Can all Obama's men and all Obama's women put Humpty Dumpty together again?

I've been trying to get my head around the current capitalist crisis. Here's what I've concluded. It seems as if what Obama is trying to do is save free-market capitalism from itself. That after all is what Roosevelt did with the New Deal, although ultimately it took WWII to finish the job. If you have any thoughts I'd love to hear from you.

Let me start a bit generally and then come back to the current situation. But first a thought that's both general and specific. Whatever happens with the economic system, with capitalism, only we, the people, can make the change we want, we need. Change can only come from the bottom up, not from the top down. Trickle-down democracy will not work.

Capitalism has to turn everything it touches into a commodity: something that can be sold for a profit, the Holy Grail of capitalism. It's virtually the definition of capitalism. It is certainly its raison d'etre. Capitalists literally turn everything from necessities to luxuries into commodities: religion, war and even our health. The key commodity is labor and that's the core of this crisis. Over the last 30 to 40 years there has been an extraordinary increase in inequality in this society. From that has followed an explosion in credit in order for workers to live a "middle class" lifestyle. According to economist Robert Kuttner:

In 2006, for the sixth straight year, the U.S. economy grew at a decent rate - on average. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was up by not quite 3 percent. But that comforting average conceals a widening gulf. For the vast majority of Americans, wages and salaries declined and economic life became less secure. Layoffs accelerated. Health insurance cost were shifted onto employees more and more. Pension coverage deteriorated. Reconciling work and family life became more of a struggle. The notable gains went to the top 10 percent, and most of that to the top 1 percent. Since 2000, median income, adjusted for inflation, has actually fallen by 5.4 percent for all families of working age, despite GDP growth of more than 18 percent. (The Squandering of America: How the Failure of our Politics Undermines our Prosperity)

I know it's always satisfying to blame Bush and certainly everything has gotten worse over the last eight years, but it's really a result of 40 years of growing inequality. That's the core of the current capitalist crisis. Labor is the most important commodity. Capitalists need to keep the cost of labor as low as possible.Kuttner puts it this way:

...though the trend [widening inequality] accelerated under [George W.] Bush, it actually started in the 1970s, when the postwar pattern of high growth producing more broadly shared prosperity went into reverse.

The Republicans know exactly who they work for: the same military-industrial complex that Ike warned us against in his farewell address. And that is what fascism is after all, isn't it? The military-industrial complex using the state to carry out its nefarious deeds . Unfortunately the Democrats are not at all as clear as the GOP about who they work for. They've supported the invasion of Iraq, the Wall Street "bailout" ( the greatest theft in American history), and gone along with almost every proto-fascist (anti-American) proposal put forward by Bush and the Republicans (yes that's a band, a band of thieves). So if capitalism collapses, who's going to stand-up for a progressive agenda? Perhaps for the moment a progressive capitalism is the better of the alternatives (I can't believe I really said that, did I?). But the real question is: what will this version of capitalism look like? In order to answer that question (even hypothetically) we have to look at how the problem began. But one thing needs to be emphasized first, capitalism is rife with contradictions and therefore it constantly tends toward crises. So the best the king can do with Humpty Dumpty is temporarily put him together (Humpty will almost surely fall off that wall again).

But meanwhile the two parties disagree about what course to follow to solve the current problem. The Republicans have either bought the trickle down supply-side mythology (more tax breaks for the rich) or are trying to use it to undermine Obama and the Democrats. (Or, as Ann said, both.) The Republicans know that if Obama can put Humpty together again, even if only for a while, they will be wandering in the political desert for more than 40 years. Or as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said (NYT, 1/19/09):

Old-fashioned voodoo economics -- the belief in tax-cut magic -- has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans and Republicans.

Although the immediate cause of the crisis was the explosion of credit and the effects of many borrowers' inability to repay those loans (toxic loans). And how the lending institutions tried to profit from this situation. And how administration after administration failed to police Wall Street.

Obama seems to understand the solution lies in putting people back to work so that they have money to spend. Despite Republican belief that as Reagan said: " In this present crisis Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." Or as McCain and Palin ran around the country yelling at their campaign stops:" You know better how to spend your hard-earned money than the government does." The latest statistics belie that nonsense. At a time when only spending (and only the government can spend in the amounts necessary) will increase demand and create jobs, people are saving more and spending less, which is the opposite of what's necessary. It also seems to me a rejection of democracy (which is still a process wherein the people decide what they want and then hire people through elections to carry these wishes out) while the Republican ideology is anarchy or, perhaps, chaos rather than democracy.

What, it seems to me, has to emerge from all this "stimulus" discussion are several things: (1) a guaranteed job for every person who wants one. (2) Those jobs must provide workers with a wage that will entitle them to at least a "middle class" lifestyle. (3) Sufficient training/education so that they will be qualified for whatever work they want to do. (4) Excellent health care for all. This will put Humpty together again, at least until the contradictions of capitalism knock him off the wall again.