Austerity is not the Answer

Since the collapse of the global economy in 2007-2008, almost every industrialized country has embarked on a series of so-called austerity measures, in an apparent attempt to either grow the economy by contraction, reduce accumulated debt, or sometimes both.

Such measures involve in most cases drastically scaling back social spending and social safety nets - pensions, welfare, unemployment benefits - while raising taxes and privatizing formerly-public institutions. These actions inevitably fall the hardest upon those who most depend upon public services: the poor, the middle-class, minorities, students, the working class. In these tough economic times, citizens are told, governments and countries must endure "shared sacrifice" and to "live within their means". This narrative has been taken up by most of Europe's governments, the majority of whom are conservative, as well as the United States - despite having a Democratic President and Senate.

Though the austerity movement is pervasive and being attempted everywhere, it is not the answer. For nowhere is austerity working the way its proponents said it would. Indeed, it appears to be causing more harm than good, and coincidentally happens to be favoring the rich, big businesses, and corporations; though calls are made for "shared sacrifice", almost nothing of substance is being asked of the rich or corporations to contribute to the effort in scaling back.

The rich don't need pensions, welfare, or social security. The rich don't care if health care is reduced, as they are already healthy and can afford quality care if they need it. Corporations are making record profits and have no desire to see things change, as firing large sections of their workforce increases their profits while not reducing efficiency. At a time when the vast majority of society needs the essential services that government social spending provides, they are being told that it can no longer be afforded, and they must make do without.

It appears that this is partly a matter of priorities, and governments everywhere have shown that their main priorities are maintaining the banking and financial systems, which have cost billions and trillions of dollars to preserve. Though it was these institutions' reckless greed and irresponsible behavior that caused this global recession, the myth persists that it was the debt that caused the crisis, rather than the other way around. Nobody seemed to care about their country's debt before the global recession - why should it matter now? It matters now because it presents a fantastic opportunity for conservatives and neoliberals to radically transform society into what they hope will be a libertarian utopia. Trillions of dollars are put aside to salvage the financial sector, but in exchange, teachers must lose their jobs, workers have to give up more for the same benefits, education budgets must be drastically cut, and millions of people must reduce their quality of life - all because of a relatively small handful of people/organizations and their insatiable appetite for making more money.

Many proponents of austerity proclaim that cutting services, cutting debt, and cutting spending is the only way to shore up business confidence, and in this way the economy will grow by contraction. Yet this business confidence is nowhere to be seen, with the cruel effects of the cutting being shown in the millions of people in the United States who are now living on food stamps, unemployment benefits, and are without jobs. It can be seen in the rioting and mass protests in the United Kingdom, Greece, and France.

It seems that, despite widespread public opposition to such cuts, conservative and even leftist parties are agreed on this course of austerity.

In the United States, the Republican Party's objectives of dismantling the New Deal and returning the country to 1900-era standards of living are nakedly obvious; they are merely using the financial crisis (a crisis they largely helped to create) as a way to savagely exterminate the feeble American safety net of unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This can be seen in the vast majority of states under Republican governors and legislatures, and all with disastrous results. The undemocratic breaking of unions in Wisconsin and Ohio, the destruction of unemployment insurance in Florida - these measures were not causes of the crisis, but are nonetheless being targeted merely because of the ideological opposition of radical neo-fascist Republicans. Such drastic spending cuts are sure to harm the economy, as most economists and even financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs say. Their argument is that the U.S. is spending too much, and so-called "entitlements" need to be reformed, that is, destroyed. This argument, for cutting spending, reforming the safety net, and balancing the budget, has largely been taken up by the Democratic Obama administration, as well as most Democratic state governors - despite there being an incredibly strong case to be made for running a deficit, raising taxes on the rich, fixing the corruption inherent in Wall Street and Washington, and reversing all of the negatives the Bush administration inflicted upon the country.

Republicans say the U.S. has a spending problem, but this could not be farther from the truth. Taxes are the lowest they've been for decades, with the vast majority of the $1.4 trillion deficit coming from Bush-era policies. Though the stimulus added some to the deficit, most of the rest of that has been because of the economy's decline, as more people require unemployment insurance, food stamps, health care, and so on. Neither the U.S. deficit or national debt are serious problems at the moment, despite all the rhetoric. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is about average for industrialized countries, and while the $1.4 trillion deficit sounds large, the United States still has the largest economy in the world by far, at over $15 trillion. Interest rates are low and foreign governments still are more than willing to buy U.S. Treasury bonds; the deficit is not a problem. That extremely fiscally conservative Republican ideology has been largely embraced by President Obama and many other state Democratic governors and parties despite widespread popular opposition to such policies is worrying for the future of the United States.

In Great Britain, David Cameron's Conservative Party have embarked upon a radical agenda of draconian cuts to the British social safety net, despite dressing up the process in somewhat progressive terms. These cuts come amid mass demonstrations that oppose them, as well as riots against the raising of student fees and other cuts to vital social services. The opposition Labour Party has a large faction of Blairites who largely agree and accept the principle of the Conservatives agenda, thereby failing to present an alternative for the people of the United Kingdom. This comes at a time when the Labour Party should be more relevant than ever, as inequality in Britain is higher than it has been for decades - yet the party is more unfocused, diffident, and weakened that at any point in the last 20 years.

For the European countries that are requiring bailouts due to their financial situation, one can argue about the extent to which such measures are necessary, but what should not be debated is that these countries have lost their ability to democratically determine the course of action the people of those countries want to choose. The IMF, European Central Bank, and ratings agencies are a group of unelected, unaccountable private institutions whose agenda is clear. They have demanded that countries like Ireland, Greece, and Portugal embark upon severe and drastic austerity measures before they are able to give them the loans they need to help solve their distress. By applying essentially the same measures to each of those countries, regardless of the differences in their situations, these private institutions with leaders who no one elected are dictating the course of action that sovereign nations take, thereby undermining the democratic foundation of these countries' citizens' right to self-determination. Even when, for example, Greece employed such austerity measures as dictated to it by the IMF and ECB, their economy did not recover; in fact, its credit rating has continued to be downgraded while its financial situation shows little sign of improving - despite decreases in the quality of life for most citizens while also drastically and forcibly changing the Greek social landscape.

Austerity is not working. Austerity is not the answer. The best way to grow the economy and reduce debt is by putting people back to work. At a time when private-sector growth is anemic, and can no longer be relied upon to employ the same amount of people that it had before, the government must step in and directly stimulate the economy by massively spending on the employment of its citizens.

When asked what got the U.S. out of the Great Depression, most people will respond with "World War II". What was it about the war that put the economy back on its feet? Massive government spending on the military for several years, combined with much higher taxes on the rich. The United States debt-to-GDP ratio in the middle of World War II was 143%, incredibly higher than it currently is. But after robust economic growth following the end of the war, this was significantly reduced to a point where it was no longer an issue. So why are governments not treating this global economic crisis like World War II? Why not spend massively, not on tanks, rifles, and planes, but on housing, roads, bridges, and rail?

Germany is a good example of a country that has largely pursued a Keynesian economic course; the German government spent large amounts of money keeping their workforce employed, while also giving bailouts to companies on stringent conditions dictating what they could and could not use the money for. As a result, the German economy has grown far faster than any of their neighbors and employment has rebounded. The governing conservative-neoliberal coalition is planning on introducing a tax cut for middle-incomes and a tax hike for higher-incomes, due to the budget deficit being so low.

The money that was used to save the financial sector can also be used to save the middle-class. The beneficiaries of the bailouts need to give back to society what they took through their own negligence, corruption, and criminality. This is a time when public service and government social spending should be higher than ever, when the safety net is strengthened and enhanced, not destroyed. This is a time when people need their government to provide for them because no one else can. This is a time when the excesses of right-wing economic policy should be reversed and destroyed, not the opposite.

Austerity is not the answer. Democracy, citizens, and government are the answer.

The Democratic Party is Not Enough

In his State of the Union Address of 1944, the great Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put forth what he termed an "economic Bill of Rights" for the American people. Proclaiming that it these rights had become economically "self-evident", President Roosevelt boldly and unabashedly asserted that every American, regardless of race, gender, skin color, or any other divisor, had the inalienable right to:

-a good job with a living wage
-a good education
-adequate health care
-adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment through Social Security
-freedom from unfair competition and monopolies of business



This Second Bill of Rights was never able to implemented, as the President died suddenly only a year later, while the Second World War still raged. Though his speech and its outline for making the United States more prosperous and equal are now almost 70 years in the past, many supporters of the Democratic Party still vote for the party in the hope that these cherished ideals may become reality.

It is a noble dream. Were that simply voting for the Democratic Party could achieve such goals. But it has become increasingly clear over the past several years, decades even, that the Democratic Party by itself is not enough to accomplish what FDR set out for the country.

For each of those inalienable rights that President Roosevelt envisioned should be enshrined in law now lie in tatters, or are dangerously close to becoming so. In the midst of the most dire economic crisis since the Great Depression, the situation appears bleak, with the Democrats mostly underwhelming in any of their attempts to rectify the general situation of millions of Americans.

Millions of Americans live in poverty or just barely out of it. The federal minimum wage remains scandalously low, and does not even approach what would be required to be considered a living wage.

The American education system remains one of the worst among industrialized nations, in terms of high-quality education being available to the most amount of citizens. This has been and remains so despite decades of policy efforts from the Democratic Party that have ultimately proven fruitless.

The national shame that is the morally bankrupt American health care system remains entrenched in place, with millions of Americans uninsured and unable to afford decent care. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where thousands and thousands of citizens become destitute every year because they cannot afford to pay their hospital bills. The Democratic Party has been unable and even sometimes unwilling to unify around a core stance of universal, national health care for the United States. Indeed, though the Democrats controlled both Congress and the Presidency for several years, the only health care bill that passed was largely a boon to the private insurance industry and still leaves millions without adequate care.

FDR's desire to restrain the innate vices of monopoly and exploitation of markets that accompany business interests has fallen by the wayside, as the Democratic Party has for over 35 years increasingly embraced the fiscally conservative positions of low taxes, minimal regulation, free trade, social spending restraint, and privatization as a means to sway the important business lobby. Such a transition represents an abandonment of the core principles of the Democratic Party of social and economic justice, as their rightward shift in economic policy played a large role in the collapse of the financial industry and the gross rise in inequality in the United States.

Today, many Democrats are about as far removed from being an FDR-style politician as can be. Though not all have abandoned the ideals of the party that created Social Security, helped massively reduce inequality and poverty, and ended segregation, an alarming amount of Democratic politicians support and buy into the reactionary conservative narrative of repealing the New Deal in its entirety. They protest and complain about the severity of cuts in social spending demanded by Republicans, yet they do not make the argument that lowering taxes and dismantling the welfare state are unnecessary and unjust - they simply advocate less severe cuts to social spending as a way of being the lesser of two evils. This desertion of an important liberal economic and social paradigm has left the difference and breadth between the two parties in socio-economic terms remarkably thin. The ones who suffer, however, are those who have no choice or say in the cuts in services that they need, as almost no one is arguing for them.

In this way, the Democratic Party has largely followed the trend of other center-left social-democratic parties of Europe, who have lurched rightward on socio-economic matters. Parties like Germany's SPD or Britain's Labour Party have embraced much of the neoliberal fiscally conservative economic platform, and in many of the same areas have failed as the Democrats have failed.

No party can be perfect. Nor is it necessarily a good thing for a two-party political system to have two ideologically rigid parties inflexibly trying to run the country. But liberals and Democratic supporters must take a hard look at the party and ask what it has done or is able to do for them and for the country.

Certainly, the Democratic Party has been unable to eliminate or even massively reduce poverty. Nor have they seemed able or even that willing to enact universal health care, a living wage, or the robust regulation of Wall Street, Big Business, corporations, and the financing and banking sectors that the country requires for the vast majority of its citizens to benefit from a strong economy.

The party of Roosevelt dreamed of achieving full employment - that is, 3% unemployment or less - and acted strongly in an attempt to do so. Decades have passed and this is no longer seen nearly as desired or plausible by "mainstream" Democrats today.

Democrats ended segregation, enacted the Voting Rights Act, and gave women the right to vote. But what have they accomplished since 1965 in terms of reducing the massive economic and social inequality and injustice that is rampant among the large minority populations of African- and Latino-Americans? Public schools are now more segregated by race than they were under President Johnson. The current Democratic administration of President Obama has taken up the conservative stance of "securing borders", indirectly helping aid the demonization of immigrants - all while a record number of deportations have been made.

The Democratic Party has been unable to coherently run a narrative against the Republican war on women's reproductive rights, which has seen a drastic increase in a very short time in the number of anti-abortion laws enacted in many states.

The Democratic Party has stood by and been unable or unwilling to stem or reverse the decline of labor unions in the United States. As Chris Hedges has described in detail, the Democratic Party used to be a robust part of the strong American labor movement - the movement that achieved Social Security, the 40-hour work week, weekends off, paid vacation, and pay for overtime. Sometime in the 1960s, however, the Democrats began to abandon labor. The result has been a slow, inexorable decline in the political power and membership of unions across the nation, with poor results for a majority of blue-collar workers. The failure of the Democratic Party to represent at least in some way the interests of labor unions has resulted in the stagnation of working class Americans, with inequality sky-rocketing while wages plateau.

Democrats voted to go to war in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Democrats voted to first pass and then extend the PATRIOT Act, shredding basic civil liberties in the process. Democrats voted to deregulate the financial sector. Democratic majorities at the federal and the state level have enacted brutal cuts - just look at California's or New York's recent budgets, which saw massive tuition increases paired with devastating reductions in social spending that millions of people depend upon. Many Democrats, such as those that make of the majority of the New Jersey state legislature, have embraced the radical agenda of right-wing governors that will further damage the vast majority of Americans, including the core supporters of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party has been unable to enact any meaningful climate change legislation, and has barely been able to fend off the destruction of the Environmental Protection Agency. After the financial and environmental disaster that was the BP Oil Spill, the Democratic Congress apparently enacted no meaningful legislation to ensure that such a catastrophe could never occur again.

The Democratic Party has proven unable and unwilling to enact any of the meaningful reforms that the country desperately needs. This stems partly from their cooperation and involvement in the incestuous two-party political system that dominates the country; no doubt many Democrats would like to see reform of some kind, none of them are truly willing or able to do so because true reformers would stand small chances of being elected without the support of the business community whose interests they must please and once elected, would be unable to enact any reform without the support of the vast majority of the rest of the party (which is not going to happen).

But where were the Democrats as millions of homes were being foreclosed? What have the Democrats done to ensure that the financial collapse of 2007-2008 will never occur again, as President Roosevelt did in the 1930s? Where are the Democrats who have zealously gone after the parasitic financial criminals that extorted trillions of the public's money for their own selfish greed? Where are the Democrats who treat the education budget like Republicans treat the military budget? Where are the Democrats who rage against the moral injustice of the PATRIOT Act and the shambles of America's health care, education, infrastructure, environmental record, or massive inequality? Those who do embody these are too few, too quiet, and increasingly becoming too late. The party as a whole has abandoned itself.

Democratic President Bill Clinton campaigned on, then signed into law, the destruction of welfare as an entitlement program - something that should have been the antithesis of a Democrat. President Clinton also helped implement financial deregulation and increased the effects of globalization and free trade upon the U.S. - decisions that cost many workers their jobs, increased inequality, and helped lead to the financial collapse.

This is a party that needs the support of progressives, liberals, and other leftists but takes their votes and funding for granted because they know that they have no choice but to vote for them, no matter how miserable their record is in actually promoting progress. This is a party that has not nominated a true liberal for president since 1988, that lashed out at its liberal base for holding the Obama campaign true to its word to not do "politics as usual".

Why did the Democratic Party, when it had majorities in Congress and the Presidency, not repeal the disastrous Bush-era tax cuts? Why did they not pass any meaningful raise in the minimum wage, or enact any environmental bills that assertively move the U.S. away from foreign oil and towards renewable energy? Why did they not treat the economic disaster like a third World War? Why do special interests, corporations, and Big Business maintain their vastly disproportional influence upon American politics and elections?

True, some state Democratic Parties have enacted progressive social legislation, such as gay marriage. But these are almost entirely in traditionally liberal states. If gay marriage is a civil right, why is the national party not coming out in favor of ending the oppression of homosexuals as they did in 1965?

The Democratic Party is too broad of a coalition of liberals, moderates, and conservatives to ever be truly unified, as the Republican Party is. In some ways, this is a strength. But it is also a handicap for those Americans who desire to see true, meaningful change in a progressive manner for the country. Too often today does the Democratic Party stand for the status quo rather than progress. The Republican Party enthusiastically advocated for the destruction of Medicare, whereas the Democratic response was to say "we won't touch it", not "we will make it better" or "the low-cost, universal health care that the elderly receive is an inalienable right that every American deserves and requires". Too many Democratic candidates simply stand in the way of the insanity that would occur were a Republican to be elected - but this is only a means of making American elections a farce. The lesser of two evils is still evil, after all.

When Al Gore lost the presidency because of blatant voter fraud and an unprecedented Supreme Court decision, there was barely a murmur from the Democratic Party about abolishing the electoral college and moving to a national popular election for president, as France does, for example. There is massive support for the opinion that corporations, lobbyists, Wall Street, and special interests have too much say in politics, yet true, meaningful campaign finance reform is not a cause that most Democrats champion. Nor are their proposals enough to truly be the change in the system that the country needs.

Much of the time, the Democratic Party has the country's best interests at heart. But they are not enough. There was a time when the majority of the Democratic Party's coalition stood for those ideals that Franklin Delano Roosevelt proudly announced in his Second Bill of Rights. That time is no more.

For those who wish to see a more egalitarian, just, integrated, progressive America, it is not enough to vote for the Democratic Party. Outside organizations, such as the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, or Fairvote.org can attempt to elucidate issues for the public while also providing funding and support for Democrats, in the hopes that it will lead them to enact certain progressively-minded laws. In the end, though, the best this can hope to achieve is elect more Democrats, who have shown themselves incapable of enacting much of a progressive agenda.

It may be that the corrupt influence of the dirty American political system has been an invisible hand that has played a much larger role in the failure to achieve the Economic Bill of Rights. But until a majority of Democratic politicians unflinchingly and unabashedly espouse the ideals of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, nothing much will change for the better for the country.

One should not and cannot place all of one's faith in the Democratic Party, despite their best intentions. It is up to the people to remake government and the country what it once was and should be: for the people, by the people, and of the people.