Maybe We Should Ask Republicans What They Mean When They Talk About Economic Growth

Marco Rubio is the latest “rising star” in a dying party to espouse the empty and pointless rhetoric of American conservativism.  The text of his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech is here.

Marco Rubio

Understanding what conservatives have in mind when they talk about America’s future and economic growth requires holding their rhetoric accountable to the facts.

The simple fact is we have lower taxes, fewer regulations, and more wealth in the hands of job creators than at any other time in recent history.  If GOP rhetoric were anywhere near the truth, we should be awash in new jobs and prosperity.  But we are not.

Rubio claims that large government and taxes that promise to help the middle class has “failed every time it has been tried.” Well, that is true if you forget mid-century America or turn a blind eye to the strength of European countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Germany.

Republicans like to say President Obama is anti-private sector, but the Obama administration overall accommodates the private sector quite well.  Obama went out of his way to remind us that the private sector is the key to prosperity.  In today’s political wars, however, the messenger is more important than the message.  Again, perhaps it is time to look at facts, not rhetoric.

We currently have the tax cuts, less government, and fewer regulations.  The wealthiest — the job creators — have seen their wealth increase by over 60% in the last decade.  So…keep asking…where are the jobs?  Where is the prosperity?  Where is the answer to these questions?

A classic worth repeating…because it is so true.

Rubio also says our financial problems begin with a country that spends too much, spends a trillion more than it takes in.  While that certainly is a problem, it is hard to see why this isn’t a funding problem.  We cut taxes with the idea that wealth would trickle down.  The increased overall prosperity would bring in increased revenues, the argument went, and that would cover the lower tax rates.  But as we see, that does not happen.

Moreover, Republicans — by giving even more cuts and subsidies, adding Medicare prescriptions benefits, and a few ill-advised wars — added to our financial unmet financial burdens.  Let’s not forget doing absolutely nothing to address the core issues behind the banking crisis that put us here in the first place and thus added even more to our deficits.

Yes…it is all the fault of government too big, isn’t it?  Hardly.  It is a mismanaged government finance policy that erroneously puts the blame on government generally.  Simply put, if you manage government to fail, it will likely fail.  It can’t be any more plain than that.

However, when Rubio argued that annual GDP growth at 4% would be a big part of helping balancing our books…he was right!  That’s why notable experts like Paul Krugman make the case for government stimulus to push economic growth.  It will be much easier to pay down the cost of this stimulus — and more — if we have ten years of growth versus doing nothing, as we are doing now, and let things remain stagnate.

(But Krugman, and others like him, is an expert.  He’s intelligent and informed.  He has spent his career understanding economics.  So he must be wrong.)

Anyway…this is all so tiresome.  What is it that Republicans want that we don’t have right now?  Are they really concerned about jobs or just growth?  And who are they anyway?  Millions of people vote GOP in this country as if those votes serve their interests.  Why?

I ask this because we should ask what exactly do conservatives have in mind when they talk about growth and prosperity.  The rank and file Republican voter certainly doesn’t understand this question.  If it simply is growth, especially for the wealthiest, Republicans have that and lots of it.  If they are talking about middle class growth and prosperity then things are not so clear.

Rubio served up a rambling list of tired complaints and clichéd promises that simply do not fit the facts of conservative principles.  They are intentionally misleading the public and misrepresenting their true objectives.  It is hard to understand how an informed and intelligent person could see things otherwise.  Show us some progress on the conservative agenda first, then may you have an argument that the less-is-more approach is a winning one.

If Rubio is a rising star representing the future of the Republican Party, there isn’t much to excite people expecting a more moderate and sensible GOP.  We have heard all of this before.  (We haven’t forgotten the 2012 elections already, have we?)

Alas, this is looking more and more like class warfare to me.  The conservative elite are pushing for more by demanding that the rest live with less…and pay for the privilege.  Conservatives have focused on dismantling government for nearly 30 years now.  It is the “Starve the Beast” argument and, unfortunately, it is winning and most Americans are losing.

How do conservatives address this fact?  How does their rhetoric square with reality?  It is time to ask more about what does a prospering America really look like in the ideal GOP world.

Related articles

• Translating Obama’s State of the Union and Rubio’s Response (usnews.com)
• What Marco Rubio Doesn’t Understand About Debt And The Economy (thinkprogress.org)
• Rubio’s economic remedy: More austerity! (tv.msnbc.com)

GOP Fail

Have Republicans offered a plan?

The GOP — a group of people who claim to be concerned about deficits — sure have an odd way of dealing with it.

Economic growth, not spending cuts and tax increases, will do more to solve our fiscal woes than misguided less-is-more strategy.  Republicans are unwilling to tolerate a deficit, which would be part of the wisest solution, and they won’t tolerate any tax increases.  So where is the GOP solution?

Behind all of this is a GOP strategy to gut government.  This failing solution is the means to their ultimate goal:  Less government.  If the middle and working class suffer for it, so be it.  They will have to learn to live with less in a GOP future anyway.

But conservatives don’t even have their own best interests in mind.  Certainly the wealthiest among the conservative constituency can tolerate economic hardship better than most.  ”Hardship” is a relative experience, after all.   But then again the wealthiest — those funding the misinformation campaign — have enjoyed unprecedented gains…historic personal gains.  Does this surprise the conservative rabble?  Apparently not.

And to “compromise” by insisting that you get all you ask and more, is not compromise.  House Republicans act as if they have a corner on political support.  They don’t.  In the end we have a combination of bad ideas, bad politics, and bad people.

A stronger economic future will serve all best, rich and poor alike.  If the wealthiest of the fortunate gain at a slightly slower pace in the near future, in the long term things look better after years of robust economic growth versus a stagnate economy that runs with fits and starts.

Look at it this way:  Would you rather be middle class today or in 1960?  We have all been better off because of economic growth, not because of smaller government and less taxes.

Smart people understand this and the GOP is not smart people.  To propose that the blame for our economic crisis is shared evenly across the political spectrum is part of our current problem.  We have experienced the failure of GOP priorities for years (anyone happy with where we are today?) and to ask for more of the same is reckless and harmful.

Ultimately the GOP position really is all about undoing the welfare state.  They want to reduce the social programs and safety nets that supported America’s strong economic growth.  Thus you often hear conservatives muddle the picture by talking of independent — and solvent — programs like Social Security, something, by the way, they want to change, too, regardless of its true impact on deficit and our economic malaise.  It is important to keep this in mind.  This “debate” is about more than our economic future, it is all about our social future as well.

So in the end we all lose.  Higher taxes, lost value in investments (watch tomorrow’s stock market), and a divided, dysfunctional government.  The change starts with voters.  If you care about the future, stop supporting the failed extreme positions taken by today’s tea-drunk Republican Party.

Related articles

• Put the Blame Where it Belongs…On the Shoulders of the GOP (alittletourinyellow.wordpress.com)
• Why the GOP Won’t Admit That Supply-Side Economics Has Failed (economistsview.typepad.com)
• Conservative activist says GOP will lose its soul if House votes for ‘surrender’ on taxes (thehill.com)
• Brewing Up Confusion (nytimes.com)

 

Bulls, not Bull Shit: The Fiscal Cliff Distraction

Bulls, not Bull Shit.

Concern about the Fiscal Cliff is all fine.  We need to get things in order.  But debates and negotiations about the problem seem to amount to little more than opportunities to take up political positions and reinforce political identities.  Everyone gets there fifteen minutes of fame…over and over and over again.  It is frustrating.

The “Fiscal Cliff” is indeed a problem that needs attention, but it looks more and more like a publicity stunt.  First of all, the problem is entirely avoidable.  Secondly, if you look at the overall condition of the economy, the Fiscal Cliff problem is entwined with secondary, not primary, problems tied to our economic crisis.  Moreover, a combination of tax increases and budget cuts won’t resolve our budget and economic crises.  The numbers don’t add up.  But if you listen to politicians, it is both the problem and eventual solution to our economic woes.

Enough of the BS…

What will correct the deficit problem is a growing economy.  Get strong economic growth combined with responsible fiscal management and the problem will be resolved.

Conservatives argue that we need to ensure that “job creators” have money so they will hire workers.  We all agree that jobs is a good thing and critical to economic recovery.  However the so-called job creators have money — top corporations are sitting on huge reserves and recovering relatively well — and we have the tax cuts, but we don’t have the jobs.  I harp on this often here.  Job creators won’t create jobs simply because they have money.  Business doesn’t succeed by being a charity, right?

Until someone can show how giving business more money will create more demand, let’s stop with that failed and unsupportable argument.

Taxpayers, however, can invest in jobs.  Can’t afford it, you say?  Yes we can.  We can also choose to deficit spend….yes, borrow against the future.  But unlike you or I, government faces different economic realities, especially the United States government.  Don’t take my word for it, check with a Nobel Prize-winning economist and others.

Tax increases and budget cuts are feel good solutions to a long-term, systematic problem that tax increases and budget cuts alone won’t resolve.  Drop in the bucket, short-term fix, if it is indeed a fix.  (If our economy tumbles into recession again, it is the opposite of a fix, correct?)

The real issue isn’t the cliff, but rather how we as taxpayers will choose to invest in our future.  The small-government, tax cutting Republicans don’t seem to have our best interests in mind.  What they want, we have…and we have had it through the course of this crisis.  If the conservative answer was the right answer, we should expect things to turn around.  They haven’t.  Better, more sophisticated understanding of the problem needs to address the long term health of our economy.  Demand better.

Related articles

• Raise the Taxes (alittletourinyellow.wordpress.com)
• What’s Wrong With The Republican Fiscal Cliff Counteroffer (bloomberg.com)
• Obama: No deal on ‘fiscal cliff’ without higher tax rates for the wealthy (newsday.com)
• GOP ‘fiscal cliff’ plan echoes failed budget talks (news.yahoo.com)
• The Definition of Insanity Is… (psychologytoday.com)

Raise the Taxes

Two reasons why we should raise taxes.  First, there is little evidence that keeping taxes low will lead to faster economic growth.  Second, we NEED to raise the taxes.

Let’s start with the need.  Over recent decades this country — largely under conservative principles — has managed to under-fund government even as it raised costs (wars, medicare benefits, tax cuts).

Grover Norquist is the news quite a bit recently for his simple-minded anti-tax pledge.  We need to be aware of this.  In the church of small government, Norquist is pope and too many conservatives bend down to kiss his papal ring.

All these so-called independent and intelligent conservatives cower before Norquist.  Impressive.  And it is important to be aware of the pledge, but the goal of the pledge is the real concern.

Lower taxes are not necessarily bad, in fact everyone would agree that lower taxes would be a good thing, if the tax rate were fiscally responsible.  However Grover Norquist’s goal is smaller government for the sake of smaller government.   Conservatives don’t cut government programs because it is a necessary and unfortunate evil, they cut government because less government is their long term goal.

Not Relevant

Why, for example, do Republicans propose raising the age of Medicare benefits qualification?  Because they want less Medicare, if they must have it at all.  (Curious coming from a party that ran against Obama just two months ago warning that Obama would eliminate Medicare!  Truth and facts mean nothing to the misleading political right.   It’s disgraceful.)

So why reduce the taxes?  The argument goes that it will create jobs and growth.  Republicans will tell you that jobs and growth are their long term goal.  If we have growth, tax revenues will increase, and we will be able to pay down our deficit and maintain our government programs.

Republicans are funny.  The anti-intellectual party claims to rely on common sense.  Even here they seem unable to set things straight, however.  Common sense would tell you that the anti-tax, less-is-more approach to economic growth hasn’t worked all that well.

We have the tax cuts which the GOP is fighting to save — we have them RIGHT NOW — and we have had them for years.  Nevertheless we managed to fall into our recession, have struggled to recover from the recession, and job growth remains sluggish.  Ask your favorite GOPer:  If these tax cuts work ,  if more money for “job creators” creates jobs…well, where the hell are the jobs?

Not Relevant

Republicans either know nothing about market demand, the labor market, and the global economy or they are dismal liars.  Sadly, I think the party of the right is both.  They are misleading the public, and in doing so leading us right over the cliff to achieve their anti-government goals.

If you are, in fact, worried about the future for your children and grand children — a politician’s favorite trope — don’t vote for anti-future Republicans.

Let’s apply common sense to the tax cut argument.  First, we see that the tax cuts don’t work, not for the fiscal and economic problem we have now.  Look at what we have with cuts.  Second, look at what higher tax rates did to economic growth in the past.  It didn’t seem to hurt it.  Our most robust years coincide with higher tax rates.  How does that square with GOP rhetoric?

We need to close loopholes, raise some taxes, and find some savings, but all of this alone will not erase our deficit and eliminate our debt.  It won’t alone save the economy.  The numbers don’t add up.  We need growth.  If the economy regains its once-upon-a-time growth, the deficit and debt problems we face will go away rather easily.

Currently the private sector is not supporting the economic growth we need.  Demand for what the private sector can supply is low.  Money needs to circulate again in the consumer markets.

We do, however, need investments in infrastructure, research, education, and other public sector projects that will support future economic growth.  This is government’s role — i.e., our role as the people — to invest in these projects.  It is the derided Keynsian approach to economic stewardship and most economists argue it will have long-term benefit.

Relevant…to the GOP.

So why don’t we do it?  Well, once you get through the misinformation from conservative politicians, it all comes down to what you want government to be.  The right wants less of a government that serves the people.  Government for them is the problem, remember?  It is a problem because they don’t like it.  God, knows why, but I have ideas on this…it is an ideological one, primarily a bastardized theological one, leading with SBC corruption, but that’s another story.  The lemmings are about to go over the cliff, regardless of the ideological influences steer them.

Raise some taxes, but focus on stimulus spending, and we’ll save the future and can even save the misguided.

Related articles

• Conservative Leaders Urge Tough Line on Fiscal Cliff (cnsnews.com)
• Do Tax Cuts Lead to Economic Growth? (nytimes.com)
• Starve The Beast:  Fiscal calamity is the GOP’s plan to shrink government (post-gazette.com)
• Grover Norquist Makes a Fool Out of Himself By Demanding Reagan Era Tax Rates (politicususa.com)
• The Top 4 Whoppers Norquist Tells To Keep Republicans From Defecting (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Republicans speak loudly about standing up to Grover Norquist’s pledge, but carry a little stick (dailykos.com)
• Grover Norquist: Beware of a second tea party wave (washingtonpost.com)

Maybe It Is a Haunting!

We can all agree that this Halloween is especially frightening.  Conservatives give the season an especially dreadful feel this year.  But I am more immediately concerned about the haunting that has begun at my place in recent nights.

There is a noise — no, let’s call it a presence, that sounds better — there is a presence that chooses to exist in whatever room is adjacent to the room I am in.  It is a scratchy, pecking noise, just audible enough to make you wonder…

Late last night I suspected mice in the kitchen were ruining my fresh loaf of seven grain bread, but I found no mice.  Then I was awoken from my sleep by the sound of crumpling paper.  Again, I guessed mice.  No mice.  And right now I am hearing little clicking noises coming from the kitchen.

I’m not even going to get up and check it out.  I won’t find anything, other than maybe a monster or a ghost or something because we all know this is the time of the year when ghosts and monsters muster up a sense of humor.  They’re playing with me, obviously, and I’m not in the mood for jokes.

Of course I have to consider the possibility that I might have uncorked a bottle of bad Brunello, if there really could be such a thing, and perhaps I am hallucinating.  The snaps, crackles, and pops could all be in my head, which wouldn’t be the first time.  Or maybe my cat has come back to visit me.  She is on the other side now, chasing birds in paradise…naughty birds, no doubt, set to a short stint as the plaything of cats in heaven.  (It’s a kind of purgatory for bad birds, I think.)

Whatever it is, I want to find out with as little stress, mess, and madness as possible.

So naturally I am hoping I might find a witch tonight — preferably one in sleek latex or satin and lace — to come home later and chase the demon — or demons — away.  (Sounds kind of fun, doesn’t it?)  Seeing that I am feeling remarkably handsome today, I don’t think that this plan is a bad one nor is it beyond the realm of possibility.

Telling a witch — and god, I have known a few — that I have something strange at home I’d like to show her might not sound like the best pick up line, but I’m going to give it a go.  I have to do something, after all.  Sleeping with garlic and silver crosses just feels plain old silly.

Ok, now I am going to go take a peek in the kitchen.

Related articles

• Hares’ Happy Haunting (plumstreetsamplers.typepad.com)
• Scientists discover mice can sing in unison (deathandtaxesmag.com)
• Saginaw’s ghost hunt: ‘A Haunting on Potter Street’ to premier at the Temple Theatre (mlive.com)
• A Halloween Haunt (thehandwrittenlife.wordpress.com)
• Boston’s Best Haunted Bars (boston.cbslocal.com)

 

What Romney Said

Mitt Romney in 2007 in Washington, DC at the Values Voters conference (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let’s take one sentence — a key sentence — out of Romney’s video taped fundraising faux pas.  He says:

“There are 47 percent [of Americans] who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Ok, I’ll name it:  How about to some decency?  We should be entitled to that.  But that’s not going to happen.

People have already pointed out how obviously illogical and misplaced Romney’s assessment of people’s beliefs and values is in this statement.   Does Mitt know who is voting for him?

Consider this, Mitt, some of the people — by far too many of the people — you insulted will vote for you.  Or at least they would have.  These generalizations don’t show a very sophisticated assessment of your political support.

This cognitive dissonance is so common and familiar in politics today that it is not interesting.  I want to focus instead on the evil of believing you might be entitled to food, health care, and shelter.  Have we become so ridiculously petty that we that we scorn people for wanting to eat and survive?  Is it time to call out the Christian frauds and ask, What would Jesus do?

Where is your philosophical consistency?  Your moral integrity?  Good god, man, have a conscience!  I mean it is fair to pick on this, right?  Mitt and a lot of his supporters are pretty hardline Christians, are they not?

And if your religion is merely a mask behind which you stow your pettiness and bigotry — in other words if you don’t really give a rat’s ass about what Jesus would do, the old fashioned thinker that he was — why don’t you ask yourself what you should do?  Let your selfish, pragmatic side shine.  (Put Ayn Rand back on the bookshelf first.  Silly old bat.)

Example:  We spend billions of dollars on wars of revenge to vindicate the death of thousands of Americans, but we won’t support social systems and health care systems that cost a fraction of our war costs to protect living, breathing Americans struggling to get along?  Where is the morality in that?  Saving our own seems like a good thing. 

(Of course if you’re fortunate enough to live isolated from reality, then carry on.  A micro-minority should not prevail in a well-informed and active democracy anyway.  But perhaps there is the rub.  We are not as well informed and active as we should be.)

And does anyone really think America would go to hell in a handbasket if we did support people who need help?  I hardly see the danger of fostering a majority class of freeloaders.  Who really wants to be on welfare?  I’d argue it is a small minority, very small, if any.  Moreover, if we invest — say it again, invest — if we invest in the well-being of citizens we all benefit.  Sick people cost money.  Ignorant people cost money.  Crime costs money. 

All indications are that investing in the common good benefits society, supports a thriving economy, and makes everyone healthier and safer, rich and poor alike.  If we went back to the good old days when we paid for our common investments, things would look a lot better and we wouldn’t have a deficit. 

So what’s going on here?  Look at God-fearing conservative Mitt Romney, leading candidate of GOP politics today, and you get a clue or two.

Conservatives today demonstrate a level of short-sighted spitefulness that borders on the immoral.  At the very least it show poor planning.  We are better when we are strong and secure.  Strength and security is exactly what we’re losing.

Individual rights and responsibility are not incompatible with government and the common good.   

Government for the people should support the common strength and security of the people.  We are moving away from that purpose.  That’s the problem and that in a nutshell is the future supported by the likes of Mitt Romney.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney vs. the 47 Percent (reason.com)
• Romney Explains Obama Voters (politicalwire.com)
• Secret video shows Romney claiming 47 percent will vote for Obama because they are moochers (dailykos.com)
• The Bald-Faced Hypocrisy of Mitt Romney (mydd.com)
• my job is is not to worry about those people (metafilter.com)

Being a Good Conservative and Understanding Oil

I Like Elephants.

Good conservatives — primarily American Republicans, of course — understand all the important issues best.  Economics, the environment, politics, human rights, education, family values and morality…They say so all the time.  So I thought, heck, why not give it a try?  Why not undergo a conservative conversion?  I want to be the best, too.

I presume there is plenty of conservative superiority to go around.  They spend millions and millions to get people to sign on, after all.  If there were a limited supply of superiority, you would think wise conservatives would be asking Americans to spend millions and millions to join them, right?

(Ok, so liberals do it, too.  My Conservative Conversion isn’t complete.  I can still have some fun.)

I was listening to NPR — something I will need to forgo as a conservative, alas — when a story about the looming Obama-Romney presidential election focused on the politics of oil.  That gave me the idea to start my Conservative Conversion with oil, a topic conservatives know best.

The solution to our energy problem is simple.  We only need to drill for more oil in this country.

The conservative premise looks something like this:  If we produce more oil, oil prices will come down, our economy will recover, and we’ll all be back at the drive-in diner in the 1950s again.

The 1950s drive-in seems like a stretch, but it is quaint and I like it so I decided to roll with it.  The rest of the premise is more difficult to swallow, unless, of course, you graced with a conservative’s greatest self-serving asset:  Ignorance.

As my post started to fill with links to charts, studies, and smart people, I began to feel uneasy.  None of it was squaring with the “Drill, Baby, Drill” policy promoted as gospel by conservatives.  Newt Gingrich says we can have $2.50 gasoline.  Michele Bachmann, however, is a better choice.  She has us at $2.00 a gallon.  So what where did I stray on my early course toward conservatism.

I started to think about this in a common sense sort of way, and unfortunately I could not get get any of the facts to square with the conservative premise.  Not being a fully fledged conservative, facts and common sense mattered.  So imagine my frustration — and my disappointment — as I struggled to join the conservative bandwagon.

Fortunately, I was just being silly.  The first thing a good conservative must do is distance himself from facts, reason, and common sense.  And, by golly…I wasn’t doing that.  Jeepers, it is a lot harder being superior than I thought!

The facts fouling the conservative solution came from smart people doing research and sharing ideas and we know where those people come from.  Academe.  Or Hollywood.  They are the liberal elite and we must at all cost avoid the elite.  Better to look into the glassy stare of Sarah Palin or even Mitt Romney than rely on some unshaven leftist intellectual for your facts.  (Sorry, Paul Krugman.)

That simple mistake was screwing me up.

And when I figured that I didn’t need facts, my post became shorter and less troublesome.  Blog posts are supposed to be short and simple anyway, a  a bit of advice for which I never took much respect.

But even today, as a conservative wannabe, I don’t understand this.  The United States consumes almost 20 million barrels of oil a day and produces less than half of that.  But even if we were able to produce more than our demand, there isn’t any guarantee that our costs would go down.

There is a little problem in the conservative dream of controlling our country’s energy costs.  That problem isn’t Barak Obama.  It isn’t really a factor of domestic production and consumption.  The obstacle to controlling our energy costs is the global market for oil.

Nuisances like cartels and emerging markets will always wreak havoc on the idea of energy independence for as long as we choose to rely on a resource like oil for a major share of our energy resources.  Factors of production matter.  It costs about 1/10 as much to “lift” a barrel of oil in regions like the Middle East and the former Soviet republics than it does in the North Sea and North America.

If oil were to fall below $90 a barrel again, for example, it is hard to see how oil exploration would continue in the United States.  Oil wells would like go quiet here.  We would import “cheaper” oil and delay further our independence from oil and the global oil market.

But that’s neither here nor there…the United States doesn’t have the oil to cover its needs, neither in the short term nor in the long term.  A policy of drilling for more oil seems economically unsound.

“Drill, Baby, Drill” has terrible environmental impacts, too, as our remaining oil becomes more difficult to reach and as refining and burning lower grade oil products elevates pollutants and greenhouse gasses.

Don’t worry, conservatives, I haven’t given up.  I want to be right!  And, man, do I look not-so-great in red.  But superiority and bliss is my goal.  Perhaps I’ll have better luck joining you on important policy issues like marriage and keeping the children of illegal immigrants out of our declining schools.  Of course there’s the fight to defend America’s disaster…it’s decaying health care system.

On at least one issue, intelligence, compassion, and common sense won’t matter.  Correct?  Please advise.

Related articles

• Paul Krugman: Natural Born Drillers (economistsview.typepad.com)
• Why Are Conservatives Anti-Science? (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)
• Some Interesting Oil Industry Statistics (gravmag.com)

Random Musings on “The Shining” and Politics

Avoid Paths Bordered in Red

It occurred to me last night while watching Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) that what we have here is something of a morality play and a harbinger of political trends wrapped into one.  It was a lesson with a warning.  Stephen King was on to something, he could sense it, he had a “shining”, and put into words.  Kubrick sensed it, too, and translated it into a film.  Here’s what  it is…

In a nutshell The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance coping with failure and a lack of direction.  He’s frustrated and that manifests itself in violence, alcoholism, and insecurity.

Jack aspires then to be a writer, which is the perfect goal for a man in Jack’s situation, and he is given an opportunity to be the winter caretaker of a remote hotel where he will have plenty of time to pursue his literary career.  Jack’s wife Wendy and his son Danny appear a bit apprehensive, but go along and make the most of it.

In my assessment we can draw parallels between the characters in this story and the looming political climate emerging around 1980 and discover Stephen King’s premonition.  While I believe this is very much like a morality play, I’ll resist the temptation to define Good and Evil.  You be the judge.

Turn Right, Damn It!

Jack Torrance represents conservatism in the United States at the time.  Frustrated, impotent, and burdened by an uncertain identity and direction.  Conservatives, as they are wont to do, see the world going to hell in a hand basket, but hadn’t really been able to change its course.  Like Jack, conservatism is looking for its future and frustrated that there is no place for it.

Wendy Torrance represents the status quo.  She’s not an imposing figure.  She’s vulnerable, perhaps handicapped by naivety and fear, but she is strong enough to survive.  She keeps the household running, protects Danny, and even does Jack’s work.  She represents liberalism in America.

Danny Torrance is Jack and Wendy’s child.  He gets dragged around – sometimes literally – between his incompatible parents.  His father hurts him and his mother nurtures him.  Dad is irrational discipline, mom is patient caregiver.  He’s largely unheard even though he has the clearest vision.  Danny has little power to change things, but he is the future and he has the most at stake in this play.  Danny represents the people of the United States.

Dick Hallorann is one other character who needs to be mentioned.  Dick is the head chef at the Overlook Hotel.  Dick represents history and wisdom.  He has seen this play acted out in the past.  He could be the answer to the family’s safety, but no one pays attention to the facts of history.  Dick Hallorann is an important character in this story; a potential anwer and a sane foil to Jack Torrance.

This isn’t going to turn out well…

Finally, there is the Overlook Hotel itself.  Stephen King was brilliant here!  The story starts here, really.  Jack and his family go to The Overlook to start their new life.  Remember Ronald Reagan’s City Upon the Hill speech?  In the film, the hotel literally shines, all lit up from inside and out.  Also note the obvious:  The story is called The Shining.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  I think Stephen King has a crystal ball.  The Overlook represents the United States and the story anticipates Reagan’s conservative revolution.

Like Reagan and the conservative movement he enabled, Good and Evil stand out as clearly as black and white.  They are both ever-present and real.  Problems are to be dealt with directly, or – as in the parlance of the story – they are to be “corrected.”

Government – in this case Wendy – isn’t the solution, it is the problem.  And the people?  Well, follow Danny in this story.  He suffers the outcomes of delusions and poor decisions.  He is, in short, a perfect embodiment of the American people struggling to get ahead.

When the family arrives at The Overlook Hotel Jack is in control.  The conservative revolution has occurred.

Look at some additional parallels between Jack and conservatism.

ü  When Jack is working and Wendy tries to talk with him, Jack shuts her down, abuses and intimidates her; he has no time for her.

ü  Jack hears voices from the past (Nancy Reagan anyone?) and acts on those voices.  Likewise, conservatives selectively look to the past for solutions.  Solutions to correct problems.  Is it a little sign from our filmmaker and writer that Jack and his spiritual mentor talk in racists terms in one part of the film or that Dick Hallorann, the voice of history, is played by black actor Scatman Crothers?  The past is a mix of Good and Evil, like everything else, which is black and white to Jack.

ü  Jack spends days working on his novel, but really is slipping deeper into insanity.  He isn’t writing anything at all, only repeating the same “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” thousands and thousands of times day after day.  Sort of reminds you of conservative rhetoric, doesn’t it?  The same tired clichés and talking points, words without substance, repeated over and over and over.  Serious legislation?  Hell no!

ü  I could talk about violence, but that’s a touchy point.  Conservatives have tossed us into a few pointless wars, turn up the violent rhetoric, and pursue other reckless policies, but I think here King and Kubrick are more subtle.  Trashing The Overlook is a metaphor for trashing government.  In other words, we will “correct” the problem even if it means destroying what we have.

That brings us to other little parallels.  The phones don’t work at The Overlook.  Our country’s infrastructure is failing.  Nice little touch there.

There is an economic lesson here too.  The road to The Overlook is not plowed because back in the long-ago days when the hotel was built there wasn’t much interest in winter sports and the cost of clearing the road was too expensive.  Like a true American conservative, the management of  The Overlook doesn’t seem to recognize that times have changed.  Winter sports is a huge industry now and modern technology might make clearing the road to the overlook economically feasible.  Think winter sports equating to new technology and a cleared road as modern infrastructure.

The American people rather than elect people who will support responsible winter management of The Overlook hires Jack Torrance instead.  And what do they get?  Chased around a maze by a mad man who wants to kill them!

Next time you vote, this kid would appreciate someone other than Jack Torrance.

And what’s the point?  All that violence and damage and backwardness seems to accomplish nothing.  Dick Hallorann shows up – remember he represents history from which the lessons we need exist – and Jack Torrance kills him.  Wisdom is a threat.  All that matters to Jack is power, answering the voices and spirits from the past, and he’ll destroy rather than build to accomplish it.  Does that sound like a liberal agenda or a conservative one?

In the end you have to ask again:  What is the point?  Jack Torrance ends up united with his spiritual world, living in the past as a smiling ghost at a 1921 Independence Day Ball.  So why the axe and the drama?

Stanley Kubrick is said to have liked ghost stories because he thought they gave people an optimistic fantasy about life after death.  I like Kubrick’s spin on things, but you have to wonder why the ghosts at The Overlook seem to think you need to employ horror in order to cross over to better days.  Likewise, I think you have to ask why conservatives employ destruction — rhetorical and otherwise — to achieve a goal.  Smashing what is new to restore what is old again.

I’ll close today’s brief musing on a theme by simply asking you to watch The Shining again and keep my character assessments in mind.  Then tell me:  Am I right or am I wrong?  Isn’t this a story that portends the rise of conservatism in the United States and metaphorically represents the politics we live in today?

I do believe that Stephen King had a shining and Kubrick saw it.

Was all that drama really necessary, Jack?

Related Articles

• The spooky Stanley Hotel celebrates the 30th anniversary of ‘The Shining’ (gadling.com)

Tax Cuts or Demand Increase?

"The Third-Term Panic"

In upcoming weeks look for news about corporate profits and executive bonuses.  Both will look like stories from pre-recession days, perhaps better.  Then look at the Republicans America elected into office this November.

Republicans have been harping on the need to cut taxes, reduce government spending, and ease regulation on business as the way to restart our economy.  The problem with their argument is so simple that even a conservative IQ can grasp the errors inherent in this argument. 

First of all, high taxes, government spending, and excessive regulation were not the causes of the current recession.  In fact, if anything, you might draw a cause-and-effect conclusion that tax cuts, smaller government, and less regulation caused the problem.  I won’t make that argument, but using the unsophisticated logic popular with Republicans it would be more plausible to believe that than anything conservatives argue today.  Haven’t we just concluded three decades of trying to do less with less? 

But back to the profits and bonuses.  Profits at the Fortune 500 companies regained their losses earlier this year and have been building ever since.  Economic productivity at the same time grew, and even surpassed historic averages, in recent quarters.  And this recent productivity growth was accomplished with millions of Americans unemployed.  (Some of that is due to how GDP is calculated.  Outsourced work by American companies counts in US GDP  calculations.) 

We have an economy that is entering a jobless recovery and that may be the start of defining a new normal in this country.  We are, in essence, in a global economy more than we are in a national one, let alone an economy that is defined at the state and local level.  Republican “solutions” — when they are the most sincere – treat economic opportunity in outdated, overly-simplified concepts that are essentially ahistorical and out of touch with the new global reality.  (In a post last week I wrote about the challenges we will have with matching our lifestyle expectations with what a global wage market will offer in the future.)

Local jobs will not pick up until local demand for goods and services increase and even then there is no guarantee that jobs will develop locally.  American labor cannot compete on a global labor market without some competitive advantage to change the trend to more profitable outsourcing.  Arguments from the conservative right for tax cuts for “job providers” fails to understand this fact. 

Wages and Productivity

It is more of the failed supply-side argument that hasn’t delivered the promised prosperity.  Real wages for most Americans have been flat or declining in real dollars while economic inequality between the haves and have nots is at levels last seen in this country in 1928. 

Money isn’t a problem that tax cuts will solve.  Again, corporations have huge reserves of cash.  There is no compelling reason for these corporations to reinvest…at least not in the United States.  Some industries — such as finance — can profit on the spread between record low interest at the Fed and rates on government bonds.  Borrow from one, buy the other, pocket the profit.  No need to hire anyone.  Cash is not the problem. 

Furthermore our wealthiest Americans are not opening local roofing companies and beauty salons.  They are investing in funds that pool assets and play in the global economy.  So is your 401(k), by the way.  Conservatives remind us that people making $250,000 are not wealthy and they argue that that amount is the threshold for most small business owners in the United States.  I won’t argue that point.  I’ll agree.  However, a tax increase on that level would be too modest to influence hiring decisions.  First of all, if business is not hiring with the current tax cuts it is hard to argue that those tax cuts generate hiring.  (Right?!)  And if you give additional tax cuts on incomes at that level you have to ask yourself if you think an additional few hundred dollars in tax savings would be enough to make a new hire.

Think about it with an example.  Pretend you are a roofing contractor.  Business is what it is, good or bad.  If you hire an extra crew of roofers, will that increase sales?  Or will you have a bunch of idle roofers sitting around?  You’ll hire roofers when there is a need to hire roofers.  You’ll hire them as long as you make a profit regardless of taxes.  The tax argument is a red herring that is leading to stupid policy decisions in this country.  Time to change. 

Tax Cuts Are Not Cheap

Business — large and small — is unsure of future demand.  No one is buying.  Tax breaks to people who are already banking  their cash reserves will only add to their reserves.  Nothing wrong with saving, not arguing against that, but saving will not restart the economy.  And this again leads to another fallacy propogated by the GOP. 

Cutting government spending, especially federal spending, is not going to help the economy.  Republicans are abusing the economic crisis to further an agenda of small government and privatization.  It serves them well.  We get misleading arguments about tax cuts and even more shift of public services to the private sector.  They can squawk about reforms and get them pulled back.  All of these things are counterproductive in a recession. 

Short-term deficit spending introduces demand in the economy.  Demand is what we need.  Demand is good.  Government investment in public goods and infrastructure increases demand in local economy sectors that create local jobs.  Once that happens we need to keep pushing the economy for momentum.  When that happens we can again look at sustained GDP growth.  Sustained GDP growth is good.  Would you rather have the lifestyle opportunities of 1900 or 2000?  Economic growth makes the difference…for everyone.

Rarely can people take a side in a political argument and say that the opposition is completely wrong.  Today we can make that statement about the political right in this country.  The tea-infused right is absolutely wrong…immoral or blind, I’m not sure which, likely a mix, but in either case not good for America.  When people like Palin, Beck, Bachmann and even that little Faustian, Tim Pawlenty, can lead economic discourse in this country versus trained economists, we have problems that go beyond our economic situation.  (We got problems.)

In summary (I have to go out and grab a beer), conservative government isn’t the solution to our problem, conservative government is the problem. 

(Reagan is turning out to be a bit of a Mephistopheles, isn’t he?  Sure plied his magic with people like Pawlenty well enough.)

Related Articles

• Obama: Not Extending Middle Class Tax Cuts Could Hurt Growth (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mistaken assumptions: jobs, business and tax cuts (dailykos.com)
• Rep. Jay Inslee: John Boehner Is Holding Us Hostage (huffingtonpost.com)