(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Real Democracy is Actually Good for Capitalism [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-11 It’s practically a loyalty test on this blog to decry the New York Times. But I maintain my subscription there for a number of reasons, two of them being Jamelle Bouie and Paul Krugman. Here’s what they each had to say this morning: Krugman: Freedom’s Just Another Word for Not Paying Taxes [B]illionaires aren’t wrong in thinking they’ll pay less in taxes if Trump wins. But why aren’t they more concerned about the bigger picture? After all, even if all you care about is money, Trump’s agenda should make you very worried. His advisers’ plans to deport millions of immigrants (supposedly only the undocumented, but do you really believe many legal residents wouldn’t get caught up in the dragnets?) would shrink the U.S. labor force and be hugely disruptive. His protectionist proposals (which would be very different from Biden’s targeted measures) could mean an all-out global trade war. If he’s able to make good on them, his attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve risk much more serious inflation than anything we’ve experienced in recent years. Beyond all that, Trump will almost certainly try to weaponize the justice system to go after his perceived enemies. Only someone completely ignorant of history would imagine himself safe from that kind of weaponization — even if Trump considers you an ally now, that can change in an instant. The point being made by this Nobel laureate in economics is that, economically, Trump’s policies will be bad for business: His indiscriminate use of tariffs won’t hurt China — but it will hurt American business. His threats to deport immigrants (undocumented or otherwise) will deprive businesses and farmers of needed labor. He wants to take away the workers who do the grunt work that Americans don’t feel like doing any more. He wants to replace rule by the law — which, yes, does include regulation to keep things from getting out of hand — with rule by whim, which means things will definitely get out of hand. America’s oligarchs probably believe that their wealth and influence would protect them from the arbitrary exercise of power. Trump and company might turn corrupt law enforcement and a cowed judiciary against other people, but surely not them! By the time they realized how wrong they were, it would be too late. Next up, Bouie: There’s a Reason Trump Has Friends in High Places There is no way in which the Democratic Party constitutes a threat to capitalism. At most, the party’s program of regulation, redistribution and higher taxes may shrink, ever so slightly, the profit rate for some of the nation’s wealthiest shareholders. But when compared with Trump’s promise to destroy the regulatory state and siphon the public coffers into the accounts of his billionaire friends and allies, even modest intervention on behalf of consumers and labor looks like the harbinger of a dictatorship of the proletariat. But capitalists are deluding themselves if they think they will be better off with Trump: The truth is that regimes of corrupt, personalist rule — in which authoritarians wield the state to reward friends, punish enemies and secure their fortunes — are much less prosperous than the alternative. It’s not as if Viktor Orban’s Hungary, a shining city on the hill for the MAGA right, can claim to possess anything like a dynamic, growing economy. And the big-ticket items on Trump’s supposed second-term agenda — large tariffs on most goods entering the United States, the total politicization of the federal bureaucracy, including the Federal Reserve, and a plan to systematically deport who he says are tens of millions of undocumented immigrants — would plunge the country into turmoil and economic disarray. Capitalism requires stability in government and the rule of law in order to prosper, long term. One simple example: regulation, while it can be burdensome and often needs adjustment, ensures a level playing field. Let us suppose there are 5 aspirin manufacturers. Four are honest; one could care less. Without regulation, the fifth one could make adulterated aspirin or even totally fake aspirin, which it could sell much cheaper than the honest manufacturers. That not only ruins their businesses, it puts the health of the country at great risk. It’s happened before. Another lesson from history: Businessmen backed Hitler because they thought he would give them free rein. And he did — as long as they served his purposes. When they didn’t, he turned on them just as savagely as he turned on everyone else. Or look at Putin and the way that oligarchs who don’t do and say just as he wants really ought to avoid standing near a window. It’s also popular around here to decry capitalism. And capitalism does have a lot of sins to answer for. But the way to extract penance, as it were, is not to get rid of capitalism — not in the foreseeable future, anyway — but to tame capitalism. That can only be done by democracy. Last history lesson: The French Revolution was the product of anger over the way the poor were taxed to death (ie, starvation) while the rich and the Church avoided paying taxes at all. The more the wealthy try to shift the tax burden onto those who can least afford it, and the more the religious right tries to back them up, the bigger the inevitable explosion will be. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/11/2246096/-Real-Democracy-is-Actually-Good-for-Capitalism?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/