The Fifth Wheel: America’s Political Economy

[DemocratsForProgress]

Walter Rhett: The Fifth Wheel: America’s Political Economy

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented her first oral dissent from the high bench last week. The New York Times coverage also reported a written statement she released the previous year on a case the Court declined to hear. The statement makes plain a profound truth overlooked. A federal prosecutor’s statement* about a group of African-Americans and Hispanics and a drug deal, she noted, was “pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotype for evidence, and racial prejudice for reason.”

Have we become a government by stereotype and blame? Yes. But more importantly, how did it happen? What were the economic and politic elements that created a such a dramatic shift? The answers lie within our political economy, one of five models active as global templates.

The most traditional of the five is the European template. In Europe, government is actively engaged in providing public service; it offers benefits to its citizens and is concerned with the public good and common resources, from roads to energy consumption, from employment to schools, from the internet to the arts. No European government would declare the death of Big Bird, the most successful teacher of early childhood language skills, as Mitt Romney did in a presidential debate (overlooking the fact that “Bird” is a part of a private non-profit group that is self-sustained by license fees). By all measures except for taxation, the European model works well, and citizen groups are not in open revolt about its goals, even as the countries of Europe debate its priorities.

European conservatives argue for austerity, but few go so far as calling for the dismantling of national social nets, the transfer of government assets to the private sector, or bizarre gun rights such as “stand your ground.”

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/05/07/the-fifth-wheel-americas-political-economy/