NO New Gilded Age, Thank You...
crossposted from penigma.blogspot.com:
No Second Gilded Age for America!
A little economic and art history lesson combined, as an intellectual alternative to football, institutionalized gluttony, and glorified shopping greed promoted under the guise of Christian capitalism.
Mitt's on R-money represented the policies of those who would accelerate the redistribution aka class warfare that extracts money from the 99% and relocates it to the 1%. This is evidenced by the grotesque excessive compensation without corresponding merit or accomplishment, that has been paid to the 'C-class' (CEOs CFOs COOs etc.) and other executives in contrast to increased labor productivity that has gone unrewarded, replaced with stagnating or declining compensation. Add in taxation and other policies which create an unequal playing field, and billionaires who try to buy elections, effectively owning politicians at all levels of government. Add in the vulture capitalism of political wannabes like Mitt Romney, and you have a recipe for a repetition of an era of our history that was exemplified by destructive and destabilizing boom and bust cycles, brutal attempts at union busting, and the conspicuous consumption of a few in contrast to the widespread and increasing impoverishment of the majority, in place of the American Dream and the possibility for upward mobility.
Also associated with the era were rampant swindles that eventually gave rise to the term we now know as a Ponzi scheme in the 1920s, named for Charles Ponzi, although similar scams and swindles using the same blueprint occurred in the era between the Civil War and WW II. American financial regulation arose to curb the excesses and outright swindles of the era that contributed tremendously to the financial collapse that resulted in the Great Depression. Those who seek a new gilded age want to abolish such regulation in the name of being 'business friendly', a euphemism for unfettered class warfare. Those who want to avert such disasters consistently seek regulation that keeps business honest, maintains a fair and equitable even playing field for competition, and tend to protect equally the consumer, the investor, and the small innovator from corporate greed, unfair practices and unfair competition.
In this Gilded Age as it was called, a term coined by Mark Twain to represent gaudy wealth as represented by gold leaf and gold plate, overlaying the social problems rotting underneath, an illustrator who worked mainly in pen and ink became internationally famous, Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl(s), a series of iconic illustrations over several decades of American women who were both beautiful and intelligent, idealized among other things, for marrying into European aristocracy. Real life examples of these beautiful women of wealth include the mother of Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Randolph Churchill (nee Jeanette Jerome) and the model for my blogging icon, Virginie Gautreau (nee Avegno) who posed for famous artists, including the portrait of Madame X by expat American painter John Singer Sargent.
I recognized the illustration in the image below as a particularly well-known Gibson illustration, circa 1900. Now women have the right to vote, and while still paid less than men, we have more opportunity to aspire to success than we did in the Gibson Girl era -- although the right wing war on women would send us back to those bad old days where all women could aspire to was to be the arm candy / trophy wife of powerful and wealthy men, not powerful in their own right. I am truly thankful as a woman that I will not ever have to say 'President Romney' OR Vice President Ryan.
Iggy
(1,418 posts)The Age of Mediocrity... the age of making small plans, the age of crumbling infrastructure.
FAIL.
Dog Gone at Penigma
(433 posts)One made by coincidentally 47% of people, who voted for Romney, and for other losing right wing candidates.
Iggy
(1,418 posts)So my vote for Obama and democrats this time guarantees THEY are going to finally propose big, bold plans to improve our nation's infrastructure?? and they are going to demand Congress fund these plans??
Please tell me you're not this naive.
Dog Gone at Penigma
(433 posts)Wanting it is different than getting it, but clearly Obama and his team of economists, unlike Romney's, do understand the NEED to do so better than the right.
Obama has been trying; we will see what kind of bargain he drives. Politics is the art of the possible, not the impossible.
What we really need is a new Ferdinand Pecora to come onto the public stage right now, and do what he did.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)but the new gilded age started about 1980 or so. I think we are well into it now.
Dog Gone at Penigma
(433 posts)Certainly the process started back in the 80s (possibly the 70's). The last Gilded Age ended with the Wall Street crash and the great depression, which was followed by more stringent regulation of the financial sector of our economy.
Both parties, but primarily driven by the right, worked to dismantle that regulation, which was an important safeguard, in the interim. They began to succeed more in the 80s onward, including the repeal of Glass Steagall in the 90s.
We can do restore regulation and a more equitable distribution of wealth, or we can go through the final disaster / tipping point of failed policies.
I vote for regulation and an equitable redistribution of wealth, by ending the flow from the 99% to the 1%.
Hopefully, the loss by Romney/Ryan means a lot of people agree.