What about an economy that works for the bottom 100%/
1. When were all entry level wages ever “living wages.” Even for the time? Let’s aim for a a rapidly growing full employment economy with an EITC to transfer ncome to low wage workers.
1. Before 1980. I note in the article how I had an easy time of paying my way through college because the five years of entry-level wages I earned in high school and college was enough to support me and pay for college. That is simply not possible today as demonstrated by my niece's extraordinary efforts to do the same in the late teens. This is going to the same college and living in the same campus neighborhoods I did forty years earlier. And the statistics tell the same story.
2. Having the higher entry-level wage facilitates the first step in the marriage process. The advice I would give to our foster kids and their children (our grandkids) to try to date guys who:
1. Have a job (so you know they aren't with you because they need you to support them)
2. Have their own place (so you know they aren't with you because they need a place to stay)
3. Have they own car (so you know they aren't with you because they need transportation)
Back in the day these three things were easily achieved with an entry level job. Decreasingly so after 1980.
4. Under our current shareholder primacy (SP) business culture prestige/success/status is largely based in the amount of money you or your company is worth. People talk about "creating value" as measured by market capitalization. This value can be considered as capital in a financial form. It is not capital is a *functional* sense as "that which when combined with resources and labor generates sales and profits."
I contend we would get better economic outcomes if we operated under the stakeholder capitalism (SC) culture in which it is functional capital that is accumulated rather than the financial variety.
This is such an interesting argument. Very persuasive. I wonder though about whether other paths/outcomes are possible once the economy crashes? It seems like there is a strong vein of rightwing thinking, sometimes summarized as ‘accelerationism’ that wants exactly what you are describing: the collapse of the economy — but not so as to restore SC, but so as to remake national and international finance to serve, well, a number of different potential purposes — one of which has to do with moving away from the dollar and all of the extraordinary complexities its role entails in world commerce and finance, and replacing it with one or another form of unregulated cryptocurrency — that is under the control of a small uber-elite (Muskreants, etc) that can consolidate control over this new form of transactional/mafioso-type wealth and power, and proceed to roll-out their fever dreams of ‘supremacist survivalism’ and/or whatever else.
Or, in other words, this is not Hoover’s America. And the person or people taking over from Trump might have very different agendas from those of an FDR analogue. I feel like this verges on conspiracy theory and all that, but there are a growing number of analysts who are sounding the alarm about the real possibility of a new, baldy illiberal, fascist dispensation being created.
So, are you laying out a ‘best case’ scenario? If so, what are the most likely and/or plausible other scenarios that could follow on Trump achieving #4 on the list?
My thinking is the fact that Trump backed off on the tariffs when markets reacted shows that some semblance of political gravity still exists.
A big difference between Trump and other initially elected authoritarians is that they had their own political party that they had led from the beginning of its existence. Trump entered Republican politics in 2011 as a Birther and was granted legitimacy by Mitt Romney in 2012. This allowed him to run in 2015 as a legitimate Republican candidate. He was able to use his considerable self-marketing talents (he had a personal brand decades before it was a thing) to rise to leader of the party and then win the president, which made him the leader until such time as he chooses to retire.
But it is not his party. It had existed for more than 150 years before he came on the scene. Those who follow him are not all true believes as Hitler’s inner circle were. Even at the end of the war the German high command remained loyal unable to break free of their belief in Hitler’s genius.
These were not the “low human capital” MAGA faithful but competent military leaders who were simply brainwashed by Hitler's charisma. The competent staff who serve Trump still do so because they believe doing so best advances their career. They are simply backing a winning horse. If inflationary forces manifest, while the economy goes into recession, as happened in 1973 we should expect a serious bear market. The market would have to fall more than 60% further to get the peak value of the market in 1973, from which the market then fell 45%. Such a large decline, should it happen, could trigger financial crisis, as could other things like a run on the dollar. In such an environment Trump’s approval would collapse. Those who are backing a horse, will now be going down with the ship and will likely abandon MAGA. The Republican party would likely survive, it would simply do so without Trump.
What I am getting at it I do not believe there are a sufficient number of capable men who truly believe in Trump’s genius to carry out the restructuring you fear. What we have is different groups with different agendas who already sometimes work at cross-purposes now when times are good. What happens when things are crashing all around them?
What about an economy that works for the bottom 100%/
1. When were all entry level wages ever “living wages.” Even for the time? Let’s aim for a a rapidly growing full employment economy with an EITC to transfer ncome to low wage workers.
2. Yes, but how?
3. ? Maybe
4. ?
1. Before 1980. I note in the article how I had an easy time of paying my way through college because the five years of entry-level wages I earned in high school and college was enough to support me and pay for college. That is simply not possible today as demonstrated by my niece's extraordinary efforts to do the same in the late teens. This is going to the same college and living in the same campus neighborhoods I did forty years earlier. And the statistics tell the same story.
2. Having the higher entry-level wage facilitates the first step in the marriage process. The advice I would give to our foster kids and their children (our grandkids) to try to date guys who:
1. Have a job (so you know they aren't with you because they need you to support them)
2. Have their own place (so you know they aren't with you because they need a place to stay)
3. Have they own car (so you know they aren't with you because they need transportation)
Back in the day these three things were easily achieved with an entry level job. Decreasingly so after 1980.
4. Under our current shareholder primacy (SP) business culture prestige/success/status is largely based in the amount of money you or your company is worth. People talk about "creating value" as measured by market capitalization. This value can be considered as capital in a financial form. It is not capital is a *functional* sense as "that which when combined with resources and labor generates sales and profits."
I contend we would get better economic outcomes if we operated under the stakeholder capitalism (SC) culture in which it is functional capital that is accumulated rather than the financial variety.
This is such an interesting argument. Very persuasive. I wonder though about whether other paths/outcomes are possible once the economy crashes? It seems like there is a strong vein of rightwing thinking, sometimes summarized as ‘accelerationism’ that wants exactly what you are describing: the collapse of the economy — but not so as to restore SC, but so as to remake national and international finance to serve, well, a number of different potential purposes — one of which has to do with moving away from the dollar and all of the extraordinary complexities its role entails in world commerce and finance, and replacing it with one or another form of unregulated cryptocurrency — that is under the control of a small uber-elite (Muskreants, etc) that can consolidate control over this new form of transactional/mafioso-type wealth and power, and proceed to roll-out their fever dreams of ‘supremacist survivalism’ and/or whatever else.
Or, in other words, this is not Hoover’s America. And the person or people taking over from Trump might have very different agendas from those of an FDR analogue. I feel like this verges on conspiracy theory and all that, but there are a growing number of analysts who are sounding the alarm about the real possibility of a new, baldy illiberal, fascist dispensation being created.
So, are you laying out a ‘best case’ scenario? If so, what are the most likely and/or plausible other scenarios that could follow on Trump achieving #4 on the list?
My thinking is the fact that Trump backed off on the tariffs when markets reacted shows that some semblance of political gravity still exists.
A big difference between Trump and other initially elected authoritarians is that they had their own political party that they had led from the beginning of its existence. Trump entered Republican politics in 2011 as a Birther and was granted legitimacy by Mitt Romney in 2012. This allowed him to run in 2015 as a legitimate Republican candidate. He was able to use his considerable self-marketing talents (he had a personal brand decades before it was a thing) to rise to leader of the party and then win the president, which made him the leader until such time as he chooses to retire.
But it is not his party. It had existed for more than 150 years before he came on the scene. Those who follow him are not all true believes as Hitler’s inner circle were. Even at the end of the war the German high command remained loyal unable to break free of their belief in Hitler’s genius.
https://youtu.be/3Uc4_ATDjoU?t=249
These were not the “low human capital” MAGA faithful but competent military leaders who were simply brainwashed by Hitler's charisma. The competent staff who serve Trump still do so because they believe doing so best advances their career. They are simply backing a winning horse. If inflationary forces manifest, while the economy goes into recession, as happened in 1973 we should expect a serious bear market. The market would have to fall more than 60% further to get the peak value of the market in 1973, from which the market then fell 45%. Such a large decline, should it happen, could trigger financial crisis, as could other things like a run on the dollar. In such an environment Trump’s approval would collapse. Those who are backing a horse, will now be going down with the ship and will likely abandon MAGA. The Republican party would likely survive, it would simply do so without Trump.
What I am getting at it I do not believe there are a sufficient number of capable men who truly believe in Trump’s genius to carry out the restructuring you fear. What we have is different groups with different agendas who already sometimes work at cross-purposes now when times are good. What happens when things are crashing all around them?