Conservative Rhetoric

In a previous article, "Public Finance and Community Power Structure" at griffithlighton.blogspot.com, we discussed the function of bifurcating the power strucuture into spheres of public and private. Where the two spheres intersect is where the rhetoric resides to direct the winds of change.

We now here the conservative critique of the neo-classical, Keynesian means of facilitating the distribution phase of the business cycle (fiscal and monetary stimulus) as a futile attempt to "tax and spend our way to prosperity." This "liberal" means-to-ends, conservatives argue, is an empirically disconfirmed hypothesis.

The tax-and-spend hypothesis is empirically disconfirmed. The hypothesis is nulled by a significant history of Keynesian fiscal and monetary policy, only to lead to our current liquidity crisis of a monumental proportion.

The rhetoric ideologically plays on the bifurcation of the power structure and the bipolar ideological debate that boxes-in ideas and arguments that fuel the winds of change beyond the duopoly of false choices and a false pluralism.

A good example of properly utilizing the bifurcation of the power strucuture is the proposed cap-and-trade energy program of the Obama administration. Directing the tax revenue from this carbon tax into green energy technologies, instead of letting it all be untraceably sucked into the abyss of class-conscious rewards and inefficiencies, the "reinvestment" dimension will utilize the private sector element of the bifurcation to green the economy. Greening will be profitable with the reinvestment being directed from the public sector.

Conservatives, of course, object that the greening policy directed from the public sector disrupts the useful bifurcation of power because, instead of generating revenues to be consolidated and paid out to the upper echelons of power (operating to merely support the power and privilege of the private sector and the welfare of its power elite first), it will actually be greening (operating for the general welfare, including the power elite). Instead of a short-term capital gain for the immediate and wasteful gratification of a spoiled and greedy elite, the revenue will be reinvested for a benefit that cannot be defined as either public or private. The benefit is, rather, pragmatic change we ALL need beyond the artificial rhetorical constructs of power and politics for solutions that are purely economic with a clearly verifiable legitimacy of providing for the general welfare.

On the other hand, that the AMA will not see a reduction in their medicare payments indicates an unwillingness of the Obama administration to dispense with power politics for pragamtic solutions neither public or private.

While I understand that a more progressive tax code will be the vehicle for reinvesting in healthcare, and the doctors' income will be affected by the code (the more income, the more tax paid), the incentive will still directly exist to increase prices, and the taxes to finance it, well beyond the rate of inflation and the increased tax rate. The cost will runaway despite the progressive code to tax the higher income so that the market pressure will not be to control the costs, but to pay the doctors the highest price for the lowest quality.

While the administration is avoiding the incentive for doctors to greedily deny healthcare to medicare patients, holding healthcare hostage to their class consciousness, it needs to be clear that public health goes well beyond taxing tobacco, and who knows what else, to regressively finance their greed. Providing healthcare will be largely a function of controlling costs and assuring the highest quality through tried-and-true competitive market practices that do not solicit the greediest among us supported by regressive tax vehicles, but the most responsible to the wants a needs, the preferences, of The People in a free marketplace. It needs to be perfectly clear to the power elite, including the doctors, it is to be freedom before tyranny whether public or priavte!

What obtains outside the box of the liberal/conservative theories and practices is the real change we need. Ideas to fuel the winds of change can be found at griffithlighton.blogspot.com.

"Infusion" or "Distribution" Phase of the Business Cycle?

January 21, 2009

Financiers and conservative economists want to describe the phase of the business cycle we are now in as "the infusion phase."

Defining the distribution phase as "infusion" is a neo-conservative attempt to foist their ideology, their words, into action.

The next step for the Obama administration, if we are to quickly and effectively turn our economy around defined as "change we need," is to facilitate the distribution phase from the existing pool of consolidated capital through Treasury and the Federal Reserve system. Infusion of new capital--the neo-conservative, Keynesian approach--will defeat the change factor.

Infusion will keep the consolidated capital intact and will act to consolidate the infused capital going forward into "recovery" (another term, a word, to guide action) so that the distribution of economic, and political, power is status quo ante, or conserved in a neo-conservative (Keynesian) fashion.

Obama has been wise to define the hastening of the distribution phase with the necessary means to be taken--as a "reinvestment," rather than the ends--a "recovery."

Defining the government's action with the ends ignores and diminishes the importance and necessity of the means to effect, and define, the change we need as a long term solution that avoids or eliminates the crisis that cyclically consolidates wealth and power.

If we deconsolidate the capital and ensure the operaton of free markets in priority, we will usher in an age of peaceful prosperity in which a free market invokes the verifiable promise of freedom to provide and prosper rather than a means to tyrannize and deprive through a system of false choices and continuous reinvention of the promise.

An age of peaceful and prosperous pluralism is at hand. We should not allow neo-conservative rhetoric and policies, like funding programs with a regressive tax burden, to continue guidance into a tyranny of markets masquerading as freedom or the general welfare.