In order to recover the debilitated political and economic rights of the American middle class, Constitutional Amendments are needed. In recent months, we can observe that democracies throughout the West are having their economic and social policies effectively dictated by the bond markets, and by the capital markets in general. Democracy has been perverted by greed, and not only on the part of the elites.
It is evident that only by putting the mass of people back in control of their governments – at least to the extent they had such influence in the 20th Century – can a better future for the majority be achieved. This means removing political control from the hands of the 1% who control the capital markets. This can be done within the framework of the U.S. Constitution with a handful of amendments that re-emphasize the priority of justice and individual rights over wealth and power, in keeping with the values of the Framers. Democracy has meant and should continue to mean a form of economic and social justice, not a shadow dance where the rich rob the poor.
The 1% led the stunning bailout of Wall Street, in which American taxpayers transferred about $1.5 trillion to failing financial institutions, to forestall a complete freeze on credit in international finance. Things got very chilly for a month or two, but in principle the system, such as it is, recovered. There was not only government acquiescence in this substantial, if temporary, transfer of wealth from taxpayers to Wall Street; the government also assumed the risk that if the bailout failed, the transfer would be permanent. We are fortunate that the bailout succeeded, that at least half of the transferred funds have been repaid, and that, for example, we still have a domestic auto industry.
Now Europe confronts a similar economic dilemma, but is less able to bail out its capitalists because there is no facility with the ability to tax and print Euros that is willing to do so, unlike our own Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank. The European Central Bank is in the hands of superstitious pre-Keynesians who appear ready to run Europe into the ground.
But the question remains as to what kind of system we have saved here in the USA? It would appear to be one in which the poor have been coerced into subsidizing the rich, and nothing in the putative democratic process holds out a prospect of redressing the historic imbalance of rights and privileges we are now witnessing. The significant rights of the mass population, as they evolved through blood, sweat, and tears from the mid-18th Century to near the last Millennium, were guided by a (not unbroken) series of ethically enlightened elites, starting with the Founding Fathers and running through the Roosevelts. But those rights have clearly been compromised by a corrupt class of elites in the last 25 years. Moral disintegration can occur quickly! A good part of 250 years of progress has been flushed down the drain in a generation.
Now that the grass roots have spoken through the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party, it is time for those among our Country’s elites who can still see right from wrong to step forward and enunciate a program of reform. Possibilities for reform would include:
- The criminalization of speculative investment on credit swaps and futures, being those where a significant, directly held interest is not being hedged
- The imposition of exclusively public funding in national and state-wide election campaigns
- The criminalization of lobbying the Congress by parties other than individuals with a significant, vested interest in the issue they are lobbying on
- The confiscatory taxation of salaries beyond some reasonable limit in the low millions
- A new tax on all financial investment transactions.
If you think that people will not invest in business and attempt to accumulate wealth no matter what the barriers may be, you are foolish. Yet the privileges that flow from wealth have gotten out of hand in the USA and they are in dire need of being trimmed back. Some of the above could be done through legislation, but if the Temperance movement could pass a Constitutional Amendment, so can Occupy Wall Street. If it takes 50 years, so what? History will hardly blink. Deeply corrupt elites gave us the Third Reich. Moderately corrupt elites have given us our present situation. I am not comparing the two beyond suggesting that the deeper the corruption, the deeper the wounds.
It appears that young people may be laying the groundwork for beneficial change. If Obama does not have the imagination to propose reforms to reign in the Masters of Our Universe, who will step forward with a plan that can capture the allegiance of a solid majority? No civilization thrives without hope. Where will our leadership come from? Government must control the behavior of capitalists, not vice versa.
