Auðræði

Stundum er sagt að vinstri menn séu með Davíð Oddsson á heilanum. Ég er svosem ekkert viss um það. En hann liggur mjög þungt á sálinni á nokkrum áköfustu fylgismönnum sínum.

Um daginn skrifaði ég pistil um efnahagslífið í heiminum eins og það hefur verið síðustu áratugina.

Ég sagði að menn væru farnir að komast að því að þetta hefði ekki verið jafnmikið framfaraskeið og var haldið fram, þvert á móti – þetta hafi hugsanlega verið tími stöðnunar og hnignunar.

Staðreyndin er sú að velmegunin var byggð á lántökum og skuldsetningu. Annar þáttur í henni var að flutt inn var mikið af vinnuafli og þannig jukust umsvifin í hagkerfinu. Í þriðja lagi fór svo að streyma ódýr varningur frá Kína og öðrum Asíulöndum og þannig var eins og kaupmátturinn hækkaði. Í fjórða lagi var þetta tími mikilla umsvifa í fjármálalífinu – eins og til dæmis á Íslandi þar sem dautt fjármagn var tekið og virkjað (les: fiskurinn í sjónum varð veðhæfur).

Ég var reyndar ekki að skrifa um Ísland sérstaklega, eins og einn helsti aðdáandi Davíðs virtist telja. Svona hefur þetta verið á Vesturlöndum. Millistéttin reyndi að ná í skottið á lifnaðarháttum ríka fólksins með því að steypa sér í skuldir. Nú hefnist fyrir þetta – það er einfaldlega ekki svigrúm fyrir meiri skuldsetningu.

Þá kemur í ljós að raunveruleg laun hafa ekki hækkað, heldur þurfa báðir aðilar í hjónabandi að leggja hart að sér við vinnu til að ná endum saman.

Eftir stendur að fámenn auðstétt hefur allt sitt á þurru og gefur ekki eftir forréttindi sín. Við höfum lifað tíma auðræðis, þegar peningavaldið fer sínu fram – og fátt bendir til annars en að svo verði áfram, að kjörum almennings og innviðum samfélagsins hraki. Nú þegar ríkir kreppa og stöðnun á Vesturlöndum virðast fáir hafa hugmyndir um hvernig sé hægt að bjótast út úr þessu ástandi – þor eða getu til þess. Stjórnmálamennirnir, nánast sama í hvaða flokki þeir eru, kunna ekki annað en að spila innan þessa kerfis. Það þýðir ekki að koma með einhverja þvælu um Sjálfstæðisflokk, Samfylkingu, Davíð, Baug og Ingibjörgu Sólrúnu – málið miklu stærra en það. Fjármagnsöflin fengu að taka völdin hér eins og víðar, það var látið eins og ríkið gæti bara verið til óþurftar og þvælst fyrir – afleiðingin er hnignun lýðræðisins.

Bob Herbert, dálkahöfundur á New York Times, fjallar um þetta í pistli sem verður til út frá hugleiðingum um byltinguna í Egyptalandi. Ég ætla að leyfa mér að birta pistil hans í heild sinni, hún nefnist When Democracy Weakens.

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As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldnt help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think its on the ropes. Were in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesnt really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we cant afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the presidents re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash wont be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. Theyll be genuflecting before the very rich.

In an op-ed article in The New York Times at the end of January, Sen. John Kerry said the Egyptian people „have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.“ Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

The corporate and financial elites threw astounding sums of money into campaign contributions and high-priced lobbyists and think tanks and media buys and anything else they could think of. They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big time.

As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, „Winner-Take-All Politics“: „Step by step and debate by debate, Americas public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.“

As if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens United decision, which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming power of corporate money in politics. Ordinary Americans have no real access to the corridors of power, but you can bet your last Lotto ticket that your elected officials are listening when the corporate money speaks.

When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet, they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.

As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, „The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry – especially environmental regulation.“ (A good, hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)

Its a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?

The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and thats a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

I had lunch with historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. „If there is going to be change,“ he said, „real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.“

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.