How The Virus Of Neoliberalism Infected The Democratic Party

                                                                               

Neoliberalism is the economic bane of the planet and the primary reason that rightist nationalist populism is now spreading - from Trump in the U.S. to Modi in India, to Victor Orban in Hungary.  How did this economic virus acquire such jet fuel to spread to every nook of the globe in barely 40 years?  I suspect it began with the U.S. in the Reagan era and metastasized from there.

Anyone who's been paying attention for the last 40 years can tell you that the marginalization of lower socio-economic classes actually commenced with  the Reagan tax cuts in the early 80s. Robert McChesney in his excellent book, The Problem of the Media, Monthly Review Press, 2004, p. 49, writes:

"With the election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal movement had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joseph Liebermann. Differences remained on timing and specifics, but on core issues both parties agreed that business was the rightful ruler over society"

Economic scholar Matt Stoller - building on this theme - notes that by the 1980s Democrats altered abandoned New Deal and Great Society liberalism in favor of the  new dogma that came to be known as neoliberalism — a view of society in which markets and financial instruments, rather than government policy and direct intervention, are seen as the best way to achieve social ends.

For his part, McChesney showed the Democrats had become their own worst enemies - seeking to advance a misbegotten, pro-business agenda even at the expense of losing many of their base, the working class. One can understand it with the naturally business-friendly Republicans, but not with the Dems who grew their original political DNA with FDR and the New Deal.

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. It also helps to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions.

Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences."

It's also how men such as Donald Trump came to unearned power - in the U.S. - especially by promising those undermined by Neoliberalism how he'd save them.  So he made enormous promises like the con man he is, including: bringing back jobs to rust belt states, resurrecting King Coal as an energy source, cleaning out the D.C. "swamp" - which he's only added to, and oh yeah, making Mexico pay for that stupid wall.

But these vapid promises existed before Trump came along, and Obama  - bless his heart - had been one of the prime Neoliberal pushers.  As a recent NY Times piece ('Barack Obama Biggest Mistake')  by Farhad Manjoo notes:

"Obama’s biggest ideas were neoliberal: The Affordable Care Act, his greatest domestic policy achievement, improved access to health care by altering private health-insurance markets. Obama aimed to address the climate crisis by setting up a market for carbon, and his plan for improving education focused on technocratic, standards-based reform. Even Obama’s historical icons were neoliberal — the neoliberals’ patron saint being Alexander Hamilton, the elitist, banker-friendly founding father who would be transformed, in Obama’s neoliberal Camelot, into a beloved immigrant striver with very good flow."

Let's also recall Obama's admiration for Reagan himself.

 Then there was also his ill-advised "Deficit commission" - which aim was to basically cut benefits from those who needed it the most, including paring down Social Security using a "Chained CPI"scheme. See e.g.

• Time to Kick Alan Simpson to the Curb!

 All of which was designed to undermine citizen security.  Then there was his refusal to veto the extension of the Bush tax cuts - another form of Neoliberal meme - given the belief that such cuts spur economic activity - e.g.

• Why Have the Dems Turned into Weak Wusses?

Sadly, most citizens today only know Dem Neoliberalism - they've no clue about actual liberal economic policies such as pursued by FDR, and JFK.  As Manjoo observes (ibid.)

"The long history of Democratic populism is unknown to most liberals today. Only now, in the age of Sanders and Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are we beginning to relearn the lessons of the past. For at least three decades, neoliberalism has brought the left economic half-measures and political despair."

And with that despair brought an unqualified grifter, con man, mutt and traitor like Trump into power as well. The question now is whether enough dumb voters will compound their misery by giving Donnie Dotard another four years to destroy what is left of the country.

Why Democrats May Soon Have To Embrace Political Warfare To Stop Trump And the GOP.

How our Founding Fathers settled political disputes - the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton - with the latter shot dead for his effrontery.(From The New Republic, March, 2018)


"The way democracy is conducted today may have hit a new low in the lifetime of most Americans—but not in the life of the republic. The United States has been here before. For almost the entirety of the country’s first century of existence, politics was a zero-sum game—and often a blood sport. All fights were to the death, and those parties that lost were eliminated. The Federalists ceased to exist. So did the old Whigs, after losing their battle to the death with the Democrats. " -   Kevin Baker, 'The Myth Of Normal America', The New Republic, March 2018, p. 14.

"At their heart, appeals to moderation willfully ignore an obvious and indisputable aspect of our presidential system: the ahistoric procedural tactics marshaled by the Republican Party to accomplish their objectives are adopted because they usually work. And despite brief episodes of political blowback when the party reaches too far, Republicans have done incredibly well for themselves by pushing the limits of acceptable political behavior to their advantage." - Tim Donovan, 'Dems Fighting Words',  The American Prospect, Aug. 26, 2006

"Unpleasant as it may be for Right wingers to think about, their articles of faith are essentially spinoffs of wrong ideas about baboons. ...The baboon model, of course, fits hand in glove with the idea that humans are killer apes who have always hunted and eaten flesh. Wrong or not this theme works well in the dog-eat-dog culture of industrial capitalism...Put together in a package they make up a political outlook known as Social Darwinism." - Jim Mason, 'An Unnatural Order: Uncovering The Roots Of Our Domination Of Nature And Each Other, p. 79.

Let's get real here: the hope of many Democrats - like my wife,  Janice- that Trump and the gangster GOP will be stopped by Robert Mueller or elections in November ( and two years hence), may be no more than a pipedream. This is because the tacit assumption made is the Ds' political opponents will act as rational and responsible actors - as opposed to rats using Russian hacking, voter suppression, rigged electronic voting machines  or other vicious tactics -  i.e. to stay in charge of the current rolling national disaster.  The point? It may be necessary for the Dems - to survive as a viable party, far less win elections - to go "nuclear" in terms of political warfare at multiple levels. 

 As long ago as April, 2010, I wrote about the message in Michael Tomasky's American Prospect piece,  'Dems' Fightin' Words', in which he observed the extent to which Democrats had devolved to become political Caspar Milquetoasts. That is, deliberately eschewing hard nosed, no -holds barred  partisanship for a debate style emphasis on "reason and temperance",  based on invoking policy points.

Little wonder from that point the Dems have been thumped time after time (especially in governorships)  until now they have almost been gerrymandered out of existence by the Repukes. Oh, even as the lower federal courts are being stacked with right wing nuts.  Without the will to fight, and by that I mean bringing a metaphorical "Uzi" or anti- aircraft gun to the proverbial "gunfight", they likely will go the way of the Dodo ….or the Whigs.

This is also the theme of Kevin Baker's New Republic article from March, 2018,  'The Myth Of Normal America'.    E.g.
https://newrepublic.com/article/146915/american-politics-has-never-been-normal

A myth, sadly, that the Democrats largely appear to be operating under.  But for context let me provide a few quotes from Baker's article, starting with the genesis of what I will call the political war state:

"Republicans’ pursuit of the “Southern strategy” to scoop up Wallace voters, followed by the Clintons’ largely disastrous effort to reshape the Democrats from a culturally diverse party with shared liberal economics into a center-right economic party with shared cultural values, have pushed our politics back to the winner-take-all past. Can we expect the results to be any different after Trump than they were the last time around, if we find ourselves back in the old-school, antebellum political system? Well, what’s the popular definition of insanity again?"

The point about the Dems' "center right economic party" - leading to the DLC  or "Democratic Leadership Council" - is a solid one because it was suggested by Tomasky (ibid.) that this is what turned the Dems away from partisan fights to Milquetoasts- and losing.  This also led to "a diminution and loss of an overarching and motivating vision".  Not surprisingly, the Dems moved toward corporate elitism (and Neoliberalism) - effectively becoming "Republican lite".

The problem is that this pose simply emboldened the GOP  - which went on a tear to destroy the Dems totally - using propaganda of whatever form, as well as bare knuckle tactics such as gerrymandering on steroids, voter suppression (including in the 2000 general election in FLA) and  reaching their apex (nadir?) with the blocking of any Senate hearings for Merrrick Garland. Oh,  and the more recent total capitulation to the traitor Trump - thereby becoming his de facto henchmen.  To  fix ideas, just look at the recent mouthings of the trio of Reepo quislings:   Lindsey Graham, John Kennedy (Louisiana backwoods inbred - no relation to JFK) and Orrin Hatch - denouncing John Brennan after Trump stripped his security clearance.

Another timely, excellent Baker point to ponder:

"Democracy is a system designed for human beings to exist in and prosper under, together and indefinitely. As in any successful means of living, it depends to some degree on mutually agreed-upon forgiveness (if not forgetting). War, on the other hand, is meant to achieve a set objective, for as long or as short a time as that takes. Its aim is to break the will of an opponent to resist, and it builds momentum—and often morale—by dwelling more and more on the perfidy of the enemy. Atrocity builds upon atrocity, propaganda replaces truth and objective analysis, “winning” surpasses any other objective, and all rules that exist are the more likely to be discarded the longer the war continues, with each blow that follows the next falling harder and more heavily. 

The politics-as-war we live under now escalates steadily, with each transgression inviting another. The Democrats who finally unseat Trump, or merely succeed him, will have to respond in kind to him and his ilk, no matter how superior they may feel in ethics and motivation. It’s the logic of war rather than the logic of democracy."

 

 
The last point is a critical one to process which is likely to blow away many Dem centrists, moderates  or "powderpuffs". I.e. those who cling to the use of "civility" or civil tactics and strategies to oust the human pustule in the White House and his retinue of lesser pustule enablers.  Hence, the theme needs to transform to the "logic of war"  rather than the "logic of democracy". Why? Because for all intents the Repukes have demonstrated by their actions they've no interest in democratic institutions or processes. Hell, they will not even provide a constitutional check on the powers of the pretender occupying the White House.   So hence Baker's admonition for the Dems to "respond to Trump in kind". In other words, become just as vicious and unforgiving, striking back as he has. Oh, and even go beyond that to altering the system itself. How ?


Again, we go to Baker for specifics:

"Democrats will have to become more partisan and more ruthless just to survive. Let’s say Republicans do add another 60, or 250, or 300-plus seats to the federal judiciary. Democrats will have no choice but to add even more, if they hope ever to pass a program that will not be struck down by the rabid new partisans filling our courts. 

 

For that matter, the best way for Democrats to make certain that Republicans never duplicate what they just did with Merrick Garland and Neil Gorsuch—refusing even to consider the Supreme Court nominee of a sitting president for months on end and then installing their own party’s ideologue instead, as soon as they won an election—would be to expand the Supreme Court by appointing two new justices, as soon as they have the opportunity.... It would be easy to say that this way madness lies, but this is the way America used to do business. 

As Richard Primus points out, before most of our modern federal judiciary existed, it was much easier for the party in power to manipulate the law by simply changing the number of seats on the Supreme Court, up or down. Why not? There is nothing in the Constitution that says they can’t—any more than there’s anything saying that Mitch McConnell can’t have the Senate wait until “the people have spoken” in a distant presidential election"

Will the Dems have the cojones to add more Supreme Court seats? How about more federal judiciary seats?  My take is most of the current Dems in power - namely Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi  - will not go that route because they will regard it as "extreme".  In this case, we can only expect more Dem losses because the two dem leaders regard our politics like a college debate society as opposed to political war. This is also precisely the criticism leveled at the last generation of D leaders by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber in their book, Banana Republicans | PR Watch

Baker has this further warning for any Dem leaders, including Schumer and Pelosi, prepared to tolerate more GOOpr ruthlessness as opposed to taking the bastards to the mat.

"Lawlessness, long tolerated, has a way of coming back on one’s own party. Democrats, ruminating upon what meat doth our Caesar feed, may be dumb, but they’re not stupid. They understand that the Gorsuch coup was another escalation, another coarsening of democracy. They get that McConnell’s silence and McCain’s pledge about not approving a Hillary nominee, period, was a clear suggestion that any Democratic president would be considered illegitimate—and that should one be elected, we can expect a four-to-eight-year Republican blockade of any Supreme Court nominees, and nominees to other vital government posts as well. "

So, in other words, Trump and the GOP have already declared a state of war- against the Dems. The latter perforce will now have to muster the will to fight like rabid Tasmanian Devils to stop the further destruction of our Republic and its devolution into a One Party state that Rampton and Stauber have warned about.

But again, is there the will?  My bet is the Dem party will need to tilt far more leftward in Antifa-style to mount the will to fight on the scale and intensity needed.

Baker again:

"Judging by the events of the last year—and the last 30—that crisis may soon be in the offing. The tactics formulated by the right, and eagerly adopted by Trump, have proved so successful that their opponents would be foolish to forswear them. And if Democrats still don’t happen to possess more than a knife to bring to this gunfight, they seem at least to recognize that it is a gunfight."

Fine. But I still want them to not only recognize the "gunfight" but to bring an Uzi and an anti-aircraft cannon or two.

Finally:

"Just three days after this column appeared, Trump sandbagged a meeting with Republican and Democratic senators to devise a bipartisan immigration bill, by bringing in some of the worst anti-immigration bigots in the Congress and announcing before them all that he was for more immigrants from nice countries like Norway, and not from some “shithole countries.” In short order, all the president’s men were insisting that they had heard nothing, nothing at all; other Republicans were denying he had said anything bad or claiming that he had actually said “shithouse countries” (a befuddling distinction); and Trump himself was insisting, once again, that Democrats wanted to let murderers and drug dealers into the country to kill us all in our beds.In one fell swoop, the president had inflicted on Americans a vulgarity that we had never before seen in our daily newspapers or heard on our newscasts and followed it up with his usual tsunami of lies, coerced perjury, and lethal smears. The sad truth of the matter is that it was years ago that one political movement in this country obliterated the “rules”...…. What the United States is immersed in now is not politics as usual but something much worse, with as venal, as vicious, and as openly racist a group of individuals as have ever controlled its government."

 In other words, we are in the midst of a political upheaval, a war for all intents, and every manjack who wants to see the end of Trumpism and the GOP quisling enablers - needs to act like it's a war - not a college debate.

Don't Blame Immigrants For Slow - Or No- Wage Growth!

Graph showing average hourly earnings growth and  effect of one 'basket' of companies increase in labor costs since 2016, relative to a basket with high labor costs. (From The Wall Street Journal, yesterday, p. A1)

It is odd that the WSJ op-ed 'The Elites Feed Anti-Immigrant Bias' (July 10, p. A15) stands in stark contrast to the same day front page story ('Workers Welcome Wage Gains, But Companies Feel Squeeze').  In the op-ed we are asked to believe that it is hordes of Mexican immigrants getting hired and degrading white Americans' hourly wages.  In the second, we learn the real reason is that companies are simply reluctant to have shrinking profit margins via higher labor costs. (See graph)

The first piece gives an anecdote from a guy  whose fiancee earns $31 an hour and has worked at the same company for "21 years" while "Mexicans have been hired at $8 an hour".  The guy adds:

"I don't want to be racial but that's all they're hiring".

On which I call bollocks.  The fact is, no company or virtually none, is hiring Mexican immigrants at that quoted low wage rate to do quality work at a quality company. Where Mexican immigrants are working  now is where they're most needed, i.e. at landscaping jobs, construction, and agriculture - and even then not enough can be hired because of Dotard's immigration policies. Employers are having to partake in "lottos" to get the workers they need.

The anecdote above was preceded by this remark from the author (Prof. Joan C. Williams):

"Yet real wage growth for the working class has been abysmal for a generation, and for many native born blue collar workers the culprit seems obvious - immigration"   Adding:

"Today less than half of Americans born in the 1980s earn more than their parents did, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty'>

Yes, but WHY is this the case?  More to the point, why are the blue collars blaming immigrants instead of corporate America and the economic ideology that fuels its excesses?

As I first noted in my book, The Elements of the Corporatocracy, ordinary workers have suffered a 'death of thousand cuts' since Neoliberalism came into vogue during the Reagan years. Robert McChesney in his excellent book, The Problem of the Media, Monthly Review Press, 2004, p. 49, writes:

"With the election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal movement had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joseph Liebermann. Differences remained on timing and specifics, but on core issues both parties agreed that business was the rightful ruler over society"

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. It also helps to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions.

Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative.  In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences.""

In other words, the global Neoliberal dynamic inevitably paves the way for authoritarian populists like Trump and others to come to power.  Among the "thousand cut" insults sustained by U.S. workers compliments of corporations and the entrenched Neolib state:

(1) Cutting employee benefits, i.e. health plans - even after employees have retired with them.

(2) Eliminating defined benefits plans, such as provided standard corporate pensions - in favor or defined contribution plans (such as 401ks) in which workers are in it for themselves to accumulate adequate savings for retirement.

(3) Cutting wages - either de facto, or through eliminating the unions which protected them (much exacerbated after Reagan ascended to power)

(4) Firing/downsizing workers just before their retirement dates, so the company is free not to have to pay retirement plan benefits, or provide stock options, as per contract clauses.

(5) Re-engineering the workplace to increase its automation factor in order to dump workers, so increase profit margins by not having to pay benefits, etc.

(6) Shipping as many jobs as possible overseas, to places like Bangalore or Beijing, with labor costs barely 20% of what they are in the U.S. and no benefits to factor in.

(7) Firing - downsizing workers after mergers dictated by Wall Street interests, in order to enhance a company' profits through higher Wall Street share prices.

(8) Identifying older (over 50) workers as 'surplus' so that they can be replaced with younger workers for whom half the wages (or less) can be paid, with fewer benefits. (A recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling a few years ago exacerbated this by asserting anyone claiming "age discrimination" could not file a suit in standing if that was the only charge)

(9) Eliminating nearly all permanent jobs which carry health and pension benefits, in favor of using 'temping', 'outsourcing' or some other device not requiring benefits. On the academic (university) front, using 'adjunct' professors, hired on a per hour, per course basis, without benefits., and with no possibility of 'tenure'.

(10) Tying health insurance to employment, so that when let go or fired, workers are waylaid again by having to do without critical protection

All of these in concert, have forced a massive marginalization of the workforce. It was so odious and extensive  - even by 1996-  that it prompted these powerful words of Charles Reich in his book, Opposing the System,p. 22:

"We have built a machine for dehumanization of such force and destructive power, thorough its accumulated assaults on human dignity, that we are creating kinds and degrees of damage to human beings beyond anything ever known, with totally unforeseeable consequences "


And as  Barbara Ehrenreich observed in her book, 'This Land is THEIR Land', p. 61:

"Market forces ensure that a volunteer army will necessarily be an army of the poor. The trouble is that enlistment doesn't do a lot to brighten one's economic future"

Probably no truer supporting statement ever appeared than barely 20 years ago, in an issue of Psychology Today  (July/August 1998, p. 10. Includes graph):

"Starting in the mid-1970s, the nation's quality of life parted company with its wealth, and the gap between social health, and GDP is now bigger than it's ever been."

A graph of 'quality life indices' vs. GDP (ibid.) shows the measured divergence. It also suggests that we devolved to a much sicker society than anyone imagined. The marginalization of the workforce, is surely one major barometer of that. The GINI coefficient, and research disclosing how it portends social and economic disintegration, is another. (The U.S. Gini coefficient is now at nearly 42.  Readers can track the Gini index increase at this St. Louis Federal Reserve site:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA


So how and when did the pre-eminence of market forces over human needs and welfare come about? It was actually brewing for dozens of years, perhaps since the collapse of LBJ's  "Great Society" in the mid to late 60s. From then on the real "elites" (which Prof. Douglas mentions) set out to render labor as cheap as feasible and hostage to Wall Street dictates and decisions.  Part of this was also based on twisted economic reasoning, e.g. as embodied in the Pareto distribution, e.g.


whereby the dollars from the affluent and the poor - or labor class - are treated differently.  This built in economic prejudice drives the Neoliberal machine and causes it to value affluent populations over ordinary workers, even as it tries to discourage the latter from enhancing their own welfare, say to do with health care.

Example:. Economist Marty Feldstein once suggested it makes more sense to give the ordinary worker with health insurance $1,499 NOT to get the colonoscopy, than to let her get the test and consume valuable specialist time and resources via a $2,000 "subsidy".  See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/modern-economics-its-evil-basis-pareto.html


In other words, capital is opted for over labor, and  profit margins trump higher wages, this was the topic of The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca.

The point is then, that labor is devalued precisely because we live in a "Judas Economy" where capital is revered over it. One of the most disgusting aspects is that productivity in relation to GDP has increased more than 40% yet isn't registered because of the skewed way GDP is computed.

All of this is eminently proven by the front page WSJ story cited above,  with the graph) in which we learn:

"Rising wages are beginning to eat into the profits of some U.S. companies. Businesses from dollar stores to hotel operators to fast food chains have warned that higher labor costs have been a drag on their profits - a potential headwind for the nine year stock rally as it struggles for momentum ahead of the second quarter earnings season."

Adding:

"This is good news for U.S. workers ...but the higher costs pose a threat to some U.S. companies"

And we should also dispel the myth that this higher labor cost factor just impinges "some" companies. That's plain blarney and understatement because in fact all corporations have higher labor costs on their radar. I already noted (Jan. 10 post),

According to Paula Harvey, VP of Human Resources at Schulte Building Systems in Houston:

"Companies are really hesitant to give raises. When you give a raise, it's stuck in the pay system. It is something you're guaranteeing: it's becoming a fixed cost. "

She insisted it's much better for companies to preserve "flexibility" so instead companies enact "variable pay". This can come in the form of one off bonuses - say on a per year basis- or if you are a stellar performer you can get a "bigger bump". Say equal to a half year's wage increase of 3 percent. (If you are a super star performer you have the optimal chance of getting a permanent good raise.)

Of particular relevance was the question asked her: Why, if the labor market is so tight (such low unemployment), do wages remain stagnant?   She responded that  "You can blame a combination of factors including the globalization of the work force, job automation and the decline of unions.".

Meanwhile. managing director of Aspen Advisors, Andrew Gadomski (from a WSJ piece), admitted that when companies lament they can't find workers to fill key openings, that is code for: "I can find talent, I just don't want to pay them as much as they cost."

Nowhere are immigrants mentioned, nor should they have been, since they aren't grabbing good paying jobs nor are they the source of wage deterioration. Vastly bigger threats  include corporations too cheap to pay decent wages and AI robots.

In the realm of manual labor, columnist Jim  Hightower cites the example of "SAM" a robotic bricklayer that "lays three times as many bricks in a day as a human can". Hence, it has the potential to displace three times the number of human workers. Immigrants? Not a factor at all compared to 'SAM'.

What about higher level jobs? They're also at risk from bots, not immigrants.  Hightower points out the jobs of "accountants, bank loan officers, and insurance claims adjustors are "falling to the bots".   Why? Because they can calculate more rapidly and more accurately than humans- oh, and they don't require 401ks or health care plans!

It shouldn't take a rocket scientist or astrophysicist to figure out the ultimate goal of the Neoliberals and all economic "efficiency" (i.e. Pareto distribution)  fetishists is to eliminate human labor and its costs as far as possible. That includes immigrants, as well as homegrown American workers - of whatever class.

See also: 'Oil's Technology Spells End Of Roughneck Boom' - Artificial Intelligence and Automation Replace Oil Industry's Blue Collar Jobs'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/oils-new-technology-spells-end-of-boom-for-roughnecks-1531233085


Excerpt:

"Technology has already upended labor needs in most of the world's manufacturing. It's now upending the energy business  foretelling the end for one of the last sectors in America where blue collar workers could hold jobs paying six figure salaries. ....The energy sector has found it can use new technologies, to do the work better and cheaper and with few people. They have invested billions of dollars on what the industry calls 'digital oil fields', embracing artificial intelligence, automation and other technologies"

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tim-koechlin/80098/imagining-an-economy-that-serves-the-99

Peter G. Peterson Croaks But The 99 Percent Aren't Mourning

Peter G. Peterson's obit recently appeared in the WSJ.  A reason to be sad? Hell no!

The more than half page obituary of Blackstone Group honcho Peter G. Peterson was interesting only for the amount of  WSJ space it consumed. To read it you'd think this rat was somehow on a par with George Soros in terms of social support and donations. But if you really bought that bill of goods you'd have to either have zero memory of Peterson's efforts to eviscerate social insurance - or been on too much weed. 

Recall as long as 5 years ago,  SourceWatch’s PetersonPyramid.org  pointed out that the “Campaign to Fix the Debt” was just the latest effort by Peter G. Peterson and a bunch of his billionaire pals and corporate cronies to chop away at Social Security and Medicare. All that  in the name of fixing America’s “debt problem”.  In a blog post (Jan. 24)  at the time I pointed out that the tragedy was in not getting politicos who ought to know better to castigate  him instead of endorsing  his dastardly efforts.

A number of sources at the time, including smirkingchimp.com, salon.com as well as The New York Times, exposed  Fix the Debt, as  a group of business executives and onetime legislators who had become Washington’s most visible and best-financed advocates for reining in the federal deficit.  These scumballs were exposed when troglydyte Jim McCrery, a former Louisiana congressman, urged lawmakers to "pursue entitlement cuts and tax reform", and was introduced on television as a leader of the hitherto unknown enclave.

Interestingly, McCrery made no mention  of his day job: a lobbyist at Capitol Counsel L.L.C. His clients have included the Alliance for Savings and Investment, a group of large companies pushing to maintain low tax rates on dividend income, and the Win America Campaign, a coalition of multinational corporations that lobbied for a one-time “repatriation holiday” allowing them to move offshore profits back home without paying taxes.

Fix the Debt had succeeded in confecting a "public-spirited, elder-statesman sheen to the cause of deficit reduction" according to the NY Times. Like busy little bees during the 2012  fiscal cliff negotiations,  they set up grass-roots chapters around the country, and even met with President Obama and his aides, while hosting private breakfasts for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Obama-  for his part-  seemed to have taken the "entitlement-reduction" Kool Aid to heart, appearing on 'Meet the Press'  on Dec. 30th, 2012,  while most of the country was getting ready for New Year's Eve. Obama strongly indicated he'd have no problem adopting the Chained CPI to reduce Social Security.  Progressives immediately reacted with predictable venom to this concession to billionaire Neolib rat Peterson's machinations.

Another Dem (more like DINO) who appeared bought out was former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. He had appeared on the (then) MSNBC show  'The Cycle', actually demanding  progressives accept the implementation of the Chained CPI and also extending the Medicare -qualifying age to at least 67 .  Even more liberal rage ensued, and wifey recalls me screaming at the tube, "He’s a Neoliberal FUCK!!"

Wifey concurred but chose the less colorful term 'rat' instead of any f-bombs, acknowledging his frequent appearances on all the most liberal MSNBC shows had duped us.  Rendell, meanwhile, had eagerly begun parroting  Peter G. Peterson's talking points. (Though MSNBC did not identify the former governor as such, Philadelphia magazine  noted that he was a “corporate consigliere for Greenhill & Co investment bank” and the co-chair of “Fix the Debt".)

The saddest aspect to all this is that Peterson's Fix the Debt  front group - by roping in center Right and centrist Dems - further split the Democratic Party leading to the political chasm we saw exposed (between Hillary and Bernie Sanders' supporters) in the 2016 election. That chasm arguably led to the election of Trump given that 16 percent of Sanders' supporters had become so disaffected by Hillary's Neoliberalism (established by her giving talks to Wall Streeters for pay)  that they actually voted for Trump - or Jill Stein. Having opted for political "cholera"  instead of "dysentery" they dragged all the rest of us - who were able to assess relative horrors - into the former, wholesale.

No. Peter G. Peterson will not be missed or mourned. For most of us the response is "Good riddance!"

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/78375/pete-peterson-s-ghost

Excerpt:

"That legacy is marked by Pete Peterson’s long war against Social Security and Medicare, his austerity economics, and the false aura of objectivity Peterson used to promote his ideology.

Behind his carefully stage-managed veneer of bipartisanship (his team once tried to get me suspended from a publication for calling him right-wing), Peterson engaged in a decades-long war on the social contract. Programs like Social Security and Medicare were his immediate targets, but his ultimate goal was even broader: He wanted to extinguish the ideal of public goods, and put an end to the notion that certain social programs should be universal.

Peterson took conservative ideas and gave them an undeserved air of truth and neutrality. Politicians who embraced them were more likely to receive a steady flow of high-dollar contributions and gaining entrée to the right salons and alliances."