When the Founding fathers approved the U.S. Constitution they left in place the institution of slavery and with it, a national divide so deep that it took five years of war and immense loss of life and property to begin to correct the problem of slavery. The American Civil War was about problems left unsettled when the Constitution was adopted.
The standard historical view of the situation is that opponents of slavery had no choice but to accept slavery in the south because the problems inherit in the weakly confederated colonies were too grave for the colonies to survive without a stronger federal government. The issue of slavery had to be put aside until later for the better of the foundering nation. This was a wise decision, unless you were among the enslaved.
We may be approaching a similar point of conflict over the future of the nation’s economic structure. The coming together of the economic crash, the drive for government health care, and the push to fight global warming are coalescing with demands to redistribute the nation’s wealth.
I write this following a week of what was billed as mostly good economic news; the economic collapse appears to be slowing, except for job losses. That is, of course, both a matter of how you interpret the numbers and what numbers you use. Former Secretary of Labor and now professor of Economics, Robert Reich, gave as succinct a statement as I have heard on yesterday’s This Week, “The best that can be said is we’re getting worse more slowly.”
Our nation still has to manage the trillion dollar plus debt disguised as stimulus that the President claims is miraculously curing the economy, though very little of that stimulus has been spent. And for that matter, the President continues to ignore the reality that economies are cyclical, meaning they go up after they bottom out, even without help and often despite intervention. Further, the nation approached this economic crisis with staggering debts that still exist, a weak financial system that has not been fixed, and an ever worsening competitive position relative to the emerging Asian economies.
There is a lot in our economy to be nervous about.
Have you ever heard the expression, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence?” The meaning is that people often fail to value what they have; all the while believing that what someone else has is preferable. Many Americans believe that the economic grass in Europe is greener, or more precisely, more secure. A lot of Americans yearn for that illusion of security and will happily trade away the opportunities for prosperity to achieve that security.
Whether you term this wealth redistribution, Democratic Socialism, or creating a greater safety net, restructuring the U.S. economy is what the health care debate, cap & trade, and a variety of other of our current issues are really about. Large segments of the U.S. electorate are demanding major economic changes, all while capitalists sit on their, um…wallets.
If the proponents of this Democratic Socialism don’t succeed with heath care reform they will try again. Capitalism has created many victims; people guilty of nothing more than wanting a steady job. There are a lot of angry people in this country. I often advance the argument that these people need to prepare themselves better for economic hard times, and take responsibility on themselves, because I believe that capitalism, despite the hard times, is the best economic system possible. But many Americans disagree with capitalism, and as a result, efforts to redistribute wealth, including Socialism and Communism, have deep roots in the U.S. The demands to replace capitalism have been simmering at least since the Industrial Revolution reached America.
Defeating health care reform won’t be enough for capitalists. There is too much of a demand for an economic system without losers, regardless of how much that system will reduce prosperity. In fact, defeating health care may work a lot like accepting slavery worked for the Founding Fathers. It will bury the problems deeper while the simmer turns to a boil and from a boil into an explosion. If we want to save capitalism in the United States, in fact, if we want to save the United States’ freedoms as we know them today, we are going to need to create a better form of capitalism. As Lincoln qouted the Bible on the danger of disunion, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
If you know what that better form of capitalism is, please let me know.
{ 3 comments }
HELL YEAH OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!
So our prosperity depends on there being economic losers? Sounds like you’re arguing for kleptocracy. There will always be economic losers, but abject poverty and expensive and ineffective healthcare don’t make us prosperous–our human capital does. The poor are a drain on us all, so we should minimize the factors that keep them poor.
I doubt that it’s as simple as “leaving in the ‘problem’ of slavery.”
The country was young, slavery was fashionable in the North as well as in the South. Please don’t bore us with another rendition of the “Southern problem.” The North today, is steeped in a kind of Pharisaical, aren’t-we-so-much-better-than-those-Southern-Publicans that they make me want to puke; sadly, in the North are worse racists because they’ve looked at the green grass on the other side of the fence and attempted to direct the growers and mowers how to do their jobs…without much success.
Now we’ve got 1/2 of a representative of a native African (who was never slave material) as the “leader” of the free world…someone who can’t find his economic stick, his everybody-can-pay-for-everyone-else’s-medical-problems stick, or even his fix-it stick: golly, who would’ve thunk it? How can one lead without a stick? Maybe he thought he’d stick it to us? No, those who stick around him (flypaper does attract flies, after all) are the ones who want to stick it to us and use him as their leader. Not trying to be a stick in the mud, but his form of socio-capitalism just isn’t the shtick.