When America Was Great

Part 2 of the “Why We Vote” series

Capitalism Worked for Us

When America was great (1940s - 1960s), we raised living standards by combining capitalism with rules and customs favorable to working people and small business. Rates for the highest tax bracket ranged from 70% to 91%. We enforced antitrust laws with vigor. Union membership reached all-time highs.

Students could work their way through college without accumulating large debts. Young couples could afford children, lots of them, and they could buy homes with yards where the children played.

Capitalists Abuse Capitalism

When America was great, companies sought long-term growth and profits. They provided goods and services in competitive markets. Now the CEOs are obsessed with short-term market valuations and private jets. They use funds for stock buybacks rather than invest in product development.

Decades of mergers have created monopolies and oligopolies that gouge us with greedflation^[1].^[2] Consumers and workers suffer.

Globalization plus the political advantages enjoyed by huge corporations squeeze small and medium sized businesses.Jobs are shipped overseas in a “race to the bottom” global labor market. Americans must compete against workers who are paid subsistence wages.

Leveraged buyouts saddle viable firms with huge debts. The raiders sell off the assets to satisfy their lust for money. Thousands of Americans lose their jobs when the raided companies are forced to declare bankruptcy. The incentives are out of whack.

Problems Beyond the Donor Class

Nobody forced us to buy so much stuff from China. Many of our trading partners treat their workers worse than we treat ours. Low birth rates have lowered the ratio of workers to retirees. Many young people cannot afford college. Less education will harm Americans and America for decades.

The donor class did not create the SARS CoV 2 COVID virus. It came from a market located suspiciously close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Zoning restrictions and a gauntlet of regulations created the housing shortage. To make it worse, private equity firms (donor class members in good standing) bid up home prices and jack up rents.

Class War in America

The Donor Class vs Everyone Else

Attack formation of the rich. - Grand Luxury Chauffeur, Unsplash

We seldom cooperate on economic issues because we are too busy fighting a culture war. The wealthy are also divided, but they hang together on economic issues. We should follow their example because…

There is a second war in America; the Donor Class vs Everyone Else. We are losing. We will not win until social conservatives and liberals work together to enact reforms that benefit workers, the middle class and small businesses. The system should work for us.

We fear the other party’s sinful nature, so we nominate the candidates who raise the most money. Where does the money come from? Who controls the news media outlets and internet algorithms that pull us apart? Who do you think?

The donor class rigged the economy, and American living standards declined. This may have been intentional, to make us easier to control and our labor cheaper. Perhaps we’re just collateral damage from a greed stampede. For a clear and concise history of the donor class, please read Evil Geniuses, by Kurt Andersen.^[3]

We need more parties so we can vote against donor class candidates. In a race between two donor class candidates, the donor class always wins.

A Nation Divided

When America was great, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats were common. The two-party system worked because we could compromise.

Civil rights issues prompted conservatives to leave the Democratic Party and liberals to leave the Republican Party. Ideology divided our two parties; an urban/rural split also developed. A long fight was in the making.

Two-party systems fail when deep divisions develop. Single-winner elections become raging battles. PACs generate floods of attack ads. Compromise becomes a dirty word. Each election pulls us further apart. Are we stuck in a doom loop?^[4]

We are More United than We Think

We have shared values.
We love our family and our community.
We love freedom and oppose oppression.
We demand a fair economy and fair elections.
We love America and oppose those who would betray us.

Despite our extreme partisan divide, we share a great deal of common ground on policy issues. A major survey, the "American Aspirations Index",^[5] shows that we are close to agreement on most issues, with immigration as the exception. They also found that we overestimate how much we disagree on the issues.

In the article “The Growing Evidence That Americans Are Less Divided Than You May Think” Karl Vick covers the Aspirations Index and other polls that reveal considerable agreement among Americans on major issues.^[6]

We could work out our differences with a better political system. What the elites fear most is populists and progressives working together on economic issues.

To solve our problems, we need to take control of the political system.

The next article in the “Why We Vote” series, “Building Capitalism for the People” looks at five core problems and describes what we can to solve each problem.

Why We Vote series:

1. The Second Law of Economics
2. When America was Great
3. Building Capitalism for the People
4. Multi Party Election Reform