Hillary Clinton will offer up her economic ideas today and I can't wait to see what those ideas will be although I have an idea of my own. I'm sure it will be more of the same neoliberal shit that has been decimating the middle class and creating the greatest income and wealth inequality since the 1920s. But...I'll reserve judgement. Hehe.
We do have a snippet of one of her ideas this morning. She wants companies to "share" their profits. Isn't that nice. Let's all share.
Check this out:
"The Democratic front-runner has hinted at the idea before, saying last month that she hopes to create “new incentives” for companies to share profits with more employees than just their top executives. A Clinton aide said the candidate will offer up changes to the tax code to encourage companies to participate, but did not say what those changes would be."
So here we go again with these fucking useless tax incentives. Like what? Like giving some company a tax break if they raise the wages of workers a smidgen? Fine, they'll raise some workers' pay and fire a bunch of others.
Let's be clear: we didn't get to this place of monumental inequality by incentivizing. We passed laws that literally allowed corporations to bludgeon or steal workers' productivity and pay.
Clinton's husband was a big part of this when he passed NAFTA, which led to huge job outsourcing. In addition, his deregulation of the financial industry led to the Great Recession, which most workers have still not recovered from. Furthermore his "welfare reform" was nothing of the sort: it was welfare redistribution, from the poor to the wealthy and big business.
You're not going to get corporations to be nice and share and give away their profits. Forget it. Most of them can't anyway. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to make as much as possible. This is Paul Tudor Jones shit. He's probably advising her.
The game has to be changed. Higher minimum wages, more social spending, job guarantee, investment in education, health care, etc.
My prediction: Clinton will come nowhere near these suggestions.
7 comments:
https://youtu.be/m1OuhikY91c Greece is an example of what happens when liberals meet neoliberals. Liberals cave. Obama has done the same in the US. Hillary is just following in his tracks. Greece is no longer the cradle of democracy. It is the first country to be a party to its on enslavement, because its government lacked the will to fight for its freedom. If it can happen in Greece, it can happen anywhere. Financial war has now become the way to take down democratic governments. There is no longer a need to invade. Greece is the first developed country to succumb. Who will be next?
Liston to these liberals picking the fly specs out of the pepper instead of taking a stand against neoliberal financial war. The people showed in the referendum what they wanted and their liberal government did the opposite because they are cowards who are afraid of their neoliberal enemies. Syriza is an example of what happens when a left party abandons its principles. A similar thing is happening to the Democratic Party in the US. Hillary will continue down this path.
The only good news about this is that the Democratic Party as a whole, not just the progressive wing, is putting owner and top management share versus worker share on the table. It's been a political taboo until now. To suggest it was to associate oneself with the crazies.
It's like Obamacare. The bill that was passed was a crapfest, but the principle of universal care was established.
Incremental change is better than stasis or backward movement. Neoliberals are strongly pushing the cart backwards.
Got to give progressives credit for beginning to shift the Overton window leftward against after several decades of rightward push. Even a gradual shift to a cause to celebrate.
Incentives = free market philosophy, from Henry George to Milton Friedman.
@Tom, we don't have universal care. What was actually established was the government power to force or "incentivize" us to buy crappy for-profit products. It's a dangerous precedent.
I didn't say we actually got universal care with Obamacare.
The fundamental issue was over whether universal care is a right or a privilege and right prevailed over privilege. This is the real focus over the push to repeal O-care.
Notice that the GOP has offered no alternative — because it doesn't want one. Nothing is their alternative. They believe that all goods and services should be rationed by price in according with "hard work" and "just deserts".
I should add that what that right constitutes is still being defined. Obamacare is the first step in a definition.
But O-care is not sufficient.
So the liberal push is to push forward to actually providing genuine universal coverage as a right (Medicare for all), while the conservative push is to go back to a completely private system based on "price competition."
I'd like to see Bernie Sanders push Hillary off the ticket. That would be "progress".
All good points, Tom.
Agree with the concept of health care as a basic human right, as FDR proposed. Once the right is established, then we could debate the best system to "ensure" (not "insure") and deliver health care.
Note that Medicare is a for-profit provider system that costs substantially more than public health care systems (i.e. V.A., Cuba, Spain, NHS). I've never understood why for-profit-care-for-all should be the holy grail of the left. Cui bono? Who benefits from for-profit health care?
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