Now that we recognize that markets must be closely regulated and even Bush accepts that banks will have to be partly nationalized, we can, with the next administration also concern ourselves with market outcomes, i.e. who wins, who loses, the prime concern of
socialism
I don't mean that the government should choose corporate winners and losers, but that the next administration (led by Obama, I hope), should use market interference and government intervention to correct the terrible imbalance in wages, income and wealth that has developed in this nation especially since Ronald Reagan.
To go the other way, with a McCain administration with more lower taxes for the wealthy and more unregulated markets would lead to a police state not unlike the last years of the Roman Empire.
(click here for
the fall of Rome.)
An Obama administration should encourage unions through the check-off legislation, so that workers will again have a real choice of whether to unionize or not, and can gain the protections that most of them want (large majorities of workers say they would prefer to have a union represent them in the workplace) as well as a larger share of the productivity gains now going almost entirely to Wall Street and management.
Insuring that trade works to the advantage of all Americans, not just corporate owners, should be another task of socialism: tax subsidies for exporting jobs should not only be rescinded but turned into penalties, and all trade agreements must include strong protections for workers and the environment: otherwise, no deal.
Tax policy should be driven consciously by the need to redress the huge imbalance in incomes and wealth; taxes should be progressive, in some cases even as steeply progressive as they were under Eisenhower (a top tax bracket paying 70% of income above the cutoff). Was Eisenhower a socialist? He didn't dare say so, but in fact he was, albeit a moderate one who accepted most of the policies of Roosevelt and Truman.
Click here
for page on taxes.
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While many economic functions should continue to be provided by private businesses, there are some that should be returned to the governments: education, prisons, security, intelligence, military services, election tabulation--these should all be publicly provided, not contracted out to private companies. In the case of education, schools and colleges, there would still be private institutions, of course, competing with public schooling. But the move to privatize everything must be reversed. Right now, half of all the work done by the National Security Agency is contracted out to private companies. That's crazy! And there are more private contractors in Iraq, paid for by you and me at wildly inflated wages, than there are US servicemen and women. That's the Bush/Cheney/Grover Norquist vision, and it hasn't worked.
Further, there are some functions now partially provided, very efficiently, by public institutions, like health insurance (Medicare may not be perfect, but its costs are very low--given its high cost elderly and disabled population--compared to private insurance). Health insurance should be entirely government operated--a single-payer system. People would pay into it in lieu of the insurance premiums they would otherwise pay, but they would pay in taxes, not premiums, and costs would go down dramatically. Only the method of payment would change for patients. They would still be able to go to whichever doctor or clinic they preferred. However, drugs, doctors and hospitals would have to be much more closely regulated, to keep costs down more effectively than the free-for-all epitomized in the Republican-crafted Medicare Schedule D. In that amendment to the law, Medicare cannot even negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. No wonder it's edging towards bankruptcy! And HMO's are paid far more than their costs. That's socialism without responsibility.
Yes, I advocate socialism (with a small 's'), in that government would see its primary responsibility once again as being the welfare of all the people, not just the few at the top.
The time for a return to the tried (and proven true) approaches of the "socialist" New Deal is NOW! Now when the economy has been brought to its knees by unregulated markets, spendthrift privatization, and exploding inequality.
What America needs is a return to an economy in which people are paid decently for their work, and then have money to spend (and do not have to borrow on credit cards or home loans) for the goods and services they need and want. That's socialism, too, because it won't be achieved without large-scale government intervention, but that's what the US--and the world--needs, a mass consumption society based on wages, not on credit.
A perverse socialism has been practiced all along, even under Bush W, when government massively subsidized oil and coal companies (directly through sweetheart contracts and indirectly through defense expenditures and environmental neglect). Now government should withdraw all those subsidies (direct and indirect) in favor of somewhat smaller subsidies (less are needed) for developing and exploiting alternative energies.
So, yes, socialism would lead to the US slowly withdrawing its massive presence all over the globe: with solar, wind and non-food bio-fuel, our national interest would no longer require that we alone patrol the oil lanes around the world, and maintain a presence in oil producing regions. Think of all the money that would save (not that defense contractors wouldn't kick and scream, and try to defend their government teat with high priced lobbying)!
Socialism would not mean the disappearance of Microsoft or GM, or GE, but they would have to adapt to new conditions. One of those should be: government's prevention of monopoly profits through strong antitrust enforcement. Ironically, in the kind of socialism I envision, markets would work much more efficiently, and prices would come down, because large firms like Microsoft would not be allowed to hold everyone up for monopoly profits.
Now, when unregulated markets have proven unstable, and are now only beginning to respond to robust government action, now is the time for a new administration to act forcefully, decisively and to legislate and administer a new socialism, whatever we call it. Obamaism? We need a new model, updated for the twenty first century, in which the best of markets and of government action will build a more humane and beneficent American, and global, society.
