| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
26 Aug 2006 06:21:19 PM |
| Object: |
Right-wingers luuuuv big government as long as they can exploit it |
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0825-25.htm
August 25, 2006
Conservatives Love Government
by Dean Baker
The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary
incompetence in a wide range of areas.
The response to Hurricane Katrina, the coordination of "homeland
security", and the implementation of the Medicare drug benefit top a
long list of disasters.
These failures have led many to say that the incompetence is
attributable to the fact that Bush and other conservatives dislike
government, and therefore can’t run it well.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
President Bush and other conservatives like government every bit as
much as any big-spending liberal.
The difference is on what the conservatives want the government to do.
Liberals and progressives think that government should be acting to
ensure the population a decent standard of living and provide it with
essential services like health care and education.
Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward.
This is done through a variety of mechanisms, the most obvious of
which are their tax policies, which favor upper income people.
But conservatives want the government to intervene in the market in a
wide variety of ways that have the effect of redistributing income
from those at the middle and the bottom to those at the top.
Conservatives promote a long list of government policies that shift
pre-tax income upward.
The most obvious is trade policy.
The conservative trade agenda is to put less educated workers (the 70
percent of the work force that lacks a college degree) in direct
competition with workers in developing countries like Mexico and
China.
This competition lowers the wages of workers in manufacturing,
construction, and many other sectors.
Pushing down the wages of these workers benefits the wealthy both by
increasing corporate profits and by making it cheaper for them to get
a wide range of services, like having their house painted or buying
restaurant meals.
A more progressive trade policy would focus on subjecting the most
highly paid workers to international competition: doctors, lawyers,
accountants.
This would lead to huge economic benefits in the form of lower medical
costs, as well as lower prices for a wide range of goods and services,
as wages for the most highly paid workers declined under the pressure
of international competition.
But conservatives count on the government to protect the six figure
salaries of highly educated professionals.
Conservatives also count on the government to protect the patent
monopolies that allow Pfizer, Merck, and other big drug companies to
earn billions of dollars in profits each year.
Conservatives also count on the government to protect Microsoft’s
copyrights on Windows, allowing it to become one of the world’s most
profitable companies.
The same is the case with entertainment industry giants, like Disney
and Time-Warner.
The big hand of government chases into college dorm rooms and the
bedrooms of high school kids in search of unauthorized downloads of
their copyrighted material.
With the new bankruptcy law, conservatives enlisted the government’s
help in debt collection.
As a result of this law, the government will follow debtors for
decades in order to provide a helping hand to credit card companies
that made bad loans.
In a free market, lenders who are bad judges of credit risk lose
money, but when conservatives control the government, the banks just
run to the government for help.
There are many other areas of policy where conservatives have run to
the government in order to get a helping hand for businesses or those
already rich.
It is ridiculous to say that conservatives don’t like government.
They rely on the government to stay rich and get richer, as I point
out in my book, The Conservative Nanny State
[http://www.conservativenannystate.org/].
It is true that conservatives don’t like government programs that
benefit broad segments of the middle class and poor.
This is why they want to privatize Social Security, mismanaged the
Medicare drug benefit, and completely failed in their response to
Hurricane Katrina.
But no one should confuse their disdain for government social programs
with a dislike of government.
In areas that matter to conservatives, the government under President
Bush is doing just fine.
Pfizer and Merck are having their patent monopolies protected quite
well by the government.
In the same vein Microsoft and Disney can count on effective copyright
protection.
Highly paid cardiologists don’t have to worry about having their
salaries lowered by an influx of qualified foreign doctors.
And the credit card companies are getting the government’s help in
shaking down debtors.
When Halliburton stops getting its checks for military contracts, then
government will have failed conservatives.
Until that day, the Bush administration is doing just fine managing
government in the way that conservatives want it to be managed.
Conservatives would like us to believe that they are free market
individualists.
In reality, they are dependents of the nanny state.
____________________________________________________
Ya see? Right-wingers are truly hypocrites in the strictest sense of
the word.
Harry
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Right-wingers luuuuv big government as long as they can exploit it |
26 Aug 2006 07:20:01 PM |
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Harry Hope wrote:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0825-25.htm
These failures have led many to say that the incompetence is
attributable to the fact that Bush and other conservatives dislike
government, and therefore can't run it well.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
President Bush and other conservatives like government every bit as
much as any big-spending liberal.
The difference is on what the conservatives want the government to do.
Sure we discussed this recently - 'corporate welfare', shifting tax
burdens to the middle class.. etc.
Liberals and progressives think that government should be acting to
ensure the population a decent standard of living and provide it with
essential services like health care and education.
Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward.
This is done through a variety of mechanisms, the most obvious of
which are their tax policies, which favor upper income people.
But conservatives want the government to intervene in the market in a
wide variety of ways that have the effect of redistributing income
from those at the middle and the bottom to those at the top.
Conservatives promote a long list of government policies that shift
pre-tax income upward.
The most obvious is trade policy.
The conservative trade agenda is to put less educated workers (the 70
percent of the work force that lacks a college degree) in direct
competition with workers in developing countries like Mexico and
China.
This competition lowers the wages of workers in manufacturing,
construction, and many other sectors.
Pushing down the wages of these workers benefits the wealthy both by
increasing corporate profits and by making it cheaper for them to get
a wide range of services, like having their house painted or buying
restaurant meals.
A more progressive trade policy would focus on subjecting the most
highly paid workers to international competition: doctors, lawyers,
accountants.
Umm.. an unfortunate choice of verbiage here..
1) I see nothing 'progressive' about putting US workers out of work -
even the highly paid ones.
2) And it is happenening already.. high end US workers getting axed..
Check out architecture, medical, engineering, and legal sectors. This
is what I implied last week when I suggested to 'Captain Compassion'
that his next co-worker might be named Vikram.
3) Since the author appears to be in good standing with the progressive
left - I hasten to point out to our resident leftists that at least he
understands that millions of illegals pouring over the borders are
*not* good for the american worker nor for america. You all need to
get up to speed.
Conservatives would like us to believe that they are free market
individualists.
In reality, they are dependents of the nanny state.
...
Well.. actually many of them are (corporate) welfare cheats or just
flat-out crooks.
Here is a link to an interesting period piece on the subject:
Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corps:
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one
in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
Much more at:
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
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