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Our current national budget debate reminds me of a quote from Charles Dickens in David Copperfield:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six,
result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six,
result misery.

Jeffrey Sachs posted a fascinating piece in The Huffington Post Sunday, in which he applied a "misery index" to the economies of the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.

He was kind enough to also post his data, so I downloaded it, and created the following chart:

Sach's "Misery Index" is the sum of the unemployment rate, the budget deficit, and current account deficit (broadly meaning more imports than exports) of each country—represented by the black diamonds on the chart. [read more]

As you probably recall, this series began with the following observations and conclusions:

1. The standard "free-market" doctrine being thrown around today ignores three very basic points:
1. All modern markets are created and regulated by laws, and couldn't exist otherwise—so the idea of a “free market” without government intervention is nonsense.
2. Insofar as a market can be left free of government intervention, it quickly becomes dominated by a small group of the wealthy and powerful—thus ceasing to be free.
3. A truly free market, in the sense which makes market forces work the way they should, isn’t free of government intervention—it’s free of the control of the rich and powerful.
2. So it’s essential, if we are to have a truly free market, for the 99% to use government to keep the 1% from running the show in three ways. We must:
1. Limit the power of the 1% to control, evade, and undermine any attempts at regulation. This means
1. taxing them heavily enough to decrease their power, while using the money to...
2. Strengthen the power of the 99% to resist the 1%, and then
3. Change the laws to inhibit the abuse of wealth and power.

(You can see some concrete suggestion about taxing the 1% and strengthening the 99% here and here.)

That last point—inhibiting the abuse of wealth and power—is the topic of todays post.

Here are a few suggestions: [read more]

I pointed out, in the previous post, that the recent Republican attack on net neutrality—on your right, for example, to read the daily mull even if your broadband company doesn’t like what I say here—that the Republican attempt to destroy that right is rooted in the specific notion of freedom which big money conservatives and social conservatives share.

The liberal view of freedom is centered in the individual—on the right to live as he or she sees fit, as long as that doesn’t infringe on the rights of others.

The conservative view of freedom is centered on power—on the right of those in power to infringe on the individual’s right to live as he or she sees fit.

Conservatives tend to stand for the right of those with power—be it government or business or teachers in the classroom—to deprive citizens of freedom.

Conservatives in the Republican voting base stand... [read more]

I’m taking a quick break in the midst of this series to comment on a current example: the battle over Internet neutrality.

The Senate voted this week on a bill to overturn the rules put in place by the FCC to ensure that big corporations can't keep you from reading the daily mull.

The bill failed to pass, because it was stopped by Democrats.

Those rules, in a nutshell, say that if you pay a broadband service like AT&T or Verizon or Time Warner Cable for access to the Internet, you should get full and complete access to the Internet—not just access to the sites they decide you should look at.

The view of the large corporations involved is that they have a perfect right to decide what you get to see over their service, and to censor your access in any way that pleases them—whether their motive is to make sites give them a kickback for letting you through or simply to keep you from hearing about things they don’t want you to hear about.

It’s as though your telephone company decided they could censor whom you called.

By this point, you probably see the connection between Internet neutrality and the ongoing theme of this series: the real danger to a free market is not government intervention, but the control of the market by the big players.

But there’s a much deeper pattern at work here—a pattern which helps explain the primary divide in our land. [read more]

Remember, this series is about creating a free market, and, in the process, strengthening freedom and democracy in the country.

A laisez-faire market is neither free, nor beneficial.

It will eventually be controlled by wealthy corporations to the detriment of freedom in general.

But a truly free market—one which is kept free of the dominance of wealth—is generally beneficial to all.

Last time we looked at the first of three ways to keep the market free, by stemming the power of wealth.

The three ways were:

1. Slow down the growth of wealth among the 1%.
2. Increase the wealth and power of the 99%.
3. Pass laws that limit the abuse of power by the wealthy.

This time we look at the second step: increasing the wealth and power of the 99%.

The steps outlined last time all had to do with taxes aimed at top incomes in one way or another.

Those taxes weren’t designed to raise money, but rather to slow the growth of wealth, and the unbalanced power it entails.

But they would raise money, and quite a bit of it.

Which is fortunate, because we can put that money to good use, in order to strengthen the 99%.

Here are six suggestions: [read more]

In the last few posts I’ve advanced the following argument:

1. The current market is not a natural phenomenon, but is a creation of government—a creature of laws and policies and contracts based on those laws and policies.
2. Because of this, we the people, through our government, inevitably exert control over that market, and have a responsibility to see that it functions in the best way for all of us.
3. To the extent that we neglect that responsibility the fact that wealth is power will inevitably create an imbalance in the market in favor of the wealthy which will lead to a political imbalance in the country, also in favor of the wealthy.
4. If this continues, we will not only lose the free market, but we will cease to be a free country.
5. There are three ways we can keep a wealthy minority from taking over the country:
1. We can keep the 1% from getting too much wealth and power.
2. We can increase the wealth and power of the 99%.
3. We can use various types of laws and regulations to control the misuse of power by the 1%.

This post looks at the first of these—six ways to limit the wealth and power of the 1%.

Most ways to do this involve taxation.

Some suggestions: [read more]

So far we’ve established the following:

1. Government--the influence of we, the people of the United States of America, cannot be separated from the market.
   
   The market is an invention of our government. We can only decide what role we, in the form of government, will play in the market, not whether we will play one.
2. Government isn’t the main danger to a truly free market.
   
   The overriding danger is the growing power of the 1%—the pooling of wealth at the top where it can coerce the 99%, control the market, and corrupt the institutions of our government, undermining democracy.
3. The wealth and power of the 1% is not theirs by right or fairness.
   
   It was not earned, but accumulated from the hard work and the creativity of the 99%.
4. So it makes absolute sense—both in terms of practicality and fairness—for all of us, through our role as government, to level the playing field.

There are many ways to do this, but recently the 1% have become very adroit at evading the more traditional approaches.

Here’s a quick list of options: all of which have been tried previously, and all of which have been dodged one way or another by the 1%: [read more]