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Carnage & Other Alternative Facts
PLUS THE MOST DISHONEST HUMAN
world view
The Rich Are Worried
By Pete McCommons editor@flagpole.com
Writing a weekly newspaper column these
days is like shooting at clay pigeons: The
targets just keep on coming and changing.
Last Friday, it was the inauguration and
President Trump’s dark speech about an
America sunk in the carnage of poverty,
crime and ignorance. By that evening, the
topic was the great rally here at City Hall
and the march. Saturday, the fabulous
women’s marches in Washington as well as
here and in Atlanta and many other cities
in America and around the world grabbed
our attention. That same day, the president
started a counter-punch with an argument
over the size of the inauguration crowd
that by the Sunday morning talk shows had
grabbed attention away from the marches.
Empowered by their official positions,
the president and his mouthpiece Kellyanne
Conway lie boldly and attack those who
question their “alternative facts,” as pro
mulgated by their bullying press secretary,
who lies and then warns the press not to
question him. Along the way, in his ram
bling speech to the CIA, the president says
of the media, “They are among the most
dishonest human beings on earth.”
Let’s be clear about what has happened.
The United States Congress at any time
during the last eight years could have fixed
deficiencies in the Affordable Care Act or
come up with a better plan. But congressio
nal leaders were sworn not to do anything
that would give President Obama credit,
and congressional leaders do not believe
in guaranteeing affordable insurance to all
Americans.
Republicans do not believe people have
a right to health care unless they have the
means to pay whatever premiums insurance
companies demand and are in good health.
People who cannot afford health insurance
or have pre-existing health problems just
fall into that unfortunate group of losers
who cannot expect to be carried by those
who have succeeded. We all will have access
to health insurance only if we can afford
it—and the cost will be high indeed for
those who need insurance most.
BEINGS ON EARTH, PERIOD
The Affordable Care Act is emblematic
of the Republican approach to government.
Congress, at any time during the last eight
years, could have funded the rebuilding of
our crumbling infrastructure—bridges,
roads, railroads, tunnels, airports—creating
jobs at the same time. Congress did not do
this, because done right it would involve
raising the tax money necessary to pay for
such a massive project of public works, and
Congress doesn’t want to understand how
that money would come back to us through
the enhanced economy.
Congress at any time during the last
eight years could have addressed the prob
lems of the Rust Belt,
the rush offshore
to avoid corporate
taxes, the high cost
of college and all the
problems created by
a system of taxation
that favors the rich
and penalizes the rest
of us.
The Congress is
based on a decade
of gerrymandering
that assures control
by a minority of our
country, just as state
legislatures are rigged
to assure Republican
control.
The result over the
last eight years has
been policy, or lack of
it, designed to inflict
the greatest possible
hurt upon our own citizens (except the
rich) and to blame that hurt on President
Obama, so that our citizens would be
clamoring for deliverance, for change. The
Republicans could not see that their care
fully calculated policy would pay off with
Donald Trump, but they are happy enough
to embrace him and to let him take the
glare of the spotlight, while they lick their
chops over the prospect of finally getting
everything they want—total control.
Now they can enact their ideology. Now
they can further cut taxes on the rich,
while cutting services wherever possible—
services that support the health and infra
structure needs of our citizens, along with
education, cultural enrichment, environ
mental protection, minimum wages, the
right to vote—anything that would put a
burden on or limit the power of the rich.
In short, the totally Republican-
controlled national government will become
much more like our Georgia government,
where corporate taxes are low, and services
for citizens are lower.
Even in Athens our local government
has been hamstrung by a conservatism
that does not match what the majority in
Athens want.
We’ve got a lot of work to do, especially
here at home. We have demonstrated a lot
of good, positive energy, and we need to be
carefully thoughtful about how we continue
to build on it. ©
By Gwynne Dyer news@flagpole.com
“I can’t wait to see how the incoming
administration deals with AI [artificial
intelligence],” said then-U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry, in a less-than-gracious
reference to the fact that the Trump team
hasn’t got a clue about the real driving force
in the changing world economy.
What was striking was that Kerry didn’t
have to clarify his remark for the 2,000
“global leaders”—politicians, bureaucrats,
business representatives and public intellec
tuals—who were in the Swiss alpine town
of Davos for the annual World
Economic Forum. They all
know what he’s talking about.
This year’s Davos gather
ing was focused on the rise of
populism and simple-minded
attacks on globalization
(Donald Trump, Brexit). That’s
only to be expected, since the
world’s ultra-rich are poten
tially threatened by that sort
of thing. But they didn’t get
rich by being stupid, and they
have a fairly sophisticated
analysis of what’s causing it.
The headline event on
the first day of Davos was an
hourlong speech by China’s
President Xi Jinping in which
he laid claim to the leadership
role on free trade, globalization
and the struggle to contain
climate change that is being
abandoned by the U.S. under
Trump. His main concern was
to fight the rise of protection
ism. “No one will emerge as a
winner in a trade war,” he said.
But Xi didn’t go into the
sources of the anger that fuels
the populist revolt (for China
is not a democratic country,
and it hasn’t happened there yet). Kerry
did get into it, and he went well beyond the
usual platitudes about rising unemploy
ment and underemployment, stagnating
wages and the widening gulf between the
rich and the rest. “Trade is not to blame for
job losses,” he said. Automation is.
Quite a few American manufacturing
jobs did go abroad in the early stages of glo
balization in the 1980s and ’90s, but that’s
old news. Eighty-five percent of the almost
6 million American manufacturing jobs that
disappeared between 2000-2010 did not go
anywhere; they just evaporated. The work
ers were replaced by tireless, uncomplain
ing machines that could do their jobs more
cheaply.
Although Kerry did not mention it, the
same thing is now happening in China:
Relatively cheap Chinese labor is still
more expensive than the automation that
replaces it. Even in India, where wages are
lower still, there is now talk of “premature
deindustrialization.”
So Donald Trump is barking up the
wrong tree, as are the other populists
emerging all across Europe, and their emu
lators who are beginning to appear in the
developing world. Why do they all persist in
blaming free trade and globalization instead
of automation? Because you can’t do any
thing about automation.
If you are a politician, then, it’s better
to blame globalization, because you can do
something about that. You can build walls,
impose tariffs, make all sorts of impressive
gestures to stop the free trade that is alleg
edly destroying the good jobs. Or, more
precisely, you can win political power by
claiming that you will do those things and
thereby solve the problem.
Whereas nobody will believe you if you
say that automation is what is really chang
ing the economy, and so you are going to
stop the automation. That’s Luddism, and
everybody (or at least, everybody at Davos)
knows that that doesn’t work. So the rich
and the powerful are way out ahead of the
pack in accepting that growing automation
really is going to destroy large numbers of
jobs.
A recent Citibank research note forecasts
that automation will eliminate 57 percent
of all existing jobs in developed countries
within the next 20 years. In China, 77
percent of manufacturing jobs are at risk
over the same period. And the notion that
the economy will create other, better jobs
to replace them is just a comforting myth.
Most of the new jobs that are being created
are McJobs.
If more than half the workforce ends up
unemployed—and therefore humiliated and
broke—then their anger will be so great
that it could sweep away the comfortable
world of the ultra-rich. Which is why there
were sessions at Davos this year considering
radical ideas like a “universal basic income.”
To stop the populism, first you have to deal
with the anger. ©
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FLAGPOLE.COM | JANUARY 25, 2017