I’d like everyone to have a very merry Christmas and Happy Holidays but I think that will take more than holiday greetings and bags of toys.
First, let’s talk about jobs.
The FED solves our inflation fears – by keeping interest rates high enough so businesses will lay workers off and drive demand down.
If the FED goofs and creates a depression, workers will be hurt most.
When government expands trade to benefit business, some workers will lose jobs, at least temporarily.
Dare we talk about the distribution of wealth?
Rich people and corporations get taxes lowered for themselves and get government to scrimp on the public services that ordinary people need.
Corporations fight to prevent enforcement of antitrust laws so they can fix prices to improve their profits at the cost of inflation for ordinary folk.
But it’s bad for business if workers unionize for better pay, so corporations fight to stop them.
Should we talk about shelter?
Some workers and poor people won’t have anywhere to sleep so some places just ban them from dozing off on streets and parks. Luckier ones can sleep in their cars though at risk to their safety and health, while people with homes and apartments “righteously” complain that people shouldn’t get to sleep if they can’t pay for the privilege.
Some who worry about encountering the poor insist that we can just hire more cops.
Who pays?
We can always make other people pay. Shifting away from fossil fuels seems expensive but we can make our grandchildren pay. One party warns that government deficits are too big – they don’t want us to leave that to our grandchildren.
Those who object to paying for education prefer privatization so everybody pays for their own and we let wealth disparity reign. For them, the effects on the country of leaving people uneducated are just too speculative.
Others lessen their legal responsibility for town and school taxes that cover the needs of workers and the poor by incorporating their own communities. Towns can keep poor people out by refusing to allow housing for them, or transportation that would enable them to get to town for work or pleasure.
Those who don’t think it’s right, fair or even safe do get to complain that our children won’t have the opportunities we did but they conclude it must be government’s fault. Everything, no doubt, is government’s fault, except that we’re government’s masters.
Notice that we’ve dumped each of those problems on the people who have the fewest resources to deal with them.
Many of us have been arguing that there are much better ways to solve each of those problems, financially and morally, for ourselves and for our workers. But that would take more than distributing Christmas or Hannukah presents.
Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” We allow ourselves to be ruled by rapacious and immoral masters. Having the votes to throw out our corporate masters, we remain their underlings instead, the fault in ourselves.
We may be in our graves before our own children and families are hurt.
If friends and neighbors may be hurt, some would deny that we are their keepers.
But without the foresight to understand the harms to our families, friends and neighbors, we have failed them.
So, let’s make the holidays the beginning of a much happier time.