Hugh Beaumont on the alleged inevitability of a Second Depression and "Blame the Victim"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

This should have been an OP. I took the liberty of OP-izing it.

Looking through your doom-n-gloom-o-rama post...

It's like a giant “victim blaming” that scolds America as a whole for their supposed spendthrift “ring-up-the-credit-card” ways, even though Elizabeth Warren, author of The Two-Income Trap put the kibosh on this long-believed canard in a recent lecture. We’re not getting hit because we’re buying too many unnecessary gadgets. Quite the opposite, actually; the price of many entertainment items/gadgets has gone down relative to inflation (which is why the right-wing talking point of “well yer not poor . . . yew have a DVD player, dontcha?” falls flat on it’s fat face).

The areas we’re getting hit on are housing, education, transportation, health care, groceries, etc. In other words, necessities are priced well out of reach of even the American middle class, much less the working class and poor. You NEED a mortgage to buy ANY home, be it 5 years old or 75; the average American does not have 50 to 150 thousand in cash lying around for a house and it’s patently absurd to think they do or they should. Unless you want a life of stocking shelves or “you want fries with that” jobs (not saying that’s a BAD thing if that is your thing, but it ain’t paying the rent), you NEED a college education just to even get your foot in the door to continue consuming and contributing economically and in turn, for companies to continue producing. What if you get sick? You think any American has a couple-hundred grand to pay for the bills?

What I’m trying to get at is that in all your finger-wagging towards the populace, you’re glossing over the ones patently responsible for putting us ALL in this situation – the wealthy and 28 years of Republican/moderate administrations buoying them.

Poor people didn’t send jobs overseas. Poor people didn’t have their wages stagnant relative to inflation since 1979. Poor people didn’t experience a 1000% increase in their income since 1990. Poor people don’t have the capability of starting new industries or even inventing anything anymore; they don’t have the start-up capital, equipment or expensive attorneys necessary when a corporation tries to overtake them or sue them. Poor people didn’t shift the responsibility of paying taxes from the rich on to themselves. Poor people aren’t being forced from their homes due to an unforeseen amount of bad luck or a major illness. Poor people aren’t the ones building these McCastles because there's a bigger profit to be made on these things compared to reasonable homes; many middle/working/poor classes, depending on their debt situation, can only buy a two-bedroom apartment or older house.

Why not any criticism towards bank underwriters who should be barring the middle class from any mortgage going over 35% of their total income? Why not any criticism towards the business leaders who look out for their shareholders only and show no responsibility towards the nation that provided them the paths to their wealth? Why not any criticism towards manufacturers who CAUSED the “No-Produce-but-you’d-BETTER-Consume!” economy that we have today?

Who gets the blame for our lousy state? Our government for not moving towards universal health care? The wealthy for expecting the world and giving nothing at all back? Universities for promoting the idea of college education while at the same time pricing 65% of the country OUT of one? The wealthy, again, for expecting us to make in the 40,000/year range forever and expecting us to survive on that while the cost of nearly everything is skyrocketing? Three Republican Presidents who ran 70% of our current national debt up for vanity wars of choice and enriching those who least need to be? Or the consumer wanting a 52 inch TV when his pocket can’t even afford an iPod?

Credit where credit is due, please. Stagnant wages vs. vaulting costs is the problem. Risk shifting from the rich to the middle/working/poor classes over the past 30 years is the problem. WE are not the lion's share of the problem. It’s the wealthy that need to start playing ball. We’ve sacrificed ENOUGH.

America needs to bring back the idea of how a living wage benefits ALL of us. America needs to return to the notion of employing anyone regardless of education level. More importantly, we need to make Keynesian economics peppered with European-style democratic social safety nets the NORM and forever banish the notion of Friedman economics, which has failed EVERYwhere it’s been attempted. Otherwise, your economy will falter and continue on the same boom/bubble/CRASH nonsense every seven years, each crash worse than the last.

I mean, I don’t WANT to get the impression that posters on DU are droolingly hoping America is going to fail and smile as 1/3 to ½ of the country potentially becomes unemployed and desititute, but I don’t like what I’m seeing on here lately. I really am not. This doom-laden schadenfreude crap needs to end.

[EstimatedProphet]

1. Good for you CPD

It really does deseve its own thread.

[AlCzervik]

2. Thank you and yes that post was way better than the scolding op.

[DBoon]

3. Debt is our "social safety net"

Other countries provide subsidized health care.
Medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. We finance our health care with credit.

Other countries subsidize higher education.
We have student loans, so young adults start their working life already in the hole

Other countries have subsidized public transit.
We have automobile loans.

Other countries have effective retirement systems, and public programs to cover periods of unemployment effectively.
We borrow to cover grocery expenses when we lose our jobs, and buy homes via mortgages to ensure our financial well-being in old age.

[raccoon]

35. Excellent post. nt

[asthmaticeog]

4. I logged in just to K&R this.

Great post, HB. :thumbsup:

[Cha]

5. Thanks for doing this..I always like

reading Hugh Beaumont and totally missed it.

"I mean, I don’t WANT to get the impression that posters on DU are droolingly hoping America is going to fail and smile as 1/3 to ½ of the country potentially becomes unemployed and desititute, but I don’t like what I’m seeing on here lately. I really am not. This doom-laden schadenfreude crap needs to end."

[JDPriestly]

39. DUers are not "droolingly hoping America will fail."

We are aware of the lessons of history.

Walter Isaacson in the book, Benjamin Franklin, An American Life, tells the story of the "Walking Purchase." Here is what Isaacson wrote:

"An old deed had given the Penns a tract of Indian land that was defined by what a man could walk in a day and a half, and Thomas Penn had hired three fleet runners to spring for thirty-six hours, thus claiming far more land than intended."

The Republicans and their wealthy friends around the world have
done something quite similar to America. The wealthy hired crafty public relations folk and the best lawyers they could buy to negotiate with the American people, winning elections with lies and distractions. Then they hired the modern day equivalent of sprinters to steal our industry, literally moving factories, jobs, incomes, lock, stock and barrel out of the country.

Can you buy a stove, a refrigerator, a computer, a piece of furniture made entirely in the U.S.A.? Maybe if you really try, but it isn't easy. And you won't get it at a price an ordinary American can afford.

We here on DU are bitter because we tried to warn Americans. Many of us spoke out early. And in spite of all of our efforts to warn, all our work for intelligent, capable candidates who could have changed the course of history that we experienced in recent years, we have had to watch a succession of failed presidents preside over the impoverishing of our once flourishing economy -- all of them elected by the money machine of the wealthy.

I campaigned for McGovern. That is how far back my patriotic efforts to get America on a realistic track go. I am not drooling. I am disappointed. I have children. I want them to enjoy good, prosperous lives. For their sakes, more than anything, I want America, my country, to succeed.

But I know that America cannot run the marathon that we need to run on an empty stomach. And, although we may not yet feel the hunger pangs, our national stomach is very empty now that the Republicans and conservative Democrats have wasted our national heritage. That is why the buy American provisions in the stimulus plan are so important.

I lived overseas for a considerable number of years, and I know that no other country has embraced the ridiculous theory that it can open its borders to unfettered imports from just any country in the world without diluting its tax base and destroying the economic well-being of its people.

We need a totally new economic plan. We need energy independence. We need to rebuild our basic industries. We need to compete with the emerging and developed nations. The picture of America's wealth is, as you point out, misleading.

[HughBeaumont]

41. A majority of DUers do not.

But I'm sorry, a handful very much do, and some are even batshit insane about it. I can ignore the batshit insane ones that are already going "Mad Max" with their predictions, condemning half the population of the US to be jobless and live in Little Sao Paulo shantytowns by 2010 (and really, we'd ALL, wealthy included, better HOPE that scenario doesn't happen or civil unrest will boil over and destroy us for good).

I can't let pass, however, those who sneeringly and inclusively blame ALL of us for "allowing" this to happen, good Democrats included. And if you'd have read this weird OP, which kind of resembled a page out of a Montana-cabin dweller's anti-consumerist manifesto, dooming all of us into the streets by our own hands, it was just insulting. Not holding to the fire the real culprits of this mess, which would be the wealthy and 28 years of Republican/Moderate presidents acting in abettance of their needs, simply reeks of borderline right-wing short-sightedness.

Call me an optimist, but I don't see what joy people get in making other's lives miserable and lousy under the guise of "being realists". What's in it for them? We finally get what we want and some have resigned themselves to the whole thing being beyond repair anyway. I and many others simply refuse to believe that. This isn't even the worst shape America's ever been in anyway. Why did the DUomsdayers even vote in the first place and why hold US to the fire for doing the right thing and getting screwed anyway? Cui Bono?

Collectively, WE did not vote for two Bewshes and a Reagan and all the disaster that came with them as a result of their policies. Hell, a few of us (myself included, I cast for Perot twice) didn't even vote for Clinton. While Clinton was rational enough to understand that fair taxation & business investment leads to job creation and we did have a long economic expansion as a result, the problem was that he still wholly embraced Friedman capitalism and didn't seriously address the already-looming concerns of the blue collar workers of this country getting their jobs shipped to cheaper locations south or overseas (or take seriously the concern that in the future it could carry over to the white collar world), nor did he ignore the idiotic ramblings of a certain Reaganite holdover and lover of deregulation named Phil Gramm.

Most of us didn't live beyond our means or move into homes we couldn't afford. We try as hard as we can to save money; you know, when it's NOT being gobbled up by a an unexpected triple-digit emergency here, a large escrow deficiency/tax bill there, or exorbitant home repair costs everywhere. Let's not mention those who committed the unfortunate crime of getting sick, which is why it's dumbfounding to me that CEOs are seemingly so bound by the code of not stepping on each other's toes that they'll continue this for-profit-health care madness even though they continually complain of it tearing into their profits.

Another thing I cannot stand from these people is the very-right-wing scold of "You should have PREPARED like I did!! You all should have seen this coming like I DID!!" It's highly idiotic because for one, it requires a person who's just trying to get through the day and probably has no free time to even spend with their families to become a part-time fortune teller. Did anyone ever think that the reason we cannot save is because wages in this country, as I've pointed out many times, are plain and simple not keeping up with the growing costs of necessities? You can't save what is constantly being taken away from you. You cannot save when your wage has not kept up with productivity, inflation or the cost of living for 30 years. There is no foolproof means of putting money away when life itself doesn't adhere to predictability. We're human beings, not risk assessors.

If anything, what will come out of this is hopefully new industries, more cost-effective and productive means of manufacturing and the moving-away from the notion of profits before people. I'm not optimistic about that last one, as Friedmanites are unfortunately still plaguing American college business schools, still running our industries and being rewarded no matter how good or bad a job they do. These same ignorant people will only pay attention to how little they can pay the Chinese to assemble, while at the same time sacrificing the quality of, their products. But new industries will arise as our energy and transporation concerns need to be met in a serious hurry, just as technology and health care will flourish due to the need of shoring up both and accommodating them in lieu of this shift.

What can we do in the meantime? I say one easy thing first and foremost would be a compilation of everything Republicans, Moderates and the wealthy did to get us into this mess these past 28 years; every illegal occupation they started, every bad piece of legislation passed, every tax break, every trade agreement, every anti-labor statements they've made, every debt-swelling action and every policy that goes against the interests of the worker and their families. Take all of this information and constantly pound home the message that reminds them WHO did this and why we should never, EVER as a nation allow any hangers-on of Friedman free-market snake-oil philosophy to disgrace the highest office of this country or our Congressional seats again.

This should never be allowed to happen again.

[JDPriestly]

43. Well said as to the following:

What can we do in the meantime? I say one easy thing first and foremost would be a compilation of everything Republicans, Moderates and the wealthy did to get us into this mess these past 28 years; every illegal occupation they started, every bad piece of legislation passed, every tax break, every trade agreement, every anti-labor statements they've made, every debt-swelling action and every policy that goes against the interests of the worker and their families. Take all of this information and constantly pound home the message that reminds them WHO did this and why we should never, EVER as a nation allow any hangers-on of Friedman free-market snake-oil philosophy to disgrace the highest office of this country or our Congressional seats again.

But, how are you going to do that without warning Americans about where we are headed?

I am one who, upon seeing the "homes" of Chinese living in caves, warned that is where we could end up if we keep competing to buy goods produced cheaply by paying lower and lower wages. The competition to lower wages and raise executive salaries has to stop. When Naomi Klein is acknowledged in schools of economics for having called out Friedman for wearing no clothes, we will be able to get back on track. Not until then.

[librechik]

6. I'm not in favor of it, but if a crash will force the villains out into the open

and the people off their duffs and into the streets, then I suppose it has to happen.

[LostinVA]

7. Yeah, that was a really good post yesterday

[glitch]

8. This is HUGH!!! :) K & R nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

31. I was wondering who would be the first...

[glitch]

33. I did feel a little bad about it.

At least my ass is cute, thanks for that!

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. knr

[Sheets of Easter]

10. This deserved to be an OP. Thanks!

:thumbsup:

[starroute]

11. It's partly exalting the idea of "risk" that's to blame

Risk-takers are valuable to a society. They're the people who are willing to gamble on starting new businesses, pulling up stakes and moving out to the frontier, doing things a little differently without any assurance it will work.

But not all of us are risk-takers. Most people would be happy to live in the same place throughout their lives, work at the same job, and enjoy the company of family and friends without ever cutting loose. And having extra risk piled on them willy-nilly doesn't turn them into daring entrepreneurs. It just makes their lives miserable.

The Republicans act as though a high-risk society is a more creative and innovative society, but it isn't. Even the natural risk-takers may hesitate, if leaving a job to launch their own business means losing health insurance or running up credit card debts that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy if the business fails. The kinds of risks that have been added to our society act as negative incentives, causing people to sit tight and stay with what they've got instead of taking chances on something new.

Since it goes against their own professed goals of encouraging innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit, we have to ask why the Republicans would be so in favor of loading us all up with risk to the current devastating extent. And the answer -- as suggested by the OP -- is that it removes those risks from the corporations and transfers them to ordinary citizens.

Perhaps the Republican Party is a lost cause, as many here seem to believe. But if there is any chance of redeeming the remaining sane Republicans and fiscal moderates, it may lie in pointing out that there is a vast chasm between encouraging individual enterprise and supporting the interests of the corporations -- and that they can't do both at once. I know the GOP as an institution has become accustomed to winning elections by rolling in corporate cash and is never likely to change its ways, but disaffected GOP voters might just be susceptible to a different message.

[Greyhound]

14. They (the "Masters of the Universe" and political "leaders") have taken the risk out of the equation

Taking risk itself is important and necessary to innovation, but what we have now is the practice of picking and declaring the winners by family, net worth, connections, and unrelated favors (raising campaign donations, for example), and removing the possibility of losing.

These pre-picked players "take a chance" and if it pays off they keep the winnings, but when they lose we cover the loss.

It is nothing but the confirmation of the few exercising absolute rule over us. What is theirs is theirs and what is ours is theirs. But don't think about taxing them, that's theirs too.

[OhioChick]

12. K&R

:kick:

[Doctor_J]

13. Hugh Beaumont? What does the Beaver have to say?

:shrug:

[Holly_Hobby]

16. LOL n/t

[Harry Monroe]

17. I know what June had to say...

"Ward, don't you think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night?"

[liberalhistorian]

18. "Dick Armey? What's his wife's name,

Vagina Coastguard?" Family Guy.

Sorry, couldn't resist!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

38. Was that actually said in FG???????

:wow:

[Quantess]

15. kick

[liberalhistorian]

19. A-fucking-MEN!

I am SO tired of the corporate shilling and blameshifting against the middle and lower classes. Especially when it comes to education, health care and retirement. People can work hard and save their entire lives and one major or long-term illness or a couple of market downturns, and they're left with nothing. Yet it's still "all their fault" 'cause they should all have a few hundred thousand extra bucks lying around. Yeah, right. Like that's really possible on a teacher's, social worker's, police/fire officer's, middle manager's, etc., salary.

My parents worked hard as teachers for forty years. My stepdad got a form of dementia starting in his late fifties and deteriorated from there, having to retire early. They used up their assets for years taking care of him (the medical system might as well have put guns to their heads and robbed them, considering how much they sucked up, more and more and more, it was never enough for them) until she couldn't keep him at home anymore, he had to be institutionalized, and their assets were gone. Now she gives most of his pension, which is a lot of what she has to live on, each month to Medicaid. All those years of work and contributing to society through educating and helping to ensure the well-being of future generations of children, and look where it's gotten them and how they've been rewarded. Yet people still say how they brought it on themselves, they should have had more saved, yaddayaddayadda. People who obviously have no idea how expensive even the smallest medical treatment is, how the health "care" sytem can bill over a hundred grand in less than a year and demand it all NOW, who fail to realize that, in life, things HAPPEN to people, responsible as well as irresponsible, and corporate, legal and economic policies make it very difficult for them.

[road2000]

24. Bravo. n/t

[femrap]

20. K and R

When can we get rid of the Federal Reserve? That would immediately make things better.

Can we fire all the banksters, well...those at the top...Senior VPs and up? And then bring charges?

This entire blaming of this Economic Disaster on Sub Prime Real Estate is CRAP. The banksters are using this as their scapegoat.

What is breaking the system are DERIVATIVES...TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF THEM.

Derivatives are nothing....they are not an asset. They produce nothing. A roulette whell is better.

Geithner is a liar. And Larry Summers can't count.

[Starry Messenger]

21. kick. n/t

[Gold Metal Flake]

22. Good on you for spotlighting HB's excellent post.

[HughBeaumont]

23. Well, that was right kind of ye.

If these people had their way, this would be DUomsday Underground.

It's just amazing that we finally get what we want after eight dreadful wrist-slitting years and some of us cannot even get behind a president that finally chooses to take action to help the 95% of the population that aren't old oil and banking cronies, finally admits when he is wrong, finally thinks pragmatically and with foresight and finally begins the first of a long series of steps to right this sorely-off-course ship.

Dooming America to failure misses the point that this isn't even the worse shape America has been in. The Great Depression had three bumbling Republican presidents enacted stupid policies to cause it and more damaging moves to try and correct it. There was that whole Civil War thing also. And we've also had times just as bad, like the Bay of Pigs, 12 years of Reagan/Bewsh and the Recession that followed, December 7th, 1941 to 1945, etc. There was also a near-attempt at a fascist coup by the post-Robber Baron conglomerate families in 1933-34.

If one needs a different way around things in addition to the stimulus, David Cay Johnston in the new Mother Jones suggests rewriting tax laws and regulations to prevent book-cooking, making the super rich pay their fair share NOW (each year you don't do this is 200-300 billion left on the table), put an abrupt end to legalized tax cheating that these CEOs get away with routinely, invade the Cayman Islands for repeal of their bank secrecy laws and tax havens, cut the Penta-Sewer's budget in half and wean Wal-Mart and the Yankees. Also, we can ground the Private Jet Exemption, demolish the Mansion Deduction and stop indenturing students.

Oh yeah, and end the two wasteful vanity wars already. We need a military that defends our country and our Constitution, not the rights of Kellog Brown and Root and Bechtol to get away with no-bid Contracts.

We'll get out of this because we're being LED by someone who knows the consequences of doing nothing. We need to build a new economy more than we need to doom the current one to collapse.

[quaker bill]

28. Just stop the plundering

collect the taxes and put the scofflaws and cheaters in stocks on the town square (perhaps they would be safer behind bars). End the DOD gravy train. Undo the book cooking and off-shoring of assets. Use tax policy to obtain favorable results for the working class. If you want a tax shelter, bring new higher wage jobs with real benefits to a depressed community, nothing less will do.

[lutherj]

25. K&R. Best post I've read on DU in a long time. By the way, it occurred to me

as I read your post, that the lax lending standards of the mortgage industry contributed to the inflation of housing prices. If fewer people could have qualified for loans, there would have been less demand to drive up the cost of homes.

Anyway, thanks for the rant.

[tomreedtoon]

26. Many far-lefters are Puritans.

Seriously. They may or may not believe in a deity, but they sure do believe in sin. And they walk around forums in DU, saying "The End is Near" and "Capitalist Consumerist Running Dogs, Burn in Hell For Your Sins."

And just like their religious counterparts, they are not generous or kind as human beings. I'm convinced that if they don't beat their kids and spouses, they psychologically terrorize them. They are one picket sign and one hair shirt away from becoming obvious crazies. The right wing is glad to see them, because they distract people from the biggest problems of the economy which the megacorporate bastards cause.

There is reason and sense in being frugal, and placing your happiness in yourself and your friends instead of in the purchase of things. (This "Shopaholic" movie that's hitting the theaters is sickening and out of touch with the world.) But that's a personal philosophy. And the nuts around DU (I hate to call them "doctrinaire Communist lovers," but they sure sound like they're repeating the same nonsense that Pradva used to print) want to interfere with your personal decisions the same way the Christian Right wanted to monitor your bedroom and teach your children in their hate camps.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

29. That's sigline material you have there.

"Many far-lefters are Puritans. They may or may not believe in a deity, but they sure do believe in sin."

Mmmmmmm.

[orleans]

27. Hugh Beaumont who played ward cleaver on "leave it to beaver?"

[paparush]

32. With Barbara Billingsly, Hugh Beaumont, Tony Dow, and Jerry Mavis as "The Beaver"

[mwb970]

42. Jerry Mathers. /nt

[BuelahWitch]

36. Hugh Beaumont's 100th birthday Feb. 16

Born Feb 16, 1909. :hi:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

30. love it. thanks for reposting as an op.

[Locrian]

34. great post ... BUT

but dont make the mistake that the rich CARE. They have instrumented the biggest upward transfer of cash and assets in history. Under the guise of the "free market". The controls that have kept this illusion are being shattered (gradually) for sure, but dont think they dont want to push us over the edge into an all out feudal society where they own EVERYTHING.

History repeats itself. The one thing the rich will NEVER have is ENOUGH.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

37. The best we can hope for is rationality

In other words, that a sufficient percentage of billionaires realize that going for that last billion by means of de facto slavery will be counter-productive.

[HughBeaumont]

40. I have NO allusions that the rich give two squirts of piss for our plights.

The only one of them that shows any common sense is Warren Buffett. The rest of them are pretty much Jack Welch/cheap labor stooge proteges.