Rebuild the Levee

[paft.livejournal.com]

Back in the '80s, when the free market was being touted as a panacea by liberals and conservatives alike, all us old-fashioned doubters were assured that our concerns about how an unfettered market was likely to impact the poor and the middle class were just plain wrong. What? The middle class being squeezed into poverty, the poor into even worse hunger and desperation? Nonsense! Why, the Free Market would help EEEEEVEEEEERYBODDDDDYYYYYY!

I don't remember any of these deregulation fans telling us, "since the free market alone will determine wages, lots of you, even with fulltime work, will have to start relying on foodstamps and/or food banks at the end of the month." Or "Sure, absent some kind of healthcare reform people will die for lack of medicine and healthcare merely because you can't pay for them, but that's triage, baby. Suck it up!" Or, "since employers can find workers desperate enough to work long hours in dangerous conditions overseas, American workers are going to have to resign themselves to longterm unemployment." Or, "once we dilute or even eliminate rent control, lots of you are going to be priced out of living in the cities you love, which will be turned into plastic Disneylands for the wealthy. Enjoy your hour-and-half commute by public transit."

And now, two decades later, the verities of the Free Market that were airily dismissed back in 1980 are being offered to us as irrefutable arguments. Certainly I'm seeing a lot of it when it comes to what is happening to my city, San Francisco. Contrary to what we were assured back in the 1980s, the influx of high tech money into the city has not (surprise surprise) resulted in us all enjoying the benefits. Companies like Twitter and Spotify enjoy generous tax breaks while putting very little into the city. We've seen a migration in of well-off high tech employees, rising rents and an unwilling migration out by middle class workers, artists, writers, and filmmakers. And when we object, we're told "Gee, too bad. That's how the free market works. If you aren't rich, you don't belong in San Francisco."

It's like watching someone dismantle a levee and spillway system and then shrug at the sight of buildings and people being washed away. "Hey, don't blame us. It's the law of nature. Whatchagonnado?"

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So, granted that the free market system has obvious problems and screws over the many at the expense of the few: what do you propose as a superior alternative? I mean if this is just to say 'well, see, West Virginia is now just another Ogoni Valley situation', that's all well and good, but what good does that do the people fucked over by the free market? Does telling people that it sucks purge the oil from West Virginian water or bring back the lives of people killed in genocidal wars for fun and profit?

[paft.livejournal.com]

Rebuild the levees.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

What materials do we build these levees with? How do we alter the power of rivers and water, the same force that delved the Grand Canyon? What are the levees? A welfare state? A command economy? What is the levee forestalling? The Mississippi? Lake Ponchartrain? The ocean? Or to complete the analogy, capitalism on the immediate or the global scale?

How does fixing issues of capitalism in the USA alter the problems facing peoples like the Ogoni or the kleptocracies in places like Saudi Arabia, Dubai, or Venezuela?

[paft.livejournal.com]

A mixed economy similar to what we had before deregulation, with the 1% paying their fair share of taxes and strengthened rent control laws in major cities.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

If listening to the arguments of the "free-market" folks is what led to the problem, one solution might be listening to those arguing against them.

Of course, Overton has framed the discourse such that even a return to the system as it was at the time those "free-market" arguments were being made would be decried as equivalent to tyranny and communism. Shrug.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Who do you have in mind?

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Well, the problem as stated is that the like of Twitter and Spotify have given their employees dump trucks full of money. This makes it difficult for those who don't work for such companies to compete for real estate in San Francisco. Okay, that was a snarky version, the real version is that technological advances and changes to how companies do business has increased the gaps between the rich and poor. I won't call this deregulation, because it's not like deregulation caused the internet companies around San Francisco to start minting billionaires by the dozen and millionaires by the thousand. This was technological advancement.

As far as the solution, there are plenty, both free market oriented and ones that count on the government. Actually, I don't see the contradiction. Increasing the EITC and capital gains taxes don't really go against liberal economic theories. Sure, taxes need to be reasonable and not like France's punitive 75% rate, but there is certainly some room.

Hopefully the GOP can stop worrying about gay marriage and refocus on coming up with workable solutions to such problems. This isn't rich vs poor, everyone has an interest in making sure the benefits of technological advances and economic growth are shared. Of course, this would be more of a return to the GOP of the 80's, not a roll back of those policies.

[morgulis.livejournal.com]

Back in the '80s, when the free market was being touted as a panacea by liberals and conservatives alike

For 50 years already economics of Detroit is anti- free market, highly unionized and regulated. With some unexpected results nowadays.

will die for lack of medicine and healthcare merely because you can't pay for them

People cannot pay for medicine because costs of regulated medicine grow faster than GDP. Government regulations just destroy the sector of cheap, affordable medicine. Same effect with wage: government destroys low wages with minimums and greedy evil unpatriotic capitalists outsource work abroad. If growth of medical costs outpace growth of GDP health care is less and less affordable, with or without the free market.



Economy answers on this by decreasing quality of regulated medical care (you can see this effect in a supermarket where producers of orange juice decrease the weight of pack with the same price).

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Government regulations just destroy the sector of cheap, affordable medicine.

Conversely, see: Any other developed country.

[morgulis.livejournal.com]

Just an example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

The American Medical Association (AMA) has lobbied the government to highly limit physician education since 1910, currently at 100,000 doctors per year, which has led to a shortage of doctors and physicians' wages in the U.S. are double those in the Europe, which is a major reason for the more expensive health care.

[paft.livejournal.com]

And yet developed countries with that regulated healthcare have consistenty lower infant mortality rates and longer life expectancies than we do.

Funny that.

[morgulis.livejournal.com]

US infant mortality rate is higher than in other countries not because of quality of medicine but because US has higher rate of preterm birth and higher rates of teenager pregnancies. Both factors cause high risk for an infant.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

The one about infant mortality is not all that straight forward and has more to do with how a live birth is defined than anything else.

“it has also been common practice in several countries (e.g. Belgium, France, Spain) to register as live births only those infants who survived for a specified period beyond birth”; those who did not survive were “completely ignored for registration purposes.” Since the United States counts as live births all babies who show any evidence of life, even the most premature and the smallest—the very babies who account for the majority of neonatal deaths—it necessarily has a higher neonatal-mortality rate than countries that do not."

and

"For decades, the United States has actually shown superior infant-mortality rates using official National Center for Health Statistics and European Perinatal Health Report data—in fact, the best in the world outside of Sweden and Norway"

source (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/105571)

I admit I'm not 100% sold on the second point, but I am completely sold on the idea that comparing the infant mortality rate as reported in the US to that of other countries is comparing apples to oranges. Also, ignoring the most common causes of infant mortality might make their statistics look good but will ignore the real problems.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

"Hey, guys, paft posted something about inequality!"

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Those are poor people trying to escape their proletariat lifestyle trap.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

It's a hot topic with many competing opinions - is there a problem?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Lively debate is lovely. Drowning an OP in whataboutthisandwhataboutthisandwhataboytthisandwhataboutthis is not lively debate. YMMV.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I didn't expect you to get so easily manipulated into channelling someone else's sentiment, and even their means of expression. ;)

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Mte.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Maybe if she had posted about Other Countries That Don't Matter(TM), things would've been different. ;)

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Countries that don't matter...they must be like Arizona?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Yes, and surprisingly, this has been the first comment on the whole thread that at least remotely resembles ad hominem. So far there's been a refreshing absence of trolling - up till now, that is.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

The Gish Galluping "whataboutthisandwhataboutthisandwhataboutthisandwhatabotthis" don't exude respect for a discussion so much as they exude drowning the topic.

[flaming-goat.livejournal.com]

Crony capitalism isn't the same as free markets, so maybe people should start with getting their definitions straight. Also, liberals aren't socialists.