[Peace-discuss] Democracy & capitalism are contradictories

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Obama's economic policies, a somewhat trammeled version of European policies (and as usual, contradicting his rhetoric - read lies) have to be reversed, as do his military policies. Is there any chance that opposition to his military and economic policies can find a home in a revived - paleoconservative and in a sense Ron-Paulist - Republican party? Such shifts have happened before: <http://www.counterpunch.org/.../an-anti-war-anti-wall.../> --CGE]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/16/why-the-european-economy-is-worse

...the question is why our European brothers and sisters have been so unfortunate as to be subjected to much more brutal economic policy than what we have experienced in the United States. While there are many nuances, there are also some simple but critically important reasons. Most vital is the accountability, or lack thereof, of the people and institutions making the decisions. 

In Europe you have the so-called "troika" – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission, and (more recently recruited) the IMF. These are much less accountable to eurozone residents – especially but not limited to those of the most victimized countries (Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Italy) – than even the relatively unaccountable Federal Reserve and US Congress and executive branch are to Americans.

Even worse, the European authorities have pursued a political agenda, and this involved actually using the crisis to promote certain "reforms" that the citizens of the victimized countries would never vote for ... reduce the size of government, reduce the bargaining power of labor, cut spending on pensions and healthcare, and increase labor supply.

...Reducing eligibility for disability payments or cutting unemployment compensation, raising the retirement age, and decentralizing collective bargaining [were parts of] the political agenda of the troika ... the European authorities saw the crisis as an opportunity to implement their favored "reforms". As the IMF put it in a 2009 report:

"Historical experience indicates that successful fiscal consolidations were often launched in the midst of economic downturns or the early stages of recovery." [Cf. Naomi Klein's 'Shock doctrine.']

All this is not to hold up the US recovery as an example; it is disgraceful that we have fewer people employed than we did six years ago, and a lower proportion of employed workers than we had at any time going back to the 1980s. It is also unnecessary: the media is filled with nonsense about cutting deficits and debt, and our government is also slowing growth with unnecessary budget cuts. And all this when our federal debt has a net interest burden of less than 1% of our national income, about as low as it has been in the post-World War II era. But the eurozone experience shows how much worse it can be when people lose most of their control over their government's most important economic policies...

[There are 1.5 million plus fewer people working in the US than when the Obama regime came to power.] 

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