Setting the Record Straight

Market Fundamentalists Reap What They Sowed

By Rob Schofield

In case anyone still had any doubts about the success of market fundamentalists in capturing almost complete control of modern American (and North Carolina) conservatism, a look at some recent news stories ought to dispel them in short order.

Exhibit number one is the latest news on the national debt. Here are some excerpts from the latest update from Citizens for Tax Justice entitled President’s Reckless Tax and Fiscal Policies Force Congress to Raise National Debt Limit — Again:

“President George W. Bush has added $2.9 trillion to the national debt so far, despite inheriting a balanced budget when he took office in 2001….Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation to raise the debt limit…to an unprecedented $9.815 trillion, to prevent the federal government from defaulting on its debts and being unable to borrow any more. In contrast, when Bush took office, the debt limit was $5.950 trillion — $3.9 trillion less than the new amount.”

The update continued:

“The largest cause is the cuts in federal income taxes enacted by President Bush and Congress. Federal income taxes fell from 10.1 percent of the gross domestic product in fiscal year 2000 to an average of only 7.3 percent of the GDP in fiscal 2002 through 2006 — a 28 percent drop — and are now near their lowest levels as a share of the GDP in 55 years.

The total cost of the Bush tax cuts, including interest on the money borrowed to finance them, has been just over $1.4 trillion so far — about half of the total increase in the national debt under Bush so far.”

In short, the President’s stubborn adherence to the counter-intuitive “logic” of market fundamentalist, “supply side” economics (i.e. the idea that tax cuts on the wealthy will spur economic growth and thus produce higher tax revenues) remains, despite it inherent and obvious illogic, our national policy.

Exhibit number two: How about the ongoing collapse of the so-called “subprime” mortgage market? It is in this realm, of course, that the preachers and practitioners of casino capitalism have fought long and hard for the elimination of pesky government regulations that safeguard consumers (and lenders) through the imposition of things like interest rate caps, disclosure rules and bankruptcy protections that discourage loans to folks who can’t or shouldn’t take on debt.

Like their ideological compatriots at Enron and Tyco, the lending industry prophets of profit spent decades lauding the “genius” of the market and the necessity for government to “get out of the way” so that the unfettered capitalism could work its magic. Now, of course, they find themselves turning to government for help like a band of tarred and feathered snake oil salesmen.

Need an example closer to home? Look no further than exhibit number three: North Carolina’s recent special legislative session to subsidize two giant, multi-national tire makers, Goodyear and Bridgestone-Firestone. What’s that you say? The far right was opposed to the incentives bill? Well, look a little closer and you may conclude that there’s more to this picture than immediately meets the eye.

While, it’s true that most of the local market fundamentalist groups argued strongly and loudly against the legislation (and that they have consistently opposed incentives in recent years), this is not the entire story. When one digs a little deeper, one finds strong links between market fundamentalist economic theories and the rapacious brand of “profits uber alles” capitalism practiced by Goodyear, Google and Dell.  

Transforming Conservatism

For many decades, the term “conservative” held much the same meaning in the political world that it held and still holds in real life. A “conservative” person was, well, conservative. He or she acted cautiously and – for lack of a better term – modestly. While a conservative was likely to be skeptical of change (and, in many instances, problematically resistant to it), he or she did believe in societal progress and the notions of discipline and shared sacrifice for the common good.

Indeed, many conservatives of wealth and status were steeped in the concept of noblesse oblige – the idea that persons at the top of the societal ladder had a duty to help lift up those on the lower rungs. These people understood and accepted the fact that, no matter how hard they had worked to succeed, a huge proportion of their good fortune was precisely that: fortune, good luck – either as the result of birth or geography or the benevolence of another person or group. These conservatives understood that it was their duty to act as careful stewards of their wealth and the wealth of society. Obviously, there were numerous exceptions, but it’s clear that this traditional brand of conservatism held much greater sway in the America and North Carolina 30 or 40 years ago.       

Unfortunately, in recent decades this brand of traditional conservatism began to fall from favor. Spurred by the likes of fundamentalist demigods like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley and the growing globalization of commerce, a new brand of much more aggressive conservatism began to wrest control of the movement. For these “conservatives” the overriding goal of corporations (and of life, really) was one thing: to maximize profits. Profits were good, big profits were better and big profits made right way were best of all.

Traditional conservative ideals like good corporate citizenship, working relationships with labor unions and workers, self-sacrifice and checks on one’s personal appetites were cast off as quaint vestiges of a naïve era of “corporate socialism.” In today’s “greed is good” economy, corporations exist to do one thing and one thing only – to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible for the people who own them. “Conservative” ideas like modesty, morality, self-restraint, noblesse oblige, or paying one’s fair share of taxes are as obsolete as the car tire inner tube.

The Result

All of which brings us back to the recent decision of the General Assembly to bestow millions upon Goodyear and Bridgestone-Firestone. While, to their credit, the market fundamentalist groups opposed the deal, in doing so, they are only willing to place blame on one side of the equation: public officials. According to these groups, corporations and the people who control them are amoral actors with no real responsibility to society. Their sole purpose is to generate profits by, for all intents and purposes, any means necessary.

The market fundamentalists, having helped to unloose the tiger of amoral, profits-and-only-profits capitalism, now turn back from the inevitable consequences of their actions. Rather than dispensing comparable amounts of criticism to public officials and the corporations that blackmail them, modern conservatives reserve all of their scorn for government.

Corporate incentives, they say, are all about public corruption and weakness. Corporate greed – like that which can drive a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation to pay its CEO $11.7 million in one year and turn around and ransom the livelihoods of thousands of workers and their families the next is just a matter of “boys being boys” – of corporations doing what they do naturally and, according to the new conservatives, are supposed to do.

Unless and until modern conservatives relearn some of the lessons of their more civic minded forbears (most notably that “greed is not always good”), America and North Carolina seems destined to continue to suffer the consequences.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Setting the Record Straight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.