St. Ronnie's Legacy

Commentary By Ron Beasley

What is Ronald Reagan's "real" legacy?  Hint, it's not the end of the cold war!  It is the destruction of the middle class in the US and since the middle class is what makes Democracy possible it resulted in the end of Democracy in this country. Dave Cohen at Decline of the Empire along with Robert Reich, Thom Hartmann and others have been talking about the decline of the middle class for some time. Dave directs us to an interview with Arianna Huffington who has a new book coming out, Third World America.  

Arianna told Aaron that �we are in danger of becoming an America with
the rich and the poor. And at the heart of America has always been a
middle class. They've been the foundation of our democracy..." She then
goes on to imply that the American Dream has gone belly up, our
Democracy is failing, and success in Third World America is now
a matter of luck. She further notes that for ordinary people, the odds
are not good.

He points out that Arianna is not saying anything that he hasn't been saying for years.

This is all Old News here at DOTE. I don't mean to criticize Huffington when I note that. In fact, I'm glad she's saying what she's saying. I felt the need today to expand a bit on her remarks. You can read more about Arianna's views in my Shorting The Middle Class (in which I beat up CNBC's Money Honey Maria Bartiromo).

First, there is the question of whether we still live in a Democracy. My answer is an emphatic No, we don't. I characterize America as a waning Empire. The proof of that can be found everywhere. You can't leave your house without tripping over some kind of Imperial calamity�your need to drive in a country which produces only 1/3rd of the oil it consumes, your life in the suburban wasteland (Wendy's, Petco, Sam's Club, Target), your life in the urban wasteland (slums, the homeless, empty decaying buildings), etc.

An Empire is incompatible with a Democracy. Our democratic institutions had been decaying over many years. The Supreme Court finally pulled the plug on our comatose Democracy when they declared an end to limits on corporate donations to political campaigns earlier this year.

While Thom Hartmann still thinks we can correct this problem by becoming involved within the political system Cohen agrees with Huffington that the system is simply too broken.

Thus I was pleased when Arianna Huffington did not suggest
that there are political solutions to our problems. Let's make that a
bullet point�

• There are no political solutions

After every election, some of the names & faces change up on
Capitol Hill, but the political parties & their Imperial agendas do
not. Once in Washington, new representatives quickly figure out how to
live within the Imperial Bubble. They have to do that if they are going
to be "successful" there. But let's go even further�

• Politics makes you stupid

The very moment you join the Democrats or the Republicans is also the
very moment when your brain switches OFF. A modern-day Hamlet, someone
like Paul Krugman, thinking of our economic problems, asks To
stimulate or not to stimulate, that is the question.

But of course it makes no difference. That is a political
question, part of the Imperial agenda, based on a now discredited
economic theory favored by liberal Democrats. If you are among the
ever-growing number of poor or heavily indebted (e.g. college
graduates) forced to live in the Real World, and not one of the
privileged few who draw their ever-growing wealth from the
Money World, then you are very likely fucked regardless of whether
the Federal government spends (borrows) more money. (If you have not
read my blog post The Money World, you should.) Success for
most people is now a matter of luck, as Arianna said.

So what do you do?

Let's put up a final bullet�

• Don't vote (or pretend it makes any difference if you do vote)

So when Arianna Huffington talked about "solutions" to our woeful,
deteriorating situation, she talked about how we can help each other,
not voting. You can listen to her views in the video below. Her view,
and mine, boils down to this: As the Empire declines, all we
have is each other.

Here's the video:

So how is this Ronald Reagan's fault? It was Reagan who facilitated the neutering the labor movement. Even if you were not a union member if you were a part of the working class you benefited from the labor movement. Second, Reagan gutted the antitrust laws increasing the political power of big business.

Note

The great graphic above was lifted from Pension Pulse.