Last Train to the Gates of Hell

“Young Americans aren’t stupid. They can read the writing on the wall, and they recognize that our economy is broken, functioning for the affluent few at the expense of the many. And young Americans will be vital to producing structural political or economic change in the coming decades.” Anthony Dimaggio

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an aristocrat and member of the American oligarchy, but unlike contemporary oligarchs, he understood that if capitalists were left to their own devices they would destroy the economy and cause unrest among the masses. Many of the reforms and programs passed into being during FDR’s four terms were designed to save capitalism by blunting its rougher edges.

Today’s oligarchs lose no sleep worrying about capitalism’s rough edges. Cruelty is on display and it begins with Tiny Hands Trump who clearly believes the wealthy are not only better and more deserving than anyone else, but bear no responsibility for the less fortunate. The oligarchs no longer bother to hide behind a facade of concern for the masses, except, perhaps, during election campaigns when vague promises are made to voters. Trump played to the embattled white working class, men and women hammered by the neoliberal economic, trade, and monetary policies of the last 40 years, but once elected, Trump’s true colors emerged as he surrounded himself with Goldman Sachs alums and a host of capitalist vultures.

A terrible illness afflicts our society and as a result we are among the most harried, stressed out, insecure, worried, and drug-addled nations on the planet. We are two distinct nations, very similar to a developing country, extremely rich on one end, and a huge number of poor or destitute. America’s brand of capitalism is destroying America, ripping and tearing, puncturing vital organs, breaking bones. From the Powell Memo to business leaders in 1971, to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, the Crash of 2008, the apologetic administration of Barack Obama, to Trump and his gang of kleptocrats, the disease has spread, metastasized. Unbridled capitalism destroyed our manufacturing base, forced states to seek revenue through gambling schemes, casinos, lotteries; cities and states have paid ransom to corporate America in the form of tax relief and subsidies; public goods have been auctioned off for private gain, and national tragedies like what happened to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were exploited for corporate profit. Ideologues and media enablers told us that a financialized economy was THE ticket to prosperity for all, but the income gains have accrued to those who already own the most. The level of income inequality in America is staggering, immoral, untenable, and wrong. The plight of so many of our elderly citizens is a disgrace.

And Trump and his gang will only make economic suffering -- and all the social ills that go with that suffering -- worse.

I remember watching a snippet of a town hall meeting during the first George W. Bush administration. A woman told Bush that she had three jobs, to which the affable nitwit said something like “isn’t America great,” thinking perhaps that the woman was simply ambitious rather than desperate. Things have not improved since. Automation will eliminate more and more jobs, including, one day, truck drivers, bus drivers, cab drivers, a legion of retail workers, and many others. The capitalist drive to lower or altogether eliminate labor costs will never stop unless there are laws and regulations in place to force the capitalists to consider the human costs of their thirst for maximum profit.

I walked past the shuttered Macy’s department store on State Street in Santa Barbara the other day. Macy’s, along with Nordstrom’s, was for years an anchor in the Paseo Nuevo Mall. Across State Street sits another deserted space that once housed the restaurant Left At Albuquerque and after Albuquerque went under, Panino. The City Fathers and Mothers blame vacant retail space on the homeless who camp on the sidewalks and panhandle passersby, but there is something far deeper at work here; wages for workers have been flat for decades while people pay more for housing, medical care, and education, particularly in a city like Santa Barbara where rents are stratospheric and everything seems to cost more. The economy depends on consumers, but what is the logical outcome when consumers can no longer afford to consume? When jobs are part-time, contingent, low-wage, temporary, and without benefits?

American-style capitalism may be destroying us but that doesn’t mean we can have a serious, rational discussion about it; capitalism itself -- the entire bullshit system of cutthroat competition and individual gain -- is sacred, unassailable, and infallible. If we had any respect for history, for the concept of moderation in all things, we would recognize that we’ve been on this road before.

The difference this time may be that we are passengers on a speeding locomotive with no brakes, hurtling straight for the gates of Hell.  

As Martin Luther King Jr., put it many years ago, “Capitalism fails to realize that life is social.”