Obama Is Far to the Right of Smith, Keynes and Marx
“Reaganomics” never died, but it’s wrong to pretend that Obama’s dismissal of working class interests is a return to Reagan’s policies. He simply represents a continuation of a trend of deregulation started under Nixon at the behest of the American Enterprise Institute, Hayek and Friedman.
“The End” mention’s a lack of “pure” Randian economists - but this is very nearly what Greenspan was. A close follower of Ayn Rand, Greenspan considered himself a “libertarian republican” and reduced the effectiveness of Mark-to-Market regulations - which comically allowed bankers’ balance sheets to distance themselves from the power of the market. Where are the Marxists in government? I certainly don’t hear anyone clamoring for popular control over the workplace. Adam Smith felt that taxes were a “badge of liberty” - try telling people that now!
What about Keynesians? Ever since Hayek, Friedman and Thatcher, Keynes was “turned on his head” in support of supply-side economics. Keynes has only been used in the expansion of corporate power - when was the last time you heard of legislation which sought to expand demand by redistributing wealth to the working class? Instead, we have massive corporate bailouts propped up by convenient cherry-picking of Keynes’ theories.
But the critical point remains: the success of capitalism has nothing to do with free, unfettered markets. As Chomsky quotes Borrus in Understanding Power, “five of the top six fastest growing U.S. industries from 1972 to 1988 were sponsored or sustained, directly or indirectly, by federal investment.”
That’s the face of capitalism today, and if Obama were serious about his “Keynesianism,” he would not be supporting a pay freeze for federal employees, which will have a serious, adverse effect on demand.
Dean Sayers, December 13th
-This was a response to an article that hilariously compared the "relative lack of input" from Marx and Ayn Rand as an attempt to prove that mainstream economists are centrist.
“The End” mention’s a lack of “pure” Randian economists - but this is very nearly what Greenspan was. A close follower of Ayn Rand, Greenspan considered himself a “libertarian republican” and reduced the effectiveness of Mark-to-Market regulations - which comically allowed bankers’ balance sheets to distance themselves from the power of the market. Where are the Marxists in government? I certainly don’t hear anyone clamoring for popular control over the workplace. Adam Smith felt that taxes were a “badge of liberty” - try telling people that now!
What about Keynesians? Ever since Hayek, Friedman and Thatcher, Keynes was “turned on his head” in support of supply-side economics. Keynes has only been used in the expansion of corporate power - when was the last time you heard of legislation which sought to expand demand by redistributing wealth to the working class? Instead, we have massive corporate bailouts propped up by convenient cherry-picking of Keynes’ theories.
But the critical point remains: the success of capitalism has nothing to do with free, unfettered markets. As Chomsky quotes Borrus in Understanding Power, “five of the top six fastest growing U.S. industries from 1972 to 1988 were sponsored or sustained, directly or indirectly, by federal investment.”
That’s the face of capitalism today, and if Obama were serious about his “Keynesianism,” he would not be supporting a pay freeze for federal employees, which will have a serious, adverse effect on demand.
Dean Sayers, December 13th
-This was a response to an article that hilariously compared the "relative lack of input" from Marx and Ayn Rand as an attempt to prove that mainstream economists are centrist.