IF YOU FOLLOWED the link at the end of my previous post—to look at the Times site, and the way I eliminated the deficit—the first thing you may have noticed was the percentage figures at the top:
73% Savings from tax increases
27% Savings from spending cuts
This is important, because it's a fundamental key to our problems.
We have been seriously misled, over the last thirty years or so, about the nature of freedom, the nature of democratic government, and the way economics work.
Let's take those one at a time:
The nature of freedom.
We have been taught that freedom is the same thing as big-C Capitalism, that it is basically a matter of majority rule (or minority rule in the case of the Senate), that it is a matter of the people against the government.
But in reality freedom, and specifically the American idea of freedom, is about a lot more than small government, or state's rights, or elections, or unregulated markets.
It's about the average citizen being able to go about his or her life without undue coercion, by government or giant corporations or local bullies.
It's about being allowed to think and speak and act freely so long as our speech and actions don't infringe on the rights of others to do the same.
We avoid coercion by government through our constitution, our court system, our democracy, our separation of powers, and the ability of average people to get access to the information they need to vote intelligently.
And we avoid coercion by local bullies through that same system, insofar as our government keeps some people from pushing others around.
Our democratic republic is not the problem; it's the safeguard against the problem.
The real source of coercion in our lives—the real threat to our freedom to live our lives as we choose—is the growing power of wealth.
We cannot be free of coercion by giant corporations if our nation allows those corporations...
- to become so rich and powerful that we cannot fight back against them,
- to give us so few real choices that we have nowhere else to go for goods and services,
- to control what information we do and don't have access to.
Every time you spend hours on the phone trying to get satisfaction from an outsourced agent with no power to fix your problem, you are experiencing the effects of corporate power on your freedom.
Every time you have to sign an unfair contract because it's the only game in town, you are experiencing the effects of corporate power on your freedom.
Every time the health care you would like to have in place for your family is frustrated at the federal level because of corporate lobbying, every time your bank changes the rules in midstream, every time...
You get the idea.
Wealth is power.
Lack of wealth is lack of power.
In any given situation, the powerful are likely to win and the powerless are likely to lose.
Which means the powerless are never free.
Freedom can only be kept for the common citizen insofar as the common citizen has at least enough wealth and power to give him or her real choices, and only insofar as corporations and the wealthy do not have enough wealth or power to take those choices away.
Next: The Nature of Democratic Government
