Pity the poor Republicans. For forty years, they have followed the mantras spouted by their soothsayers, Art Laffer and Grover Norquist. “Lower tax rates bring in more money. Prosperity will trickle down. I want a government so small I can drown it in the bathtub.” For forty years, we’ve been subjected to an experiment aimed at fulfillment of the Republican dream. Then, with the ascendance of a so-called “businessman” to the Presidency, they had their wish totally fulfilled. Tax rates for corporations were slashed, incremental personal tax rates were cut further, and the estate tax now only affects a truly small segment of the population. We should have seen wild growth in our economy! Everyone truly happy and sharing in the national prosperity.
Except. Except we were not sharing equally in the prosperity this nation generated. Many, many folks were caught in the grinding wheel of trying to survive inside of a high cost society. Some lived in fly-over land, where it took a little less to survive, but still, it was nearly impossible to survive on a single income earning anywhere near the minimum wage. If they fell behind, then there were the predatory lenders, the auto title lords, the pay-day lenders, who would take advantage of those who had the least and withdraw funds feeding those who already had made it.
Now the Republicans are facing an opponent that doesn’t buy into the Ayn Randian philosophy permeating the Republican party. And those same Republicans, forced to compete on the field of ideas and policy, are retreating to their well-worn phrases against socialism, and attempting to incite culture wars in order to keep their base energized and engaged. It seems as though the first cracks are appearing in the Republican monolith aimed at enshrining Trumpism into the political hall of fame. Erstwhile supporter of Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, now finds himself at the focal point of the magnifying glass of the Federal investigating agencies, while the bright light of the press shining through that same magnifying glass has caused the first smoldering of combustion to appear.
There now is someone in charge who believes we’ve had a decades long dearth in the investment provided through the Federal government. The bill has come due in the amount of spending required to repair the neglected arteries of our commerce. Perhaps the global commerce cardiac infarction from the Suez Canal blockage will show folks what can happen if something we depend upon within the US is suddenly taken out of service. Were we to suddenly lose train routes from New Jersey to Manhattan, or lose I-95 due to a bridge failure, we would see how vulnerable we are to this type of incident.
But its more. We now have a society where access to the internet is taken for granted in most population centers. Unfortunately, it is not a given in much of the lower population density regions that extends across the nation. As someone who lives in one of these lower population states, non-existent or extremely poor internet service is the norm anywhere outside of what passes for a population center in the state. Private industry has not found it profitable to serve much of the area in the country, since there is so little population there to amortize their investment. One of the real reasons for population declines in my state is due to the inability to compete because of poor internet connectivity. This really was apparent during the pandemic, where there were attempts to conduct remote learning through the internet. Whole swaths of this state were unable to do this due to the lack of internet service. The internet has become a necessary utility, like electric, phone, and water. Now it appears we are addressing those regions where it is not available, and that is good.
So now we hear the wails from the Republicans about the extreme leftists who have taken over the opposition party. Nowhere do we hear about the extremism we’ve endured on behalf of the ideology of “I’ve got mine, now go screw yourself” party we’ve seen for over a generation. Like it or not, no one is a raging success on their own. If we’ve been successful, it’s because of education systems put in place a long time ago. When people began abandoning the public school system, mainly due to the integration of that public system, then their engagement with that system has atrophied. Many no longer believe they have a role to play in the success of the whole. Instead, they decry forced taxation as legalized theft. They don’t care if the poor can’t get ahead, they’ll just hole up in their gated community and enjoy the fruits of their supposed labor.
Well, better historians than me have traced the decline of societies to the times when a significant underclass no longer feels they are able to share in the wealth of the society. That’s when desperation leads to true socialistic movements that will overwhelm any gates the rich can put up to isolate themselves. We can begin to address the obscene inequities present in our current system, or we can pretend that we can escape the world’s ills by flying to Cancun while everyone at home freezes in the dark.
Even A Broken Clock 