what could admonish and wrest control of the economy from the oligarchs.

To get there, it’s going to take a vibrant democratic political system with massive citizen participation to enable this new democratic economic system called socialism.