GOP: Be careful what you wish as Trumpism trashes affordability and regulatory enforcement. Last week, I caught a panel of experts on Stephanie Ruhle's new AM show on MSNow, who concluded it was the wild, wild west on Wall Street. That is a scary potential for our future becoming a crash and trash. In the present era, that is a threatening cloud on the horizon, but now the new threat du jour the GOP sees is democratic socialism. In the wake of Democratic socialist candidates winning so much in the Democratic primaries last week in New York,, the right wing has found a new cause and has launched a political attack with howls of glee to paint all Democrats as the equivalent of communists (an echo of red scare tactic of the 1950's termonloty not heard by most voters who were not even born in the McCarthy era; it could work with some, though.. The GOP is not without its own wings, like de facto fascists and white nationalists. The political discourse is now as wild as Wall Street. New York is New York, and New York has never swung like the rest of the US, and all politics is very local there, so let's get a grip on reality.
If capitalism fears democratic socialism, it has only its own excesses to blame, but the GOP is hoping most voters, their own especially, remain ignorant of what is and what is not democratic socialism. or communism, for that matter. I'll leave that defining and name-calling to others and instead focus on what is happening, however, is reality, and who is feeling it. Unlike what Trumpists tout, Dow is not the measure that counts if resentment grows, because 80% of the economy is driven by what consumers do and feel. Consumer confidence is now in the dumps per polls. That gets reflected in political action and votes., Politically, there is a growing resentment that the "affordability" that middle-class consumers treasure is slipping from their grasp, and they are pointing the blame at those in power. and who are becoming trillionaires. The voters' buck stops there. Even some MAGA supporters are realizing that Trump betrayed them with his promises to lower their cost of living (AKA affordability).
There is an old truism: action creates reaction; To put it another way, extreme action begets extreme reaction. Capitalism is now facing a backlash of its own successes of the few,, causing the rise in political power of democratic socialism of many... For that, capitalism has only itself to blame. Capitalism also has the ability to address the anger it has caused... to observe the reforms resulting from the 2008 crash or. Due to Trump's public policies that favor the rich and his disdain for their pain, however, the concept that business can regulate itself flies in the face of humanity's great weakness: greed. Get it while the getting is good; never mind tomorrow. The will to self-regulate, or for the government to impose constraints on their excesses, does not exist, and consumers resent the results. As investors and Wall Street love their gains, ordinary people are just feeling their own loss in living standards.
.The near-death of regulation is a ticking time bomb that has not yet been felt. Are we about to repeat the financial crash of 2008 or the scams of Bernie Madoff? Both are epic examples of a government's failure to enforce regulations. earlier in this century. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is never more true than in the world of economics. The Trump regime is simply repeating what caused the 2008 crash and victims like those of Mdoff. The lack of regulatory enforcement. The result then was a strong backlash, evidenced by legislative reforms aimed at preventing a recurrence of the 2008 debacle. Laws without enforcement are not worth the paper they are printed on.
I got this response to above from a FB friend...claiming i was against capitalism. After all, he opined, socialism has failed every place it has tried. It does not work.Ye, gads...the blanket indictment of democratic socialism that it does not work...is really divorced from reality in Europe and they hate communism. ,too. They know the difference. Get a grip on yourself: My family has been in the transatlantic business for years and intensely so now. This right-wing trope has no resemblance to reality. This is not to say that the US should ditto Europe, but half my family lives in Europe, and I even have a granddaughter who left the US to escape student debt, and frankly, really likes health care and the quality of life, and the economy of Austria. She works in tech, a data analysis program to provide marketing information to the thriving private businesses in Europe. She got her undergrad and grad degrees with no student debt hangover. There is no place like Vienna for a quality of life. Also, within recent years, I visited Norway. Trump's invitation for immigrants from there has no takers. But it gave them a belly laugh. Why? Every poll I have seen calls countries like these (democratic and socialist) are the happiest in the world. It is all relative, of course, ... But I also know the reasons Europeans hate communism is what they have seen and experienced firsthand, that the economic system of a centrally controlled one-party failed. Instead of communism, the governments of Eastern Europe first replaced communism with something resembling fascism. until they, like Ukraine, revolted to join the EU, and western capitalism, warts and all, partially socialistic and regulated, but basically capitalistic. Taken as a whole, its economy is a rival to the US.
.Russia and its kin run on the support of oligarchs and corruption and fear.. Trump worships Putin. He is a fascist in his heart, as one former military aide said. But as a small business person myself, and a family that includes Harvard MBAs and entrepreneurs, the current regime of Trump cares not a whit for us little guys. and entrepreneurs..and favors the millionaires,and those who contributed to them with loyalty and money... and I am surprised you do not know it. I love capitalism, but only if it is well-regulated to keep it stable, predictable, and and competitive based on performance, not fealty to some great leader.,.There must also be some force to fill the cracks that capitalism, based on profit, cannot and will not provide, such as health care, social security, and basic affordability, while balancing the ability of the spirit of innovation, risk-taking, and freedom that capitalism provides. It is a balancing act. Without that, expect democratic socialists to pick up steam because that balance has been jeopardized by Trump and his band of billionaires, his personal greed, his third finger raised against the rule of law, his amassing of federal power, and an attempted rule by fear and retribution.
Going back to the last century, the financial crash and poverty caused by the Great Depression led to FDR.His New Deal reforms and new government services were, in modern terms, an exercise in and implementation of what we now call democratic socialism, which is now inadequate to meet all the needs citizens demand as they struggle to keep up with even the basic economic needs of food and housing.
