Please ignore over simplifications and generalizations rooted in biased bigotries posted all over this website. If you're truly serious in trying to begin to understand the economic warfare being waged against our Western nations and the working class, you can begin by reading Noam Chomsky's books or, for starters, watch one of his many lectures posted on YouTube and decide for yourself. He isn't a light read and everything he reports is rooted in documented fact and not propaganda that caters to either left or right-wing biases. And, The Peoples History Of The United States by Howard Zinn should be required, basic reading for every American who cares about their heritage and history. Below is an article clip from one of our country's leading economic professors and writers on economic polices for the New York Times, generally a conservative paper.
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Paul Krugman Exposes Adam Smith’s Vile Maxim “of the Masters of Mankind”
Paul Krugman runs a superb half column-half blog through the aegis of The New York Times, which he calls "the conscious of a liberal."
He has a pretty hot new post-column on what he calls "the bankruptcy boys." It is worth reading.
He argues, essentially, that deficit hawks in the US, mostly right wing members of the GOP, have used tax cuts in order to fashion a deliberate fiscal crisis. This was used, from Reagan onwards, to compel downsizing in US welfare programs. All sorts of quasi philosophical rationales were used as a shield by the defenders of the bankruptcy boys, such as Nozick's entitlement theory of justice, mutual obligation, reciprocity and so on.
What is at operation here is something very simple, no philosophy is required, namely the supreme operative axiom of neoliberalism; Adam Smith's "the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
Krugman could have gone much further, though. Take say some pretty strong comments he makes in framing his thesis
...Voters may say that they oppose big government, but the programs that actually dominate federal spending — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — are very popular. So how can the public be persuaded to accept large spending cuts?
The conservative answer, which evolved in the late 1970s, would be dubbed “starving the beast” during the Reagan years. The idea — propounded by many members of the conservative intelligentsia, from Alan Greenspan to Irving Kristol — was basically that sympathetic politicians should engage in a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit...
He could have made two very important additional points. I'm sure he is aware of this, but his blog isn't run by the Wordpress server. There is only so much that The New York Times will let you get away with, even if you are Paul Krugman.
Those supply side tax cuts were heavily skewed towards the rich, especially during the era of Bush the Wrecker. So it is tax cuts for the rich that are behind Krugman's manufactured fiscal crisis, a crisis designed to hit social programs for the poor.
That's Adam Smith's "vile maxim of the masters of mankind", i.e. "all for ourselves and nothing for other people", precisely.
It should also be added that certain government programs were exempt from the budget cutters knife. We speak of course of such things as missile defence and military-industrial spending more broadly. These programs have always functioned as a type of "military-keynesianism", what the great US economist Hyman Minsky called a "permanent war economy." This type of spending has functioned as a public subsidy for high technology industry, remember market failure and the positive externality, and so constitutes a form of corporate welfare.
Newt Gingrich's old district illustrated this well. It was very much affluent based. It also received just about the most by way of government subsidy, in the military-keynesian sense, than any other district in the union. Because it was affluent it would not have received the type of spending on social programs typical of a democratic district based upon the urban working poor.
That's all the vile maxim. What is unique to the United States, and key to understanding a lot of what happens in America, is that the vile maxim operates in the world's most open democracy. It's not easy for the masters of mankind to pull off the vile maxim under this structural condition. That's why one observes what is sometimes called "intelligence failure."
The masters have managed to pull the vile maxim off, thus far.
For how much longer, I ask?
Filed under: Left Observer, Neoliberalism