THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CRISIS is about more than money. How we handle money as a nation says a great deal about our commitment to democracy, and about our basic spiritual values.
How the candidates respond to the crisis says a great deal about their commitment to democracy, and their spiritual values, as well.
McCain's solution:
- Suck up to the people you want to vote for you: Tell the American workers they are the best in the world.
This approach had three purposes:
First, it was his way of getting out of a stupid mistake. He had said the economic fundamentals were strong, and they obviously weren't. So he claimed that what he meant by "economic fundamentals" was the American worker.
Second, it was a way to woo voters, while distracting them from his mistake. "Oh, I didn't make a mistake, I was complimenting you." (This, by the way, shows just how little respect the McCain campaign has for the American workers. He actually thought they'd be stupid enough to buy it.)
Third, it was a defense against anyone who wanted to point out the mistake. "Oh, you don't think the fundamentals of the American economy are strong? What do you have against the American worker?"
As a political ploy, it was the second most brilliant thing he could have done. (The first would have been to admit the mistake and revert to straight talk.) But as part of a solution to the current problem? The American workers were just as good during the Clinton years, and this didn't happen.
There's an underlying spiritual message here as well: a comparison between Americans and the workers in other countries, and a subtle encouragement for us to think we're better than they are. McCain doesn't seem to mind this, he may even think it's good for Americans to think of themselves as superior and the rest of the world as inferior.
It's part of the whole Bush/Cheney idea of an American Empire. You can't have an empire without instilling in your citizens the idea that they are superior to the rest of the world. And the President gets to be Emperor. - Blame someone else for the problem: It's because of the Greed of Wall Street.
This approach has several purposes, as well:
First, it makes a nice counterpoint to the American worker ploy. If the American workers are the good guys, those greedy Wall Street types are the bad guys. It all becomes a matter of blame, with a nice scape-goat to pin it all on.
One problem with this is that McCain has generally been on the same side as the Wall Street guys, but that makes this move all the better. It distances him from the problem.
Second, it makes it sound as though punishing the bad guys will fix the problem, and it puts McCain firmly in the role of parent, dishing out the punishment.
Third, it makes the problem people rather than policy, while giving it a moral tinge. McCain isn't all that good at policy, especially economic policy, but he's great at casting himself as the warrior on the side of good against evil.
Once again, it's a brilliant strategy for winning votes, but we could punish Wall Street greed all we want, and it would not begin to solve this crisis.
Spiritually, of course, it relies on the idea that every problem can be blamed on some "bad guy", who, of course, is someone else. McCain seems to believe that the average voter will buy into this kind of thinking. I'm not so sure. - Make people afraid of your opponent's policies: I'm against raising taxes.
The idea here is to hide a carrot and stick for the voters inside a Trojan theory: trickle-down economics. Tell the voters that high taxes are stifling the economy (ignore the fact that some of America's most prosperous years included higher taxes on the rich and corporations than we have now), and hint that your opponent will raise their taxes. (Ignore the fact that he won't, unless they earn more than a quarter of a million per year.)
Once again, it's a great strategy for getting votes, if you think the voters are too dumb to notice that the money never trickles down. But it won't do much for the crisis: after all, it's exactly what Bush has been doing the last eight years.
The subtle spiritual twist is to encourage people to vote out of fear, and to be willing to believe what the fear monger says, without actually bothering to check. An essential quality in voters, if you want to perpetuate the last eight years. - Offer yourself as a strong-man alternative: I'll reform Wall Street and Washington: all those bad people out there who are hurting you. I'll take them on.
Once again, McCain portrays himself as the strong-man, the emperor, the warrior-king. He wants us to buy into the idea that we can just trust him to do battle for us. The state of mind he's trying to encourage is a spiritual trap. It leads to citizens giving up their power, it leads to the presidency becoming more like a dictatorship, it leads to an abdication of responsibility.
It may, again, be a very effective way to get votes, but it tells us nothing about how he would actually address the issue.
Not one of the responses above actually does address the issue. Every one of them is an attempt to position himself for votes without addressing the issue. And every one of them encourages, or depends upon, some kind of weakness in the American character.
Obama's solutions:
- Go to the root of the problem, and help alleviate the immediate pain at the same time: deal with the growing income gap between the middle class and the wealthy.
This is a fundamental part of the problem: an unregulated free market soon ceases to be free. Money is power. A few people at the top, who have the political and economic power to influence the economy, end up controlling everything. They get deregulation when they want it, and if that leads to a crisis they get bailouts at our expense.
Worse, they end up in a position to continue sucking all the capital and income out of the economy, leaving less every day for the rest of us, who work for them and help them to do what they're doing. The economic status of the working middle class gets worse and worse while the elite rich do better and better.
It does no good to point fingers at the wealthy. We can punish them or blame them all we want without changing a thing. The solution lies in policy, not finger pointing.
First, we need to reform our taxes. We need to tax wealth more, and the middle class less. Yes, this is the R-word, redistribution. Without it, the wealthy elite just keep gaining ground, while the working people who are actually creating the wealth lose ground.
But this is not just an economic issue, it's a spiritual issue (an issue of fairness, and of taking care of the people who do the work) and it's an issue of democracy. Any country which allows one small group of people to collect all the power at the expense of everyone else will not remain a democracy for long. If we want to continue to be America, this is a necessary step.
And don't worry about the poor wealthy elites. First, they'll still be rich, even after their taxes go up. And second, the trickle-down theory may not work, but the bubble-up theory does. All the stimulation provided to the middle class will end up increasing the profits of the wealthy as well, and provide the government with more tax income to pay down the debt left to us by Bush and Cheney.
Second, we need to stop showering benefits on oil companies and corporations that out source American jobs.
Many of these institutions get unfair tax-breaks and other government benefits to help them suck up the wealth. This is both a fairness issue and a free market issue. In order for the economy to stay healthy, giant corporations need to compete on the same playing field as everyone else. They shouldn't be getting breaks from the government which interfere with their normal vulnerability to market forces. - Take pragmatic steps to control what's out of control: Regulate Wall Street to protect our investments and savings.
This, too, is a spiritual issue. We used to call it stewardship in the church. When people have direct influence on the savings and investments of others, there's a need for oversight, to make certain they are responsible.
Obama would begin to undo some of the rampant deregulation of the last 20 or 30 years, advocated by people like Bush and McCain. - Build for a more stable and prosperous future: Fast-track an energy plan to free us from dependence on Mid-East oil and to create millions of jobs in America.
This has multiple purposes, and multiple spiritual benefits. McCain would focus on more drilling for oil while giving lip-service to other forms of energy. Once again, this is bad stewardship. Oil is not good for the environment, when we drill for it offshore, or when we burn it. And it depends on those same big corporations, which have very little loyalty to the United States, but eat up large and costly benefits from the U.S. government.
On the other hand, other sources, such as wind and solar, are much more environmentally friendly. They're cleaner to use, and cleaner to create. They also lend themselves to implementation by many smaller businesses, rather than a few enormous corporations, and that will tend to democratize our economy, and create more jobs, thus strengthening the middle-class.
The McCain campaign has been fond of screaming that Obama has no plan, while they do. Read the above, carefully. Scan the internet for future developments. But keep your eye on the ball.
We have a spiritual and patriotic duty to pay attention.
