since the fall the Soviet Union and the "discrediting" of Marxist ideas, the capitalist class have been given the green light to do what it does best; accumulate capital. We have been conditioned as a culture to accept this by the injection of ideas through the writings of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises under the guise of "freedom". The incubator of these ideas would be found in the University of Chicago School of Economics and given ideological cover by "think tanks" such as the Cato Institute and the Hoover Institute where it would be echoed through the media especially "The Wall Street Journal", "Forbes Magazine" and the pro capitalist newspapers and TV editorial writers. Using "shock doctrine" methods in Chile, these "free market" ideas were first given it's debut after the overthrow of Salvador Allende and the takeover by Augusto Pinochet, aided and abetted by the Nixon Administration. Then you saw the same strains with the bankruptcy of NYC when the bankers took control of the financial and political control of the municipal government and systematically dismantled the liberal reforms and safeguards under the banner of fiscal responsibility, using austerity programs not unlike what is being proposed today.
Next came the election of the corporate shill Ronald Reagan to the presidency and the ascendancy of "Supply Side" economic doctrine, accompanied by the subsequent slashing of tax rates on the wealthy. This "theory" was advanced by Jude Wanninski (The Two Santa Clauses Theory) and Arthur Laffer. (The Laffer Curve)
Then there was the matter of destroying organized labor, which was signaled by the destruction of PATCO. Now to be sure, labor unions did assist in their own destruction through internal corruption, their conservative turn away from their own leftist roots and endorsement of increasingly conservative candidates including the support for the Vietnam War and racist practices coupled with the general complacency of the organized labor movement and failure to organize beyond their own shores. In fact it, was the AFL-CIO who endorsed Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Presidential election; they never saw the lead pipe coming.
Deregulation began under Carter and accelerated under Reagan. The Democratic Party, stunned by the reversal of fortune, scrambled to become as "conservative" if not more than the Republicans in order to keep their seats abandoned labor and became "Reagan Democrats" and joined the lynch mob against the middle class. Bill Clinton, triangulated with "welfare reform" and NAFTA which in the words of Ross Perot created "the giant sucking sound" of jobs being outsourced, then came Gramm-Bliley which repealed Glass-Stegall then the Bankruptcy Bill, and the last nail in the coffin of the middle class was hammered...right into it's heart.
It would only be a matter of time before the next crisis would hit. We got the first inklings that something was wrong with the Savings & Loan scandals; no reaction. Then the "dot com" bubble; nothing. Then the real estate bubble, which came with a twist; the proliferation of derivatives which were unregulated. Calls for regulation by people like Brooksley Born went unheeded, so when the house of cards came tumbling down, we find ourselves in the worst recession/depression since 1929.
We should not be surprised. After all, we put them into office, we went along with the policies-as long as it affected "them" and not "us". We chased the dream of being millionaires all the while planting the seeds of our own destruction. George Carlin's words are proving to be prophetic every day. The question now is-what will we do about it?
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