But the republicans have nominated them before and there are a couple in the nrunning now that have no chance of winning, like Newt "divorce my wife on her death bed so I can marry my sweet thang mistress" Gingrich and talk of Fred Thompson.

The point is that the right-wing christian conservative wing of the Republican Party has been muted by the pragmatism that America has moved to the Left.

You are incorrect. Yes the Republican base has nominated right wing social conservatives, there is a difference between social and fiscal conservatism, however the electorate, including the less radical members of the Republican party have not voted for them enough to get them elected. Bush merely plays a social conservative and does enough to get by. Americans have never elected a true social conservative to the office of Presidency. As far as the shift to the left, the lack of support for Kerry should dispell that. Moreover look at who really put the Dems over the top in Congress. It wasn't really the liberal Dem candidates who only won in areas where the main election was the primary. In contests where there was actual competition it was the conservative or moderate Dems that carried the day not the liberals.

__________________

The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure... - Klaatu

Cheap-Labor Conservative Mythology

A big change ocurred in the world order during the 1960's owing to the decline of US dominance and our resulting inability to continue as the entire planet's banker. This, in turn, led to pressure from corporations who were experiencing sharply lower profits. Consequently, they attacked social welfare gains; now EVERYTHING had to go to the greedy rich. In 1971, Richard Nixon dismantled FDR's Bretton Woods system, expanding the supply of unregulated capital in the world tremendously. The WORST period of American economics is the last 25 years, following the rise of Ronald Ray-Gun. Anyone out there think this might simply be an accident?

John Maynard Keynes himself warned "that nothing less than the democratic experiment in self-government was endangered by the threat of global financial market forces." THIS is the historical reality that all cheap-labor conservatives will deny, and lie about and obfuscate with their last breath...but the numbers do not lie. Their vaunted "free market' is a monumental, gilt-edged, fraud. Stay after school and write that 100 times on the blackboard.

I will now proceed to knock the props out from under their neoliberal fictions. First, however, we have to understand exactly what they are and where they came from. To put it all into proper context, we have to remember that "The Great Transformation" of Karl Polanyi was published in 1944. The thesis upon which he based his most important and influential work can be reduced to these four points:

• 1. The dominance of the market over society is an artificial creation of the 19th century.
  
• 2. The origins of the ensuing cataclysm lay in the unrealistic endeavor of setting up a self-regulating market system. (He called it "utopian.")
• 3. Such a free market system could not exist for any length of time without physically destroying man and turning his surroundings into
  a wilderness.
• 4. Ultimate destruction was delayed only by the organization of labor into unions and similar social reforms.

Essentially, Polanyi makes the argument that, prior to events which coalesced around the Industrial Revolution, people and governments regarded the nature of 'the market' as merely incidental to economic life; social interactions took much greater precedence than mere financial considerations. The concept of moving from a state-regulated market to a self-regulating market, then, is the "Great Transformation" of his title.

As a reaction to this far-sighted book, the poisonous weed of neoliberalism took root at the University of Chicago. (Oddly enough, Leo Strauss was there at about the same time, channeling Machiavelli and bringing neoconservatism into the world. That joint must have been a regular hotbed of rightwad insanity after the war, huh?) An economic philosopher named Freidrich von Hayek and his students, among them Milton Friedman, took his theories of reconstituted liberalism--hence NEO-liberalism--and attempted to give them a patina of intellectual legitimacy. These are the very precepts that Polanyi so roundly denounced...of course. Same sour old wine in a shiny new bottle.

Riding in over the horizon in support of this guesswork and cock-eyed optimism, came the movers and shakers of the private economy, mainly corporate cashsuckers with the means to dominate policy formation as well as the structuring of thought and opinion. At once, they realized the possibilities of taking this half-baked hogwash and applying it for their own benefit...but it lingered in limbo as the country experienced the aforementioned era of unbridled prosperity after the war.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher, a hard-bitten social Darwinist, came to power as Prime Minister of England and initiated the neoliberal revolution there. Ronald Ray-Gun "October Surprised" the presidency away from Jimmy Carter in 1980 on this side of the Atlantic. Urged on by Big Business, both of them brought what came to be known as the Washington Consensus to bear upon vulnerable Third World countries, imposing financial slavery, increasing poverty among their populations and imposing stringent external controls through the twin institutions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank....not what Roosevelt had intended AT ALL.


The basic rules are to liberalize, or open up, all trade and finance, let markets set price, end inflation and privatize as much as possible. (You may notice this is a blueprint for the radical right's agenda even to this very day.) Various controls designated as "barriers" to free trade like tariffs, laws and capital investment restrictions are to be uniformly done away with--the "de-regulation" refrain that cheap-labor proponents keep singing--and allow the huge megaconglomerates to rake in as much as they can beg, borrow or steal. Ostensibly, this allows the free market to respond unhindered to market demands.

There's only one problem: This doesn't work. It's a crock.

There are simple facts that all its advocates, the ones who get so misty-eyed and worshipful about this claptrap, flat-out refuse to acknowledge: This free market of theirs is a pitiless, merciless jungle that Thomas Hobbes called "war of all against all." Its natural tendency is NOT toward balance and equality, but monopoly and cartels. With nothing but greed and naked self-interest pulling the strings, this monstrosity offers consumers such delights as bid-rigging, overcharging, price-fixing and exploitation as it spirals toward less and less freedom. This is the reason that a measure of government regulation--anti-trust laws, to cite one obvious example--are not only prudent but absolutely necessary! But, then, they've never been known to let the Real World impinge on their golden ideology...

Further, as Ernest Partridge so deftly points out, the transactions of giant corporations inevitably affect not just the parties of those transactions--buyers and sellers--but unconsenting third parties whom he calls stakeholders. These could be folks residing downstream from a polluting industry or children whose impressionable young minds are negatively influenced by mass marketing.

Those Wal-Mart Republicans would have you believe that man is an economic creature, always and forever in competition with his fellow creatures. This repugnant balderdash is wholly refuted by the evolutionary evidence of hunter-gatherer societies which bound themselves together for "the common good." Or, as our own Constitution says, 'the general welfare." Back in 1987, Margaret Thatcher told Women's Own, a British magazine, "There's no such thing as Society...only individual man and women and...families." This is the lie at the center of their entire lop-sided worldview: We are, each and every one of us, alone and battling each other tooth and nail for some sort of nebulous economic supremacy, hacking as much as we can from the fixed amount of wealth that is available. Or so they say. This, my friends, is a stupid, simplistic notion which has ZERO basis in actuality on planet Earth.

You'd think those who embrace this inimical worldview would be able to point to at least one success story. Well...no, they can't. With decades of evidence now in, not one Third World nation in this hemisphere--NOT ONE!--has enjoyed the promised fruits of plenty. Chile, which I mentioned earlier, has survived Allende and Pinochet, but not the intervention of the IMF. It's economy is, so to speak, completely "pauperized." Haiti, once one of the world's richest colonial prizes under France, may scarcely be habitable in the not-too-distant future. American puppet Aristide was compelled to direct the politics of his government to the needs of "Civil Society, especially the private sector, both national and foreign"...which only means that US investors are designated to be at the core of Haitian civil society, along with wealthy Haitians who backed the military coup...but not the peasants and multitudinous slum dwellers. And now even he's gone.

Argentina's economy completely collapsed in 2001, leaving widespread sickness and poverty in its wake. Bolivia very nearly had its water purification privatized out from under its feet; it became ILLEGAL to collect rainwater for a time there. Brazil, America's darling since 1945, had two-thirds of its population left without sufficient food for normal physical activity by the time the IMF eased up and are only now recovering after throwing off the yoke of neoliberalist policy completely. The most recent example is Mexico, praised as a prize student of the rules of the Washington Consensus. Poverty there increased almost as fast as the number of billionaires, foreign capital flowed in...for exploitation of cheap labor kept under control by the brutal "democracy. This house of cards was obliterated in 1994 and to this day about half of the population cannot obtain minimum food requirements. It all depends on your definition of success, of course: The local elite in each and every case, along with foreign--primarily US--investors, have all done swimmingly; it's just those pesky populations who haven't managed to avoid the pre-meditated fiscal abuse.

__________________
"Tomorrow, you're all going to wake up in a Brave New World, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research laboratory, run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags."

AOM - that bears several readings. It seems to me that completely free, unregulated economies are a temporary thing. They'll die out with the exhaustion of all the resources of the world. Look now at the struggle we're witnessing between those who would ignore the scientific evidence of climate change and those who want business as usual regardless.

It's time for economics to serve us, rather than the other way around.

__________________
"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

There are 40 countries where a newborn baby has a better chance of seeing it's first birthday than the US, are you happy with that?
40 countries where people live longer healthier lives than the people of the US, and the most any of them spend on health care per capita is less than half of what the US spends per capita on health care.

There are thousands of foreigners who come to world renowned clinics in the US, true, but the average US citizen can't get into those clinics.
And there are tens of thousands of US citizens who seek medicine and health care abroad.

If Socialized Medicine is so horrible, why hasn't any country ever dropped it and adopted the US model of health care?

Other than the odd anecdote, Why aren't people demanding change? why isn't there political pressure from the people who are so dissatisfied with the terrible system they have?

I can understand why say Cuba, a nation that spends about 1/10 of what the US spends on Health Care, yet has better outcomes than the US Health system, has no opposition to it, Castro would have them shot. But what about Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Italy? Those are all democracies, shouldn't the people have risen up and demanded that they be allowed to have the same system as the US?

Could it possibly be that they like getting better health care, and paying less for it?

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Sage words Diuretic,

The truth is that our economic system was built brick by brick to serve the needs of the banking community first and Burgoise "with capital" ists second.

Thousands of alternative economic possibilities were intentionally overlooked so that a system that was based on Credit and capital was the vortex of all of the worlds economic vibrancy and function.

It is not unlike a system of law that evolves over many hundred years designed by criminals.

We have not even begun to try to understand the potential for other econ systems.

No answer I see from Angel of Mercy on how to pay for a government run mediacal system. Apperantly I wasn't as off base as he/she suggested, he/she just has no answers of his/her own and so prefers to attack others.

__________________

The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure... - Klaatu

Welcome to the forums LC - interesting issues you raise there

__________________
"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

How about a national health insurance system that is paid for by a levy on top of everyone's taxes? And if you want the frills you can buy private health insurance.

__________________
"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

Well, in the US, per capita government spending on health care is already higher than any other country in the world.
Government in the US already spends more on health care per citizen than any country with National Health does. Our system is so inefficient, that the amount spent by business and individuals is absorbed by inefficiencies, and the net result is less efficacious health care than some countries provide at one tenth the cost.

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

That's a really interesting observation. I wonder that is? <insert usual disclaimer about disingenousness, laying a trap, being a smartie etc. and reinforce the notion that a straight answer from anyone is welcome>

__________________
"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

The problem Goober, I will get to your issue Diuretic in just aminute, the government is in fact already spending that much on programs that do not actually provide health coverage except for some retirees and some people on welfare, most of that is still comming from the states. And even with that limited number of people covered it is still spending more than anyone else on health care. You expect me to believe that if they were to offer univesal coverage to all and levy a tax to pay for it that somehow the numbers would magically drop back into line? I have yet to see a government run program, almost any program, run efficiently and this will be the single biggest program it would have so why should we think this would be any different.

Diuretic, the arguement was made by AOM, I think it was AOM, that GM is not competative because of health care costs, and to a certain point AOM had a valid point. But lets look at why their costs ae so high. I pay for a part, a good part, of my own health care system through my employer. Now I have a choice of how comprehensive a program I want, and I will pay according to the level I choose, the company picks up the rest. The company doesn't pay more if I choose the cadillac program instead of the yugo program they pay the same amount and I pay the difference. However everyone working for my comapny has the ability to get health insurance even though they share the cost. Now lets look at GM historically. The unions fought for and were given by the management of the company free health care for their members. So in essence while I agree this is a problem it is a problem of their own making. GM is not the only union organization where this was the norm while in the rest of the non union country participatory programs were the norm. As a result the non union companies had the advantage, and we still got health care.

I am not going to sit here and pretend our health care system is perfect, but it is far preferable to a government run program. There has to be a different way other than the government taking over and using its usual lack of efficiance to run the system.

__________________

The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure... - Klaatu

Thanks for taking the time to explain that to me Gort, I appreciate it. I also appreciate the clarity. I have to admit to being confused about how it works in the US but I did remember that labor/labour contracts have a bit to do with it.

No-one has the perfect scheme and in truth no one scheme will work for every country/culture but it's good to compare and perhaps learn.

__________________
"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

I can see you've got the victim pose down pat. It's much easier than attempting to defend the toxic nature of your agenda, I suppose. Attack you? I can't be bothered...but I do intend to expose the flim-flam that is at the center of what passes for conservatism these dark days. How long did the radical right ACTUALLY think they could keep pulling the wool over the American electorate? Sweet suffering succotash! This country is moving to the left out of self-defense; the ravening beast of corporatism is threatening to devour it, enabled by the unclean Republicans.

And, no, you're not EVER going to see a suggestion from me as to how to pay the really rather minimal expense of single-payer healthcare. I freely admit I don't know enough about economics to even make an uneducated guess...but if we can fund a filthy Oil War and a missile defense system that HASN'T WORKED YET, I think we ought to be able to cobble together a few billion to get it off the ground. I only know that what we're doing now--which is, in essence, privatizing healthcare--isn't working and more of the same is only likely to accentuate the problem.

__________________
"Tomorrow, you're all going to wake up in a Brave New World, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones created in a stem cell research laboratory, run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags."

So in essence you agree that you do not know squat about this yet you feel free to take pot shots at others who actually do have some information. Typical. Moreover what has ever given you the impression I am a conservative or even support a conservative agenda. Clearly it is not I that has a victims mentality for I am trying to discuss this issue and with some knowledge. It is not I that is thorwing around ad hominem attacks willy nilly while at the same time acknowledging I know nothing. That my friend is the victim mentality not what I am exhibiting. Pehaps you should educate your self a little before posting. It might make you points a tad more valid because right now based on your own admission you have zero credibility.

__________________

The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure... - Klaatu