Thank you for this brilliant insight and, I think, a must do for America. Republican desire to give undeserved political power and influence to corporate executives, who never pay a price for their corporate greed, and give corporations the rights of an individual without our ability to punish the executives, has put a knee on the neck of America, and the working class is screaming that they can’t breath. Rampant inflation and economic control by Big Oil combined with grossly over inflated profits is literally killing the middle class. I agree with you completely.
Actually, in this country, this was first expressed by Al Levine, who we know as Alexander Hamilton anonymously in the Federalist Papers and in his report as our first Secretary of the Treasury.
As Always . . Excellent post with absloutely important links to the fundamental divisions confronted by a young, still struggleing to " Perfect a More Perfect Union".
Hamilton recommended paying only the interest on the debt and deferring principal payment until far into the future.
Much of our debt is owed to Japan, where interest rates are about 1%. They borrow at 1% and buy our debt at 8%. If we really wanted to retire the debt/reduce the deficit, we could do a little re-engineering by arbitrage.
Huh, I thought we won the war with Japan. . .by the way, an unreported/underreported reason for Brexit was the British bankers' revulsion re being indebted to Deutsche Bank. . you know, Germany. .the outfit that bombed Britain about 77 years ago. . . the outfit that runs the EU banking and destroyed Greece...
We may have won the war, but because Japan was forbidden from raising a military as part of the agreement to end the war, they instead poured their resources into creating a healthy peace time economy, and then sold their wares to us. We still insist on using many of our precious dollars on the rat hole of military spending.
Daniel, Maybe I’m being dense or this is just too far outside of my wheelhouse, but I don’t see how info about how to buy treasury notes explains “re-engineering by arbitrage” or how that could retire or reduce the deficit. Maybe I’m asking too much from you to educate someone whose economics education consists mostly of undergrad Econ 101 (and Samuelson’s text) some 57 years ago.
Thank you again, Daniel. That was a very interesting article, and one I had never read. More and more reasons to respect the wisdom of both Hamilton and Washington.
Question: Was Faucette Levian her married name or her maiden name. If it was her maiden name, Alexander Hamilton was Jewish. I it was her married name, he is not.
It just occurred to me as I read your remark, but two good words that seem to be conspicuously absent in contemporary discussions are "miser" and "miserly." I think they should be resurrected. Don't know what about your remark prompted that, but I felt compelled to mention it. Just a thought.
Please understand that politicians of all stripes are guilty of trying to please big money. The most egrious example was the bank bailouts of the 2008 financial crisis that destroyed local banking under the Obama admistration by agreeing to banking regulations favored by the mega banks. We all need to accept that big egos want to work with big egos and the little guys gets crushed by both parties.
Oh Knobs, I knew there would have to be folks who are in the "everybody does it" camp. Yes there are some Democrats who do it because we as a society have decided that 2 year campaigns are acceptable and money is needed to keep that insanity going. On the other hand, Bush was president when the 2008 crash happened and so many folks in power were crying that the banks were too big to fail and needed to be bailed out. What should have happened is that the money should have gone to the people to pay their mortgages which would have paid the banks anyway, and preserved neighborhoods and people's homes. Democrats went along because the threat of a depression kept being thrown in their faces and because a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans were inexperienced when faced with corporate propaganda. Please stop the simplification of implying that Democrats and Republicans are both bowing to corporations at the same rate; they're not!
Both sides do it but they're not equally guilty. Citizens United has unleashed unlimited political corruption. The elimination of almost all campaign contribution limitations is exclusively a Republican project. Five waves of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy have largely gone unanswered by any Democratic effort to repeal them. Democrats may not have a very good record for making things better but at least they're not making things much worse the way Republicans do.
Agreed, Ruth. Obama took office at the worst possible time. He did not have the economic know how (and frankly there are few if any Presidents who understand) to successfully flaunt the Republican 'economists' he inherited from Bush. I agree it was a mistake to bail out the wealthy and let the middle class sink in the mire Coroprate America and Wall Street had created. But you are correct, Ruth, Obama acted, not out of greed and corruption, but a lack of understanding. One of the problems as I see it, is our politicians across the board lack intricate knowledge of the economic machinations of corporate and money America. I think we should have an outside group of people who do understand economics to explain the leanings of economists selected for positions of Treasury Secretary and Head of the Federal Bank. Then perhaps we would get an economy aligned either for the people or corporate America, depending on the will of the electorate (Democratic or Republican) Roosevelt was fortunate enough to be visited by Keynes who. while he was condescending, at least laid out what became the New Deal.
Sorry Ruth, but I lived it along with a good number of my homebuilding friends. I remember when I went in to see Ernie, my loan officer at the local bank I'd done business with for years. He said, "I'm sorry, but we don't want to be in that business anymore. We used to have three regulatory categories that we had to manage. That's grown to 23 under the new regulations. It's just too much to manage."
Soon after all the really solid local banks were bought out using government money and replaced by big banks that managed by data. Even though most of us had been building for 15 years we were not considered viable risks by the big banks and even though most of us had solid balance sheets and stood ready to take advantage of development opportunities that the market crash was creating we were cut of from any financing.
I stand by what I said and i have the scars to prove it.
I agree with this, but there were also other factors that facilitated the transition (catalyst). Government assistance, in leveling the playing field, was fine following the Great Depression and WWII, as it overwhelmingly benefited white American's. This changed following the Civil Rights Movement, when laws were passed to try and stop the discrimination that prevented black American's from benefiting from the same programs. Racism and the Southern Strategy, of attracting racists without sounding racist, was employed to prevent the "others" from benefiting from the same Government programs that created a overwhelmingly white middle class. So those that were now living comfortably, were fine with cutting taxes and keeping more of their money so it could not be used for the programs that once benefited them and the generation before them. And politicians/policy seeking to level the playing field, was now considered bad Government. Unfortunately, because that history is not taught, ppl incorrectly assume they are, where they are, through their own merit, and now have the audacity to question the merit of others! And as a result, those programs are not available to help them sustain their status, nor to benefit the generations that follow them- black, white, or otherwise. This stance continues to benefit corporations and wealthiest, who are by far the biggest winners of this type of tax policy, by keeping more of their wealth (more power) and by depriving the Government (the people) of resources that can be used to fund the agencies that should regulate corporations and wealthiest few. That would fund Social Security and Medicaid. That could fund Universal healthcare, free college and a host of other programs/agencies designed to benefit the people- the Majority. Updated version of the Southern Strategy used by Reagan , per his aide, Lee Atwater- https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
fyiurban, I had forgotten the massive economic impact of denying programs and services to Black Americans after WWII, and all the deliberate efforts to keep Black people out of the mainstream of American life. This did contribute significantly to massive corporate power, nearly all white owned and operated. When legislators, nearly always Democrats, try to reverse the effects of this exceedingly racist set of practices, they are called all kinds of names, chief among them right now is "woke." Even the Supreme Court is in on this, as its conservatives (mostly white) are about to end affirmative action which is one small way to help the correction continue. Our economy will suffer but it seems our Supreme Court conservatives have been bought and paid for by wealthy white corporate propaganda, no matter what the American people want. So what else is new!
Ruth-Your assessment of SCOTUS is spot on-let's not forget all that DARK MONEY of the Federalist Society that provides the names for judges. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has brilliantly pointed it all out in his You Tube multipart video program and book "The Scheme".
Barbara, you are so right about the unholy relationship between the Federalist Society and the Supreme Court. I have heard nothing positive over the years about the Federalist Soc. They are quite racist to the core but try to hide it slightly. They care as little as possible as far as I can tell about our Constitution. They catch young people and indoctrinate them into their nonsense while still in college, to their anti-democratic, pro-rich corporations, and above all, misogynistic and homo/transphobic positions. Republican presidents can't seem to find anyone who cares about our democracy, so they lean on the Fed Soc. to provide the pathetic excuses for judges that they ultimately nominate. Every American should oppose this, but most just don't care until a terrible decision those judges and justices make touches them. Now, they are specifically targeting women and people of color and will continue to do so until We the People stop accepting their decisions, and that would probably not be a good thing for our nation's courts. We need President Biden to step up the nomination of good people from all backgrounds to all the Federal courts. Then, we need to work to get good people onto state and local courts too.
Corporations are not people, and until humans see through the blatant efforts to divide us, we will be subject to corporate power wielded by the super rich, and, since money is speech: we will have no voice, and no power to self govern. As we have seen ; corruption extends all the way 'up' to the Supreme court! Democracy is an illusion when we have no voice, or power.
I'd like to see corporations accept the same responsibilities as people, if they're going to be treated equally. And if being taxed too heavily or subjected to "unfairness" or discrimination, well, maybe they'll just have to learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
If corporations are "people" then surely they should also be able to serve time in prison and even face the "death penalty" for their most heinous and repeated crimes.
Prior to 1930 is was not unheard of for the government to revoke a business charter, effectively "killing" a business by denying it the right to do business in America. At the very least, we need to put this risk back on the table to create a proper disincentive for killing people through negligence and intentionally withholding data about known harms.
Instead we're in a cycle where paying a fine or penalty that's only a tiny fraction of the profits derived from corporate misdeeds has effectively become an expected "cost of doing business" rather than an effective deterrent.
Corps will be paying 15 % income Tax "less than a nurse" [ RN's ] per Biden. Billionaires are not paing their "fair share" per Biden. Me? "I like Ike" & his 1950's tax rates rather than heavily taxing the swiftly, upwardly mobile & growing middle class with women re-joining the workforce after booming babies like me.
Got it, Biden does too ... hence the lower CORP rate of 15%. When working with my JD, my annual net tax rate (state & federal) was always aound 19%. The alleged corporations-as-persons can easily handle the15 % rate.
Kerry, wouldn't that be fun to watch, corporation persons pulling themselves up by their bootstraps! But you know what happens to you if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps? You fall on your butt!
Laurie, you are so right about the lack of voice when corporations are considered persons when they clearly are not and when money is seen as speech, which it is not, but has been permitted to serve as speech, particularly for the rich corporations that essentially have no accountability for their money-speech and cannot be "tried and imprisoned" as persons for bad behavior.
"They don't represent us-" is what Professor Laurence Lessig says (and, clearly, a pair of baseless violent foreign misadventures didn't help to loosen the grip of those who aren't even willing to try)...
As I've been saying for a while, this country needs desperately to toss out its old and dying capitalist economy, and replace it with a modern form of Democratic Socialism. For those who don't know Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist economy or an alternative form of a decentralized planned socialist economy. This isn't what Bernie Sanders was calling his ideology, but I suspect it's exactly what he is for. Bernie was really a Social Democrat. That doesn't matter as the two forms get confused all the time. The people need to own all forms of energy production, natural resources and all other big corporate entities, either through workers or citizens. Free enterprise would remain for small business of all sorts. Late stage capitalism has reached the end. Big corporations have done as much damage as the country can stand. When will this be feasible to implement? Since conservatives are either wealthy capitalists or uneducated and brainwashed workers struggling to make it, its going to be a hard road to hoe, but it can be done, maybe slowly, and a step at a time. It's imperative that we work hard to get there, hopefully, before it's too late. I'm 75, and I doubt I'll live to see it. I hope most of you will. I hope I do. lol
Excellent observations. On energy, there is the outlier already in Nebraska where all electricity generation and distribution is provided by public power districts or electrical cooperatives. With the transition to renewables, there is a opening to displace the investor-owned utilities with something similar to what Nebraska has had for nearly century.
Thank you. That's a good start and there are a few smaller electric companies in Georgia that will make it easier for the workers or citizens to take control of the electric distribution, but GA Power Co. and its owner the Southern Co. will be a very difficult fight. I'm sure that will be true all over the country. Nothing will be easy, but it must be done.
Doug, I really like the idea of publicly-owned or cooperatives for energy production. Maybe Nebraska could teach other states how to work it out. A lot of corporations would be angry and fight it tooth and nail, but I think this should be the future of energy. It could lead to more innovation and an increase in the development and employment of renewables.
The idea came from a Republican "New Deal" Senator, George Norris. He was also behind the Tennessee Valley Authority legislation. Time to dust off an old playbook.
Bernie is exactly a Social Democrat, and I agree with the essence of your opinions. Unfortunately, only collapse will make that row "hoeable". Just like the Great Depression, it's only after the speculators have sent the country into soup lines that Joe non-political Blow, Fox News puppet, will see the truth for himself.
I'm afraid you're right, so the only alternative is to chip slowly away at it like we've been doing, and hope it isn't too late. We might not be as far away from that collapse as people think.
Thank you for this clear summary of so much important info that most of us were never taught! Too bad that most Republicans—especially MAGA Republican ordinary workers (not wealthy CEOs)— will not know any of this and will continue to vote against their own best interests…
Barbara, alas, it's not just West Virginians. I have asked people why they vote against their interest and they get angry immediately and have accused me of not knowing anything and that I should stay out of it (whatever "it" is). Maybe we need to find a different approach like asking them what they are looking for in a representative or senator, then helping them to see which candidate would actually have those attributes. Could work?
This might work. The last time I asked why West Virginians sent a senator to Washington who sounded like a Democrat, said he was a Democrat, but voted and talked like a Republican, I was told that he was the best of the available candidates.
Michael Hudson provides interesting perspective on the WWI reparations in his book "Super Imperalism." Apparently there a link between the demand for heavy German reparations and needed repayments by the British to American financiancial interests loaning money to the U.K. for WWI.
Yes, great summary of Keynes, who seems a real systems thinker in advance of systems thinking as a discipline. Breaking up corporate power is a priority that politicians overall do not seems to grasp. Capitalism cannot exist if there is no competition, and in the absence of competition (see the blatant profit seeking of Pfizer and Moderna related to the Covid vaccine) corporations drive inflation. If government spent its way out of a recession and ignored the corporate role, the excess money would just fuel a rise in corporate profits. This explains why they support deregulation (and stagnation) in a time when we must creatively move away from the energy source (fossil fuels) that made these corporations rich. They are huge but brittle in the face of climate change and we need to break them up with a sledge hammer. It will create chaotic behavior for a time, any abrupt, but essential, change will do that. I fear for the fate of the planet if the corporations still rule the economic roost when their self-caused recession/depression hits. Thanks for the post on Keynes, you said it well.
The way it's supposed to work is the DOJ antitrust department and the FTC should be on the alert to enforce laws like the Clayton Act and individuals and companies have been have access to courts to bring actions for unfair competition.
However, the rules are not enforced. . r
Meanwhile, corporations are creatures of state charters. States like Delaware should stiffen their laws.
Mens rea -specific intent- to commit crime, resides in the minds of individuals, not necessarily the corporate entity. the way to stop it is to preclude officers who participate in criminal acts from being involved with the public. Jail a few of them, forbid them from being able to invest, will be an object lesson to reduce it.
We should have been zoned in on price fixers and price gougers.
The other aspect is that shareholders can object to unfair completion, exposure to criminal prosecution, etc. Although management is the job of the directors, shareholders are permitted under certain circumstances to file a lawsuit on behalf of the corporation. IMHO companies like Exxon are acting on behalf of foreign interests, and with Saudi holdings in the US like refineries, with aid of OPEC cause unfair completion. It can be viable. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/business/exxon-mobil-engine-no1-activist.html
Dan, here in Aridzona we ,like most of the southwest, are looking at water shortages resulting from poor planning for the changes in the size of our populations. To be blunt it was recently revealed that the UAE has purchase large facrory farms herein Az and elsewhre using our water rights to grow feedstok to be export back to UAE to feed their beef cattle resulting from the shortage of watered farmland in ther own country. What could possibly go wrong here??? Could this be the result of their own poor planning? Their own consumerism / desire for beef meals?? Enquiring minds want to know !!
The abandonment of Keynes and the New Deal seem to coincide with the infusion of vast amounts of money into politics authorized by the 1976 Buckley v Valeo "money is speech" Supreme Court decisions and later decisions like Citizens United v FEC.
Keynes was shunned. When he inquired if the U.S. intended to treat Great Britain as ' small Balkan country' post Second World War the answer was 'Yes.' One amusing account of Keynes in Washington at that time came from J.K. Galbraith. Working in his office for the Administration, Galbraith's secretary came into inform him a 'Mr. Keenes wanted to see him'. Galbraith went on working whilst wondering who this visitor might be. Suddenly the penny dropped and he leapt to his feet to rush out and see John Maynard Keynes sitting patiently outside the door. 'It was' Galbraith wrote later 'like a parish priest was being visited by St Paul'. No system that is 'hard and fast' can get it all right every time and doubtless there are problems with Keynes ideas; but the essential message is that it is folly to believe capitalism is a self adjusting system; its tendency is always to oligarchy unless government places checks and balances upon it. The 'Fiat money cult' that wishes to return to the Gold Standard and monetary policies based upon it were in Keynes view metal fetishists – correctly so.
Small point, Eton isn't a prep school; prep schools are for juniors who may go on to greater things.
Hello Progwoman. Galbraith should be read anyone interested in the pre and post Second World War economic situation and how these were dealt with through humane policy. A great – and frequently very witty – observer as well as the kind of libertarian we need right now. Prof. Reich is in the same mould.
Yes, I recognize this, and when I first read Galbraith, he was widely supportive of women in the workforce when a lot of his cohorts seemed to think this was going to destroy the family.
Barry, when I was in college, my economics classes had a Keynesian bent. We really thought that seriously regulated capitalism would continue and that would keep the economy in some kind of balance. We didn't even imagine out-of-control corporations and a Supreme Court whose conservative loyalties were to corporations and making them as powerful and untouchable as possible. A decade after my last economics class, we were in the midst of trickle-down and corporate greed run-amuck.
Thank you Ruth. I am by no means an economist, more a historian. Keynes is frequently accused of being a Communist today {as is FDR!); he wasn't even a member of the Labour Party, but a Liberal (and, though Prof. Reich is perhaps too delicate to mention it, bi-sexual, having had along affair with the artist Duncan Grant). His ideas for an International Monetary Fund and a World Bank were also very distorted and failed to fulfil his vision of a more stable international order. We must agree. Reagan and Thatcher's dead hands are still wrapped around our throats.
Barry, alas, you are right on all points. It seems that any attempts to make equity in a society will be met with force by those who are either the haves or the wannabees. Their knee-jerk response is that if those people get something it means I will have less. Instead, they often end up getting less because the ones who are just a bit luckier got there first and see those folks as the ones planning to take stuff away from them. It is just insane, but the game goes on and only those at the top "win" because they force everyone else to lose. A win-win structure would be far better but traditional competition can have only one winner or small group of winners. That is a bad system, but definitely hard to change because most people believe in it.
Thank you for an excellent synopsis. Your analysis clarified for me why Keynes' idea failed to address workplace feudalism through more distributed ownership of economic entities.
One of the lessons I took from a long assignment working in Southern England was how entrenched the class (caste?) system is in English society. Keynes was a part of the upper parts of that system and his models appear to have a blind spot to the need spread capitalist ownership to the workforce.
One would hope for "post-Keynesian" enlightened policies to broaden ownership and control of enterprises. There are already examples. A third of the GDP in Northern Italy’s Emilia Romagna region is produced by cooperative ventures. Then, of course, there is a noble 70+ year experiment of the Mondragon cooperatives in Basque country. One of the secrets behind the Mittelstand in Germany has been the cooperative financial system with the Genossenschaftsbanken or cooperative banks.
A concerted effort is needed at the Federal and State level. Kudos to Senator John Hickenloopr for S. 1736 in the past Congress directing the SBA to be more receptive to cooperative structures in startups. It is just one of many steps needed.
Daniel, I often ask that question about corporate responsibility if they break the law too, but I am curious who and how many would go to prison if a corporation breaks the law, which they do often. We would need huge additional prisons for that. Maybe a better punishment would be to make the offending corporation a public entity, owned collectively by the people they harmed and those in charge relegated to low-level positions in the new entity. It's a thought.
Thank you for this enlightening explanation. Relevant to this, I heard something very concerning last night. Sen. Chris Murphy in a brief interview asserted that the Trump Republican Supreme Court justices see themselves as policymakers, unbound by any ethical or other constraints and free to rule according to their personal predilections. That is, they are usurping the role of Congress and the President, to rule by judicial fiat.
Thus, any policy enacted by the real policy-making branches, including breaking up large corporations and disapproving mergers, may be summarily reversed by unelected judicial bureaucrats. We badly need Congress and the President to stand up to the Judicial Branch and stop this, otherwise we will not even begin to solve our problems. I am concerned that Biden does not seem to appreciate the seriousness and urgency of this problem.
Carolyn Herz ; I wonder what President Biden can do about a Rogue Supreme court? While working with the Congress? Especially the one we currently have?
One thought I have had, for more than ten years, is that, for judges to declare an Act of Congress unconstitutional is a violation of separation of powers. The Constitution plainly gives Congress and the president, not unelected judges, the power to enact legislation. Judges have taken it upon themselves to effectively repeal legislation, which they have no power to do. So, my solution is for Congress to add to every law they enact a provision that the law is not subject to judicial review, and may not be interpreted in a manner that effectively nullifies the law. In the absence of that, the president could add a signing statement with the same message. This would be the case whether the legislation is considered liberal or conservative or anywhere in between.
I just wrote to my congressman about this, because I am so concerned. I recognize that getting Congress to take remedial action will be difficult, not least because a significant number of members of Congress like what the judges are doing. That's what Mitch McConnell put them there for. However, President Biden could use his bully pulpit to relentlessly decry what is happening, to get the public's attention, but it does not seem to concern him.
Carolyn, the Supreme Court is a challenge for all of us who care. I get it that Biden has a lot on his plate right now, but as you state, he needs to get on board and start speaking about the activism of the SC regularly and that it is wrong. The only time a court should be able to overturn legislation would be if someone actually harmed by the legislation brings a case and that harm is physical, not just religious or based on that person's hate or fear of another group. Declaring corporations to be persons is not within the purview of the SC, but they did it anyway with faulty legal justification. Any precedents overruled need to be unanimous. Those 2 changes might make a difference in addition to the justices being held to a high ethical standard. Lower court judges or any justices should not be able to declare a proven helpful medication or medical treatment illegal. That is definitely overstepping bounds and should be ignored completely by everyone. We need serious controls on the legal world including judges/justices.
Carolyn Herz ; He made a strong statement at the SOTU about women's right to medical care, suggesting support to end the ruling that shut down abortion rights.
Yes, he has asked Congress to codify Roe, and I'm glad he did, but he needs to address the out-of-control judiciary as an issue in and of itself. Unscrupulous judges are causing problems on many different issues.
Laurie, yes Biden did speak briefly about women's reproductive rights. I wish he had said more, but that was at least something. Were the justices even at the speech? I can't remember.
That's why America 🇺🇸 needs 13 justices ⚖️ to accurately represent the 13 federal appellate districts and all of America 🇺🇸 not just the GOP minority!!
True but, states can reorganize themselves politically, deal with gerrymanering, deal with health policy, deal with unrestricted voting matters & more. GRETCHEN WHITMER for anything she choses to do next.
Note, Biden's trip to the state yesterday & focus on the state's many human needs not the least of which is health care & the cost of meds for the very large elderly cohort.
You are so right! I live in Florida also (my son is in TX) and am horrified by what our authoritarian governor and "his" congress are doing on a daily basis and are getting away with it (at least for the time being). Same with Texas. Yes, there are court challenges, but many go nowhere because of these partisan judges. I makes my head spin!
Carolyn, I share your concern about this beyond activist Supreme Court. Johnny Roberts has turned it into something the founders whom those conservative justices claim to revere, would not recognize. They care nothing for the American people and our institutions. They also care nothing for the inequalities in our society and how much they, the conservatives on the SC, have contributed to them. I do wish Biden had spoken about the Court in his State of the Union address, but alas, he didn't and often seems to ignore it. That is a bad move. Those unelected, badly vetted, and poorly chosen folks are usurping the roles of the Legislative and Executive branches, as you note. It is time Biden start mentioning what the Court is doing and stop acting like they should be seen in some level of reverence. Now, lower court judges are trying to make law, like the anti-abortion pill judge in Texas. We need to start ignoring judgments that dismiss the American people's wishes, science, and truth. How dare a judge outlaw a safe medication! Who is he but just another conservative ignorant man who was approved because of his being Republican, and who probably owed favors to someone, or they owed him.
This is the main reason, far more than his age, that I'm hoping that Biden won't run for reelection. He places too much trust in a judicial system that has shown it can't be trusted. If he decides not to run, I will be looking closely at how the candidates who do run handle this issue.
Redistribution is not only 'moral'.. it's economically efficient! (The only way to 'beat' that redistribution efficiency ,would be to make sure workers get back the full value of their work...) 🙂
Redistribution is a two way street. For the last 40 years we have been cutting taxes for the wealthy and redistributing money from the bottom to the top. It's way past time to reinstate taxes on the wealthy and corporations to change the direction of the redistribution.
Thank you for this brilliant insight and, I think, a must do for America. Republican desire to give undeserved political power and influence to corporate executives, who never pay a price for their corporate greed, and give corporations the rights of an individual without our ability to punish the executives, has put a knee on the neck of America, and the working class is screaming that they can’t breath. Rampant inflation and economic control by Big Oil combined with grossly over inflated profits is literally killing the middle class. I agree with you completely.
Actually, in this country, this was first expressed by Al Levine, who we know as Alexander Hamilton anonymously in the Federalist Papers and in his report as our first Secretary of the Treasury.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/alexander-hamilton-debt-national-bank-two-parties-1789-american-history-great-courses-plus-180962954/
As Always . . Excellent post with absloutely important links to the fundamental divisions confronted by a young, still struggleing to " Perfect a More Perfect Union".
Hamilton recommended paying only the interest on the debt and deferring principal payment until far into the future.
Much of our debt is owed to Japan, where interest rates are about 1%. They borrow at 1% and buy our debt at 8%. If we really wanted to retire the debt/reduce the deficit, we could do a little re-engineering by arbitrage.
Huh, I thought we won the war with Japan. . .by the way, an unreported/underreported reason for Brexit was the British bankers' revulsion re being indebted to Deutsche Bank. . you know, Germany. .the outfit that bombed Britain about 77 years ago. . . the outfit that runs the EU banking and destroyed Greece...
We may have won the war, but because Japan was forbidden from raising a military as part of the agreement to end the war, they instead poured their resources into creating a healthy peace time economy, and then sold their wares to us. We still insist on using many of our precious dollars on the rat hole of military spending.
I wish that military spending were not necessary. But it is.
...and finances crime...
Daniel, could you please explain how that would work? Thank you.
Markets. https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/how-to-buy-treasury-bonds#:~:text=Yield%20Bond%20Funds%3F%20%5D-,Best%20Way%20to%20Buy%20Treasury%20Bonds%20Directly,provide%20your%20Social%20Security%20number.
Daniel, Maybe I’m being dense or this is just too far outside of my wheelhouse, but I don’t see how info about how to buy treasury notes explains “re-engineering by arbitrage” or how that could retire or reduce the deficit. Maybe I’m asking too much from you to educate someone whose economics education consists mostly of undergrad Econ 101 (and Samuelson’s text) some 57 years ago.
Thank you again, Daniel. That was a very interesting article, and one I had never read. More and more reasons to respect the wisdom of both Hamilton and Washington.
Question: Was Faucette Levian her married name or her maiden name. If it was her maiden name, Alexander Hamilton was Jewish. I it was her married name, he is not.
Her grave is on St. Kitts. Fanny Levine. Not Hamilton.
According to many reports, Burr was vicious.... Hamilton said Burr engaged in incest.
Rachael Faucette Lavien was her legally married name. She was buried on St. Kitts as Rachel ""Faucett."
"Rachel Faucette Lavien", "Faucett", "Hamilton", "Known as Faucette not Hamilton. Not married."
Sez you. Hamilton had aa brother named Levine who moved to South Carolina. There are letters from/to Hamilton about him, his estate.
When you go to St. Kitts you can see the grave.
Daniel, I'm just asking. Don't shoot the messenger. I read she had more than one child with Lavien. James was Hamilton's step brother I believe.
It just occurred to me as I read your remark, but two good words that seem to be conspicuously absent in contemporary discussions are "miser" and "miserly." I think they should be resurrected. Don't know what about your remark prompted that, but I felt compelled to mention it. Just a thought.
Absolutely
Dead on !!
Please understand that politicians of all stripes are guilty of trying to please big money. The most egrious example was the bank bailouts of the 2008 financial crisis that destroyed local banking under the Obama admistration by agreeing to banking regulations favored by the mega banks. We all need to accept that big egos want to work with big egos and the little guys gets crushed by both parties.
Oh Knobs, I knew there would have to be folks who are in the "everybody does it" camp. Yes there are some Democrats who do it because we as a society have decided that 2 year campaigns are acceptable and money is needed to keep that insanity going. On the other hand, Bush was president when the 2008 crash happened and so many folks in power were crying that the banks were too big to fail and needed to be bailed out. What should have happened is that the money should have gone to the people to pay their mortgages which would have paid the banks anyway, and preserved neighborhoods and people's homes. Democrats went along because the threat of a depression kept being thrown in their faces and because a lot of Democrats as well as Republicans were inexperienced when faced with corporate propaganda. Please stop the simplification of implying that Democrats and Republicans are both bowing to corporations at the same rate; they're not!
Both sides do it but they're not equally guilty. Citizens United has unleashed unlimited political corruption. The elimination of almost all campaign contribution limitations is exclusively a Republican project. Five waves of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy have largely gone unanswered by any Democratic effort to repeal them. Democrats may not have a very good record for making things better but at least they're not making things much worse the way Republicans do.
Here's another over-simplification: Larry Summers.
Agreed, Ruth. Obama took office at the worst possible time. He did not have the economic know how (and frankly there are few if any Presidents who understand) to successfully flaunt the Republican 'economists' he inherited from Bush. I agree it was a mistake to bail out the wealthy and let the middle class sink in the mire Coroprate America and Wall Street had created. But you are correct, Ruth, Obama acted, not out of greed and corruption, but a lack of understanding. One of the problems as I see it, is our politicians across the board lack intricate knowledge of the economic machinations of corporate and money America. I think we should have an outside group of people who do understand economics to explain the leanings of economists selected for positions of Treasury Secretary and Head of the Federal Bank. Then perhaps we would get an economy aligned either for the people or corporate America, depending on the will of the electorate (Democratic or Republican) Roosevelt was fortunate enough to be visited by Keynes who. while he was condescending, at least laid out what became the New Deal.
Sorry Ruth, but I lived it along with a good number of my homebuilding friends. I remember when I went in to see Ernie, my loan officer at the local bank I'd done business with for years. He said, "I'm sorry, but we don't want to be in that business anymore. We used to have three regulatory categories that we had to manage. That's grown to 23 under the new regulations. It's just too much to manage."
Soon after all the really solid local banks were bought out using government money and replaced by big banks that managed by data. Even though most of us had been building for 15 years we were not considered viable risks by the big banks and even though most of us had solid balance sheets and stood ready to take advantage of development opportunities that the market crash was creating we were cut of from any financing.
I stand by what I said and i have the scars to prove it.
And that was BEFORE Citizens United.
I agree with this, but there were also other factors that facilitated the transition (catalyst). Government assistance, in leveling the playing field, was fine following the Great Depression and WWII, as it overwhelmingly benefited white American's. This changed following the Civil Rights Movement, when laws were passed to try and stop the discrimination that prevented black American's from benefiting from the same programs. Racism and the Southern Strategy, of attracting racists without sounding racist, was employed to prevent the "others" from benefiting from the same Government programs that created a overwhelmingly white middle class. So those that were now living comfortably, were fine with cutting taxes and keeping more of their money so it could not be used for the programs that once benefited them and the generation before them. And politicians/policy seeking to level the playing field, was now considered bad Government. Unfortunately, because that history is not taught, ppl incorrectly assume they are, where they are, through their own merit, and now have the audacity to question the merit of others! And as a result, those programs are not available to help them sustain their status, nor to benefit the generations that follow them- black, white, or otherwise. This stance continues to benefit corporations and wealthiest, who are by far the biggest winners of this type of tax policy, by keeping more of their wealth (more power) and by depriving the Government (the people) of resources that can be used to fund the agencies that should regulate corporations and wealthiest few. That would fund Social Security and Medicaid. That could fund Universal healthcare, free college and a host of other programs/agencies designed to benefit the people- the Majority. Updated version of the Southern Strategy used by Reagan , per his aide, Lee Atwater- https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
fyiurban, I had forgotten the massive economic impact of denying programs and services to Black Americans after WWII, and all the deliberate efforts to keep Black people out of the mainstream of American life. This did contribute significantly to massive corporate power, nearly all white owned and operated. When legislators, nearly always Democrats, try to reverse the effects of this exceedingly racist set of practices, they are called all kinds of names, chief among them right now is "woke." Even the Supreme Court is in on this, as its conservatives (mostly white) are about to end affirmative action which is one small way to help the correction continue. Our economy will suffer but it seems our Supreme Court conservatives have been bought and paid for by wealthy white corporate propaganda, no matter what the American people want. So what else is new!
Ruth-Your assessment of SCOTUS is spot on-let's not forget all that DARK MONEY of the Federalist Society that provides the names for judges. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has brilliantly pointed it all out in his You Tube multipart video program and book "The Scheme".
Barbara, you are so right about the unholy relationship between the Federalist Society and the Supreme Court. I have heard nothing positive over the years about the Federalist Soc. They are quite racist to the core but try to hide it slightly. They care as little as possible as far as I can tell about our Constitution. They catch young people and indoctrinate them into their nonsense while still in college, to their anti-democratic, pro-rich corporations, and above all, misogynistic and homo/transphobic positions. Republican presidents can't seem to find anyone who cares about our democracy, so they lean on the Fed Soc. to provide the pathetic excuses for judges that they ultimately nominate. Every American should oppose this, but most just don't care until a terrible decision those judges and justices make touches them. Now, they are specifically targeting women and people of color and will continue to do so until We the People stop accepting their decisions, and that would probably not be a good thing for our nation's courts. We need President Biden to step up the nomination of good people from all backgrounds to all the Federal courts. Then, we need to work to get good people onto state and local courts too.
Corporations are not people, and until humans see through the blatant efforts to divide us, we will be subject to corporate power wielded by the super rich, and, since money is speech: we will have no voice, and no power to self govern. As we have seen ; corruption extends all the way 'up' to the Supreme court! Democracy is an illusion when we have no voice, or power.
I'd like to see corporations accept the same responsibilities as people, if they're going to be treated equally. And if being taxed too heavily or subjected to "unfairness" or discrimination, well, maybe they'll just have to learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
If corporations are "people" then surely they should also be able to serve time in prison and even face the "death penalty" for their most heinous and repeated crimes.
Prior to 1930 is was not unheard of for the government to revoke a business charter, effectively "killing" a business by denying it the right to do business in America. At the very least, we need to put this risk back on the table to create a proper disincentive for killing people through negligence and intentionally withholding data about known harms.
Instead we're in a cycle where paying a fine or penalty that's only a tiny fraction of the profits derived from corporate misdeeds has effectively become an expected "cost of doing business" rather than an effective deterrent.
Well stated !! Thanks for reminder of the reality of today's Judicial shorcommings
Corps will be paying 15 % income Tax "less than a nurse" [ RN's ] per Biden. Billionaires are not paing their "fair share" per Biden. Me? "I like Ike" & his 1950's tax rates rather than heavily taxing the swiftly, upwardly mobile & growing middle class with women re-joining the workforce after booming babies like me.
Thanks for the timely reminder of a time of precience in goovernig. Beware the Military-Industrial complex . . . Citezens United . . . Etc.
Bryan, I like that 1950s rate too, but there is no way corporations would ever permit that. They would take out the Congress before that would happen.
Got it, Biden does too ... hence the lower CORP rate of 15%. When working with my JD, my annual net tax rate (state & federal) was always aound 19%. The alleged corporations-as-persons can easily handle the15 % rate.
Kerry, wouldn't that be fun to watch, corporation persons pulling themselves up by their bootstraps! But you know what happens to you if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps? You fall on your butt!
Good one ; Ruth!
Laurie, you are so right about the lack of voice when corporations are considered persons when they clearly are not and when money is seen as speech, which it is not, but has been permitted to serve as speech, particularly for the rich corporations that essentially have no accountability for their money-speech and cannot be "tried and imprisoned" as persons for bad behavior.
Ruth Sheets ; "Money doesn't talk, it swears!". Bob Dylan
Ruth Sheets: They can't even get a 'time out!'.
Touché, my friend. 🌻
"They don't represent us-" is what Professor Laurence Lessig says (and, clearly, a pair of baseless violent foreign misadventures didn't help to loosen the grip of those who aren't even willing to try)...
As I've been saying for a while, this country needs desperately to toss out its old and dying capitalist economy, and replace it with a modern form of Democratic Socialism. For those who don't know Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist economy or an alternative form of a decentralized planned socialist economy. This isn't what Bernie Sanders was calling his ideology, but I suspect it's exactly what he is for. Bernie was really a Social Democrat. That doesn't matter as the two forms get confused all the time. The people need to own all forms of energy production, natural resources and all other big corporate entities, either through workers or citizens. Free enterprise would remain for small business of all sorts. Late stage capitalism has reached the end. Big corporations have done as much damage as the country can stand. When will this be feasible to implement? Since conservatives are either wealthy capitalists or uneducated and brainwashed workers struggling to make it, its going to be a hard road to hoe, but it can be done, maybe slowly, and a step at a time. It's imperative that we work hard to get there, hopefully, before it's too late. I'm 75, and I doubt I'll live to see it. I hope most of you will. I hope I do. lol
Excellent observations. On energy, there is the outlier already in Nebraska where all electricity generation and distribution is provided by public power districts or electrical cooperatives. With the transition to renewables, there is a opening to displace the investor-owned utilities with something similar to what Nebraska has had for nearly century.
Shareholder-driven Capitalism
gonna be the Death of US yet.
perhaps there IS Hope.
thanks Doc!
Thank you. That's a good start and there are a few smaller electric companies in Georgia that will make it easier for the workers or citizens to take control of the electric distribution, but GA Power Co. and its owner the Southern Co. will be a very difficult fight. I'm sure that will be true all over the country. Nothing will be easy, but it must be done.
Doug, I really like the idea of publicly-owned or cooperatives for energy production. Maybe Nebraska could teach other states how to work it out. A lot of corporations would be angry and fight it tooth and nail, but I think this should be the future of energy. It could lead to more innovation and an increase in the development and employment of renewables.
The idea came from a Republican "New Deal" Senator, George Norris. He was also behind the Tennessee Valley Authority legislation. Time to dust off an old playbook.
Charlie Jervis ; Yes, I think Bernie IS a Social Democrat.
Bernie is exactly a Social Democrat, and I agree with the essence of your opinions. Unfortunately, only collapse will make that row "hoeable". Just like the Great Depression, it's only after the speculators have sent the country into soup lines that Joe non-political Blow, Fox News puppet, will see the truth for himself.
it's 'funny'
what standing
in line for Soup'll
Do to a man once-
blinded by his Salary
.
finally finding Clarity
at the bottom of
the Food Chain.
I'm afraid you're right, so the only alternative is to chip slowly away at it like we've been doing, and hope it isn't too late. We might not be as far away from that collapse as people think.
brilliant and spot-on.
Thank you for this clear summary of so much important info that most of us were never taught! Too bad that most Republicans—especially MAGA Republican ordinary workers (not wealthy CEOs)— will not know any of this and will continue to vote against their own best interests…
The price of ignorance that effects us all
Affects us, yes...
This is what West Virginians constantly do: vote against their own best interests.
Barbara, alas, it's not just West Virginians. I have asked people why they vote against their interest and they get angry immediately and have accused me of not knowing anything and that I should stay out of it (whatever "it" is). Maybe we need to find a different approach like asking them what they are looking for in a representative or senator, then helping them to see which candidate would actually have those attributes. Could work?
This might work. The last time I asked why West Virginians sent a senator to Washington who sounded like a Democrat, said he was a Democrat, but voted and talked like a Republican, I was told that he was the best of the available candidates.
The New Deal haters will never acknowledge that liberals simply want to save capitalism from itself.
I REVERE Keynes for his WW1 prediction forever! Greetings from Germany
Michael Hudson provides interesting perspective on the WWI reparations in his book "Super Imperalism." Apparently there a link between the demand for heavy German reparations and needed repayments by the British to American financiancial interests loaning money to the U.K. for WWI.
Yes, great summary of Keynes, who seems a real systems thinker in advance of systems thinking as a discipline. Breaking up corporate power is a priority that politicians overall do not seems to grasp. Capitalism cannot exist if there is no competition, and in the absence of competition (see the blatant profit seeking of Pfizer and Moderna related to the Covid vaccine) corporations drive inflation. If government spent its way out of a recession and ignored the corporate role, the excess money would just fuel a rise in corporate profits. This explains why they support deregulation (and stagnation) in a time when we must creatively move away from the energy source (fossil fuels) that made these corporations rich. They are huge but brittle in the face of climate change and we need to break them up with a sledge hammer. It will create chaotic behavior for a time, any abrupt, but essential, change will do that. I fear for the fate of the planet if the corporations still rule the economic roost when their self-caused recession/depression hits. Thanks for the post on Keynes, you said it well.
"Breaking up corporate power."
The way it's supposed to work is the DOJ antitrust department and the FTC should be on the alert to enforce laws like the Clayton Act and individuals and companies have been have access to courts to bring actions for unfair competition.
However, the rules are not enforced. . r
Meanwhile, corporations are creatures of state charters. States like Delaware should stiffen their laws.
Mens rea -specific intent- to commit crime, resides in the minds of individuals, not necessarily the corporate entity. the way to stop it is to preclude officers who participate in criminal acts from being involved with the public. Jail a few of them, forbid them from being able to invest, will be an object lesson to reduce it.
We should have been zoned in on price fixers and price gougers.
The other aspect is that shareholders can object to unfair completion, exposure to criminal prosecution, etc. Although management is the job of the directors, shareholders are permitted under certain circumstances to file a lawsuit on behalf of the corporation. IMHO companies like Exxon are acting on behalf of foreign interests, and with Saudi holdings in the US like refineries, with aid of OPEC cause unfair completion. It can be viable. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/business/exxon-mobil-engine-no1-activist.html
Dan, here in Aridzona we ,like most of the southwest, are looking at water shortages resulting from poor planning for the changes in the size of our populations. To be blunt it was recently revealed that the UAE has purchase large facrory farms herein Az and elsewhre using our water rights to grow feedstok to be export back to UAE to feed their beef cattle resulting from the shortage of watered farmland in ther own country. What could possibly go wrong here??? Could this be the result of their own poor planning? Their own consumerism / desire for beef meals?? Enquiring minds want to know !!
IMHO this is a national security issue. Same thing in other parts of the west. https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/15/saudi-arabia-buying-up-farmland-in-us-southwest.html
The energy sector is vulnerable. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/03/saudi-arabia-now-controls-the-largest-oil-refinery-in-north-america-energy-middle-east-aramco/
Iluminating as usual. Why is this information not considered note worthy by our famous MSM ?? (the men behind the curtain perhaps??)
The abandonment of Keynes and the New Deal seem to coincide with the infusion of vast amounts of money into politics authorized by the 1976 Buckley v Valeo "money is speech" Supreme Court decisions and later decisions like Citizens United v FEC.
Keynes was shunned. When he inquired if the U.S. intended to treat Great Britain as ' small Balkan country' post Second World War the answer was 'Yes.' One amusing account of Keynes in Washington at that time came from J.K. Galbraith. Working in his office for the Administration, Galbraith's secretary came into inform him a 'Mr. Keenes wanted to see him'. Galbraith went on working whilst wondering who this visitor might be. Suddenly the penny dropped and he leapt to his feet to rush out and see John Maynard Keynes sitting patiently outside the door. 'It was' Galbraith wrote later 'like a parish priest was being visited by St Paul'. No system that is 'hard and fast' can get it all right every time and doubtless there are problems with Keynes ideas; but the essential message is that it is folly to believe capitalism is a self adjusting system; its tendency is always to oligarchy unless government places checks and balances upon it. The 'Fiat money cult' that wishes to return to the Gold Standard and monetary policies based upon it were in Keynes view metal fetishists – correctly so.
Small point, Eton isn't a prep school; prep schools are for juniors who may go on to greater things.
Yes, I'm surprised that Galbraith hasn't been mentioned here. I avoided Economics in college and it wasn't required, but I learned a lot from him.
Hello Progwoman. Galbraith should be read anyone interested in the pre and post Second World War economic situation and how these were dealt with through humane policy. A great – and frequently very witty – observer as well as the kind of libertarian we need right now. Prof. Reich is in the same mould.
Yes, I recognize this, and when I first read Galbraith, he was widely supportive of women in the workforce when a lot of his cohorts seemed to think this was going to destroy the family.
Barry, when I was in college, my economics classes had a Keynesian bent. We really thought that seriously regulated capitalism would continue and that would keep the economy in some kind of balance. We didn't even imagine out-of-control corporations and a Supreme Court whose conservative loyalties were to corporations and making them as powerful and untouchable as possible. A decade after my last economics class, we were in the midst of trickle-down and corporate greed run-amuck.
Thank you Ruth. I am by no means an economist, more a historian. Keynes is frequently accused of being a Communist today {as is FDR!); he wasn't even a member of the Labour Party, but a Liberal (and, though Prof. Reich is perhaps too delicate to mention it, bi-sexual, having had along affair with the artist Duncan Grant). His ideas for an International Monetary Fund and a World Bank were also very distorted and failed to fulfil his vision of a more stable international order. We must agree. Reagan and Thatcher's dead hands are still wrapped around our throats.
Barry, alas, you are right on all points. It seems that any attempts to make equity in a society will be met with force by those who are either the haves or the wannabees. Their knee-jerk response is that if those people get something it means I will have less. Instead, they often end up getting less because the ones who are just a bit luckier got there first and see those folks as the ones planning to take stuff away from them. It is just insane, but the game goes on and only those at the top "win" because they force everyone else to lose. A win-win structure would be far better but traditional competition can have only one winner or small group of winners. That is a bad system, but definitely hard to change because most people believe in it.
Thank you for an excellent synopsis. Your analysis clarified for me why Keynes' idea failed to address workplace feudalism through more distributed ownership of economic entities.
One of the lessons I took from a long assignment working in Southern England was how entrenched the class (caste?) system is in English society. Keynes was a part of the upper parts of that system and his models appear to have a blind spot to the need spread capitalist ownership to the workforce.
One would hope for "post-Keynesian" enlightened policies to broaden ownership and control of enterprises. There are already examples. A third of the GDP in Northern Italy’s Emilia Romagna region is produced by cooperative ventures. Then, of course, there is a noble 70+ year experiment of the Mondragon cooperatives in Basque country. One of the secrets behind the Mittelstand in Germany has been the cooperative financial system with the Genossenschaftsbanken or cooperative banks.
A concerted effort is needed at the Federal and State level. Kudos to Senator John Hickenloopr for S. 1736 in the past Congress directing the SBA to be more receptive to cooperative structures in startups. It is just one of many steps needed.
In this country, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment should "level" society where government (state action) is concerned. LBJ was the first president to take on this issue but as soon as the great society programs office of economic opportunity became law, they were thwarted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Economic_Opportunity#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20Economic%20Opportunity,s%20Great%20Society%20legislative%20agenda.
If corporations are people too why don't they have to pay their taxes too?
Why aren't they jailed when they commit crimes?
Daniel, I often ask that question about corporate responsibility if they break the law too, but I am curious who and how many would go to prison if a corporation breaks the law, which they do often. We would need huge additional prisons for that. Maybe a better punishment would be to make the offending corporation a public entity, owned collectively by the people they harmed and those in charge relegated to low-level positions in the new entity. It's a thought.
Eton is in fact a "prep" school known for producing "Braton Brats" seeking "greater things" & a long-term dole in the House of Lords (sic).
Thank you for this enlightening explanation. Relevant to this, I heard something very concerning last night. Sen. Chris Murphy in a brief interview asserted that the Trump Republican Supreme Court justices see themselves as policymakers, unbound by any ethical or other constraints and free to rule according to their personal predilections. That is, they are usurping the role of Congress and the President, to rule by judicial fiat.
Thus, any policy enacted by the real policy-making branches, including breaking up large corporations and disapproving mergers, may be summarily reversed by unelected judicial bureaucrats. We badly need Congress and the President to stand up to the Judicial Branch and stop this, otherwise we will not even begin to solve our problems. I am concerned that Biden does not seem to appreciate the seriousness and urgency of this problem.
Carolyn Herz ; I wonder what President Biden can do about a Rogue Supreme court? While working with the Congress? Especially the one we currently have?
One thought I have had, for more than ten years, is that, for judges to declare an Act of Congress unconstitutional is a violation of separation of powers. The Constitution plainly gives Congress and the president, not unelected judges, the power to enact legislation. Judges have taken it upon themselves to effectively repeal legislation, which they have no power to do. So, my solution is for Congress to add to every law they enact a provision that the law is not subject to judicial review, and may not be interpreted in a manner that effectively nullifies the law. In the absence of that, the president could add a signing statement with the same message. This would be the case whether the legislation is considered liberal or conservative or anywhere in between.
I just wrote to my congressman about this, because I am so concerned. I recognize that getting Congress to take remedial action will be difficult, not least because a significant number of members of Congress like what the judges are doing. That's what Mitch McConnell put them there for. However, President Biden could use his bully pulpit to relentlessly decry what is happening, to get the public's attention, but it does not seem to concern him.
Carolyn, the Supreme Court is a challenge for all of us who care. I get it that Biden has a lot on his plate right now, but as you state, he needs to get on board and start speaking about the activism of the SC regularly and that it is wrong. The only time a court should be able to overturn legislation would be if someone actually harmed by the legislation brings a case and that harm is physical, not just religious or based on that person's hate or fear of another group. Declaring corporations to be persons is not within the purview of the SC, but they did it anyway with faulty legal justification. Any precedents overruled need to be unanimous. Those 2 changes might make a difference in addition to the justices being held to a high ethical standard. Lower court judges or any justices should not be able to declare a proven helpful medication or medical treatment illegal. That is definitely overstepping bounds and should be ignored completely by everyone. We need serious controls on the legal world including judges/justices.
Carolyn Herz ; He made a strong statement at the SOTU about women's right to medical care, suggesting support to end the ruling that shut down abortion rights.
Yes, he has asked Congress to codify Roe, and I'm glad he did, but he needs to address the out-of-control judiciary as an issue in and of itself. Unscrupulous judges are causing problems on many different issues.
Laurie, yes Biden did speak briefly about women's reproductive rights. I wish he had said more, but that was at least something. Were the justices even at the speech? I can't remember.
Ruth : yes, they were seated right up front ; all together.
He IS Catholic and visited the pope at the Vatican shortly after his inauguration.
That's why America 🇺🇸 needs 13 justices ⚖️ to accurately represent the 13 federal appellate districts and all of America 🇺🇸 not just the GOP minority!!
Takes Congress.
With our present Congress and this partisan stacked court it would be unlikely that this unpopular and unconstitutional ruling will be reversed.
True but, states can reorganize themselves politically, deal with gerrymanering, deal with health policy, deal with unrestricted voting matters & more. GRETCHEN WHITMER for anything she choses to do next.
The problem is that states like mine, Florida,, and Texas, are trying to become Fascist enclaves.
Note, Biden's trip to the state yesterday & focus on the state's many human needs not the least of which is health care & the cost of meds for the very large elderly cohort.
You are so right! I live in Florida also (my son is in TX) and am horrified by what our authoritarian governor and "his" congress are doing on a daily basis and are getting away with it (at least for the time being). Same with Texas. Yes, there are court challenges, but many go nowhere because of these partisan judges. I makes my head spin!
And Ohio
Carolyn, I share your concern about this beyond activist Supreme Court. Johnny Roberts has turned it into something the founders whom those conservative justices claim to revere, would not recognize. They care nothing for the American people and our institutions. They also care nothing for the inequalities in our society and how much they, the conservatives on the SC, have contributed to them. I do wish Biden had spoken about the Court in his State of the Union address, but alas, he didn't and often seems to ignore it. That is a bad move. Those unelected, badly vetted, and poorly chosen folks are usurping the roles of the Legislative and Executive branches, as you note. It is time Biden start mentioning what the Court is doing and stop acting like they should be seen in some level of reverence. Now, lower court judges are trying to make law, like the anti-abortion pill judge in Texas. We need to start ignoring judgments that dismiss the American people's wishes, science, and truth. How dare a judge outlaw a safe medication! Who is he but just another conservative ignorant man who was approved because of his being Republican, and who probably owed favors to someone, or they owed him.
This is the main reason, far more than his age, that I'm hoping that Biden won't run for reelection. He places too much trust in a judicial system that has shown it can't be trusted. If he decides not to run, I will be looking closely at how the candidates who do run handle this issue.
Concerning, indeed! Perhaps it's the same interview, but I saw Sen Murphy on Alex Wagner's show last night and was dumbfounded.
Professor, thanks for this. I finally get it.
Professor, THIS is the message you need to bring to Congress.
A wonderful education for those of us who are relative "economic illiterates!" Thank you!
Redistribution is not only 'moral'.. it's economically efficient! (The only way to 'beat' that redistribution efficiency ,would be to make sure workers get back the full value of their work...) 🙂
Redistribution is a two way street. For the last 40 years we have been cutting taxes for the wealthy and redistributing money from the bottom to the top. It's way past time to reinstate taxes on the wealthy and corporations to change the direction of the redistribution.