It is fitting that the recent marches in New York and Canadian Thanksgiving should coincide. One of the things for which you can be thankful is that you don't live in the United States or some of the other countries that are experiencing genuine social action. However, there is another side to this story. I firmly believe that the March of the 99 Percent--or the have nots--is closely linked to the Arab spring. Both are examples of entitlement-whether political or social-denied. Not since the hunger marches of the dirty 30s has there been such a display of solidarity against what has become a significant imbalance in the socio-economic composition in the Western world. How did this happen?
To put these events in context the marches and civil disobedience associated with the Vietnam war were of a different character. These marches were the provence of either the hippies of the 1960s or college students. They had come to the conclusion that the government had lied to them and the "nobody over the age of 30 can be trusted". They marched and some of them died for the cause of making government more transparent. In this regard nothing has changed. The United States and in some regard Canada are fighting wars that do not advance the interests of the people at home. Government is unresponsive to its constituents and has become largely dysfunctional. Lunatic fringe parties can become operative because nobody believes that anyone in Washington will make a difference. Voting in elections is at an all time low in Ontario. Indifference is the hallmark of lost rights.
Let's go back to Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. This was the beginning of "trickle down" economics that assumed that deregulation and support for the rich was a sure fire way to make the whole economy fatter. The truth was that the only ones that got fatter were the rich and the multinational corporations that were granted large tax subsidies. These conditions prevail today. Reagan's reaction to a homeless person was, "Why doesn't he get a job". The Conservative doctrine of the day was to shrink government (which never happened), reduce taxes and deregulate industries (which did happen) including the banking industries. The argument was that deregulation lead to better competition and lower prices. What happened in fact is well known: deregulation lead to an obscene and predatory chapter in economic history. And the poor got poorer.
Fast forward to the current younger generation. They were adolescents through boom times. When family income could not come up with the cash to subsidize extravagant lifestyles parents could always borrow against the pent up value of the home. Values were always going up so why worry. Unlike the the folks in the dirty 30s who were working class poor some of the the current down-and-outers are coming down from a lifestyle that was subsidized by easy money and instant gratification. When all that ends there is complete breakdown in the social structure. The marchers want jobs that are "fulfilling" and "relevant". They want to live at home until age 30+ and put off becoming a tax paying and contributing member of society. They want what they had as kids and it is unlikely that they will every return to the lifestyles of the past. Of course that is not true of all the displaced persons. Job erosion has hit all socio-economic classes. There are the hardworking folk who worked in car factories that no longer exist, in construction that has largely gone silent, and the banking system that is saddled with a raft of bad loans. They have lost their jobs and many have lost their homes. More that 48 million Americans receive food stamps. That is ore than 10% of the population.
There is no political help. Once a staunch supporter of President Obama I now have the feeling (along with many others) that he is lost; overwhelmed by events that he cannot correct. He has largely become disengaged with the House and the Senate and he sits, isolated, hoping that the Republicans field presidential candidates that are bizarre enough to insure his re-election. President Roosevelt, in similar circumstances, took the people into his confidence and offered the Americans the "New Deal". President Obama has no "New Deal". He doesn't even have an Old Deal. Instead he speaks to like minded Americans in a style that is reminiscent of electioneering or lectures his constituents in a manner that is completely unconvincing. His solution to a deadlocked Congress is to encourage write in emails. He is seen as having subsidized the banks and under assisted the common man who was saddled with a mortgage and a house that was financially "under water". His advisors appear to be policy wonks who tinker with solutions but won't tackle the root cause of the problem: jobs. Tackling the hard problems should have been undertaken early in his presidency--not know when he is virtually electioneering for re-election. Instead he took on Medicare--a problem that certainly needed fixing but not in priority to a job package. When he had both the House and the Senate he squandered his political capital. He could have gotten his tax on the rich when he had a majority. Instead he abdicated to Congress and watched, largely from the sidelines. His bad.
So, what are the marchers marching about? There is no doubt that there is a socio-economic disparity in the US as there is in many other Western countries. Nothing new there. But, in prior years, there has always been the hope that the American Dream--or the Canadian Dream or the European Dream would pay off. That pay off seems remote indeed. It is very unlikely that the present generation in Western societies will be better off then their parents. It is also likely that transfers of wealth through inheritance will suffer as many savings plans have been savaged by the stock market. Like the Egyptians and the Tunisians they want to be stakeholders. Unlike the Egyptians and the Tunisians the Americans were, formerly, stakeholders but appear to be losing their stake in unemployment and financial chaos. People who lose their stake take to the streets. People who lose their stake take up extreme positions (viz the Germans in the 1930s). It is no accident that hate crimes are on take rise.
All of this is reminiscent of the Chinese Curse: "May You Live in Interesting Times".
Bernie.
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