Dual Intentions III: The Blood Sport of Paper Cuts

In the United States of America is has long been held, well only since the very beginning that the Sovereign entity of our country is we ourselves, its citizens; the whole Of the People, By the People and For the People thing. No King, no ruling class, no masters, no feudal Lords. While it is lovely in theory, it hasn’t always worked out so well. In economic terms it’s been a complete disaster, thus far.

It has also been long-held, almost as long as the above, that things in this country are done according to the rule of the majority of its citizens, with the primary exceptions to that being things that are deemed by the Congress or the Supreme Court to be violations of an individual or minority groups civil or legally protected rights,  or the nasty things that are sometimes necessary for the protection of the people or the State.

The concepts of Majority rule, Citizen Sovereignty, and the multiple levels of interconnected and balanced representation and participation of the individual are the things of which America was made. As Patti Smith once intoned, “People have the Power”. The preamble of the Constitution, the part that most of the Tea Baggers out there seem to not remember too well, spells out the thesis of the document:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

But what does that have to do with economics or the budget battles or the Republicans? Where is the intersection here?  It’s that part about promoting the general welfare. It’s a real stick in the mud for Free Market Capitalism. This creates a problem. And the way to solve that problem has a lot to do with how you see the world and interpret the Constitution.

The people charged with the economic future of the country, which has everything to do with our health and welfare, we sovereign citizens, are much more interested in the health and welfare of “the market” than in us. The Market, that indefinable, amorphous non-entity that is according to Conservative Thought right up there next to Jesus in the great Pantheon of Deities, the fourth side of the triangle so to speak, does not have to follow any of the rules that people do. Not only that, but the Market itself is run so that its main function, design and I can argue, intent is to concentrate wealth in a manner that is inconsistent with the Constitutions stated goal of promoting the General Welfare.

You might be tempted to say here; well Mr. Ascend, if that is your real name, what’s wrong with that? A free and healthy market brings economic diversity. Wealth flows down from on high and the rising tide lifts all boats, unless you are not lucky enough to own a boat in which case you just drown, and that’s your own fault because it’s a free country and you had every chance to get your shit together and buy, build or steal a boat. So there.

Oh, you mean the concepts of supply side economics, that trickle down stuff? Take care of the rich and everyone reaps the rewards. It doesn’t work. Never has, never will. One has only to look at the accumulation of wealth over the last thirty years or so, since the right-wing academicians first coined the terms and popularized the phraseology that defines our current lack of understanding, to see that the proverb about the tide and the boats only works with actual boats and actual tides, not money and the power of money.

Or we can compare the rate of growth of income across the spectrum. In a perfectly balanced economy there would be some similar pattern, all boats being equal and whatnot, but my, look at that gap in income! If you were to also look at the relative income over time of “hard” goods and services, that is, transactions where either real physical goods or immediate identifiable services are transferred to the income from financial service investing, you would see a further breach. And if you then look at the rate of increase over time of the top 1% or even the top 5% of America’s population compared to the average, the mean or even the break in spot of the top tax bracket, which for 2010 was $373,650.00, a pretty good sum in anybody’s book, you would see a tremendous divide that is getting larger by the minute. In case you are wondering, that’s a bad thing. (I could really rattle on about that, but for now, take my word on it.)

And you say, (thanks for playing along, by the way) Well, it has to be that way. High taxes on the rich and things like interventionist rules and regulations only stifle innovation, reduce the return on risk that is so necessary to entrepreneurship, and interfere with the God Given Right of the wealth class to make a Guaranteed Profit. Well, you might not say that last bit, that’s a little sarcastic. But it is true that the ability to make a profit has been enshrined in the canon of American economic policy planning as an inalienable right, and that is wrong. Profit is not a civil right. You have the right to conduct commerce, and the right to make a profit if you can, but you are not guaranteed a profit. But that’s another story.

See, this market thing is made up of a lot of different aspects and entities, processes and transactions. It is almost universal in its application, from the daily decisions of the so-called Optimizing Individual, (a mythic creature, in my view, as unrelated to reality as Elves) to the massive currency exchanges taking place in international trade, and the long-term fluctuations of entire economies. Some of that activity needs to take place outside of the casino. “What Casino” you say?

Here in the US, we have taken most of our proverbial eggs, or boats or whatever you like and placed them in this one basket, or marina, called the Stock Market, personified by its address; Wall Street, New York City, 10005. It has been described as a casino, aside the admonition that the house always wins. It is here that a good many of our illustrious leaders focus their attention and efforts at stimulating, encouraging and ‘setting free’ the economy. So much of our national financial identity is tied up in Wall Street in fact, that when you say “Markets” most people automatically think you are talking about Wall Street, and the Stock Market, and of the Financial institutions that live there.

But increasingly, as the Stock market has gained power over the last twenty years or so, the actions it takes out there in the real economy to satisfy the needs and wants of the stock market and the powerful people who control the stock market, which, I might add is a private entity, unrelated to the government of the United States, yet totally supported by every action of the federal government, is unhealthy in increasingly obvious measure to the country as a whole and the so termed “working people” who used to be the epitome of the American ideal.

So much so that it has become apparent that the two entities, the real economy and the Wall Street economy, are at odds with one another and that the support of the one does not automatically infer any benefit to the other. In the case of the current and former administrations it is clear that they would rather support the economy represented by Wall Street than the private business economy across America that does not auction its shares there, and the people whose livelihoods are often victimized by corporations intent on satisfying the whims of this great casino. This casino of the blood sport of paper cuts; where the slightest whiff of non-conformity to the creed established by the power class that says the worker is merely a figure in a mathematical model of productivity gains or losses, a deficit, a liability to be minimized along with all other costs, can lead to retribution, sell-off and ruin overnight.

No wonder America is scared. No wonder the State Governments treat their unionized state workers as if they are evil incarnate; this is the new reality. This is the world that the power brokers have wrought. The money that flows to the politicians flows in large part from the wellspring of this new world order of financial and economic hegemony of the financiers, the power class, the elite. Call it what you will, it is unprecedented in human history.

Politicians are simple creatures. They follow the money, so they might stay in their positions of power. We know whom they serve. We know it is wrong. We know we should be fighting it, but we don’t know how. We are victimized by misinformation, split along lines of argument by propped up issues of class, race, and morality that never go away because they are never acted upon it good faith by these self-same politicians, who recognize a tool when it shakes their hand and passes them a check.

Is it Treason? Is it treasonous to support the narrow needs of the exclusive class of super-wealth at the expense of the rest of the country and risk the destruction of the union, in terms financial, ethical and sovereign in order to achieve personal gain, the favor of the powerful and the temporarily expeditious, petty chalk marks of political points?

In the letter of the law, probably not. Not in the climate we find ourselves. The concept of plausible denial and intent of purpose are honed to an art, and the courts themselves are as guilty of pandering as anyone. But in spirit? In my view, yes, we have been the victims of treachery and treason, and it shows no sign of abating.

More later. For now, think, and grow weary of masters in your universe.