Views » September 18, 2007

Twilight of the Market’s Idols

Not Larry Craig, but George Bush and his careless economic policies, have left the Republican party cornered in a bathroom stall

By Susan J. Douglas

As I write this, Republicans, nearly deranged by their own homophobia, have succeeded in ousting Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) because he made some odd foot and hand movements in an airport men’s room. But the person they should be going after, and not just because of the quagmire in Iraq, is Bush, a bigger disaster for the Republican Party than even his colleagues might think. For the Bush administration’s singular accomplishment, aside from demonstrating why unilateral military intervention is a road to ruin, has been to discredit the alleged virtues of free-market ideology.

The neocons’ and Reagan’s crowning achievement in the ’80s was to reverse the 50-year notion, established by the New Deal, that the government had a crucial role in moderating the effects of unchecked capitalism on everyday people. The neocons especially attacked Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs as failures. Antipoverty programs, welfare, the school lunch program, prenatal care for poor women and all government regulations hadn’t worked, they claimed, and even made things worse: They promoted a “culture of dependency” that robbed people of the motivation to improve their own lives.

The most effective, fair and wise gyroscope for modulating economic swings and distributing social and economic goods was “the market.” The market optimizes outcomes for all, so the mantra went. The government, by contrast, was inefficient and unfair, giving the greatest benefits to the most undeserving sectors of society. Watching shows like “Wall Street Week” with Louis Rukeyser, one saw and heard the market personified into some all-knowing, beneficent Buddha. The market “liked” certain things (downsizing always made it happy), “responded negatively” to other things, became “jittery” and the like. The market knew best.

By the time Bush and his much-vaunted “CEO presidency” came to roost, the notion that the government had a role to play in shaping public life was unspeakable. Grover Norquist advanced the Bush-Cheney position that if you “kill the taxes, you kill the government.” From the EPA to the FDA to the Veteran’s Administration to FEMA, that is exactly what Team Bush did.

So, what is the track record of “the market”, especially under Bush? How has it done, compared, to say, all those inefficient unfair government programs of yore?

Where to start? Leaving healthcare to the foresight of the market has meant that 47 million Americans—6 million more than when Bush took office, and nearly 16 percent of the population—do not have health insurance. The sagacity of the market has also meant that more than 600,000 children joined the ranks of the uninsured just since last year.

Having jettisoned LBJ’s “War on Poverty,” the United States now boasts the highest child poverty rate in the developed world: nearly 27 percent. In other countries like France, Sweden and Germany, government programs helped slash their rates to 10 percent or less. (When Johnson launched the “War on Poverty in 1964,” the rate was 19 percent; ten years later it was 11.2 percent. What a failure.)

On the environment, Bush has sought to curb the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because the market—in this case, industry—is the superior regulator. There are too many cases here to innumerate, but under Bush, the EPA has weakened pollution laws or postponed their implementation until the next decade, raised the arsenic-in-tap water standards, allowed snowmobiling in national parks, and opened up national forests to the timber industry. The result? Millions of Americans are still exposed to unhealthy air pollution, and 20 million acres of wetlands have been removed from protection under the Clean Water Act.

What happens when we let the market decide which drugs are good and which are bad? Under Bush, FDA enforcement against false and misleading ads declined precipitously as we were bombarded by ever more ads for prescription drugs that sounded official because they had X’s in their names. The FDA’s enforcement of manufacturing standards for producers of vaccines dropped by 80 percent between 2002-2004. The market missed that Vioxx, for example, could kill people, or that other drugs like Celebrex and Bextra might have some problems.

And two years after Katrina, need we say anything about the government’s preparedness for natural disasters?

Everywhere, the safety net—except for the rich—has been shredded under Bush. He’s gone so far that people are rediscovering that we do need strong, well-funded government agencies to prevent us from devolving into a third-world nation. The Democrats may have their work cut out for them in reversing the nearly 30-year-old mantra that the market is the best regulator and the government is the worst, but they have two things on their side: the increasingly widespread, dispiriting experiences of everyday people at the hands of “the market,” and the facts.

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• Reader Comments

  Susan,

  Either stay with the motherhood topic (or perhaps there is something other area in which you have knowledge), but avoid economics unless you take time to study it more.

  The economic mess the U.S. is in is the product of decades of inept and misleading financial reporting. Many administrations and mostly Democratic congresses were participants and advocates.

  Greenspan served the purposes of three administratiions with his disembling and vocal fog.

  If ever there has been a category of bipartisanship the making and manipulating of money is it.

  Bush is as much a Republican as Clinton was a Democrat. Both are first and foremost interested in their own well being.

  Harry Truman was probably the last U.S. President who was true to his party, totally honest and loyal to his word and did not profit financially from the office to which he brought integrity annd left with it intact.

  Posted by whattheheck on Sep 18, 2007 at 6:29 PM

  I think Susan has put it rather well. This adminsistration has managed to ‘debase’ the $US, all without any help from the ‘reds under the beds’. The ‘free market’ is an ideological abstraction that obscures more thn ait illuminates, and left unchecked, will kill the very thing it is supposed to underpin-capitlaism. In the US the situation is absolutely gobsmacking to anyone living abroad. The ‘reserve currency’ so important to the prestige of the US abroad, is slowly deflating, and risking a turn to the Euro by holders of $US, meaning most of south east Asia. When and if that happens, the US working class will really get to know just how much ghe Land of the brave and Free really feels about democracy.

  Posted by Jane Doe on Sep 24, 2007 at 7:34 AM

  Go back to your hole, rabbit.  ;-)

  Posted by whattheheck on Sep 24, 2007 at 11:36 PM

  Who hooo! Rabbit eh? Get a grip! BTW, what’s your prediction for the amount of time the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans will be content to see their foreign reservs slowly deflate in value as the US palms off its debt to the rest of the world, onto those countries, full of hard working people whose efforts permit US citizens to consume beyond their means?

  How long do you think the rest of he world will be happy to hang around while the US threatens to bomb the crap out of anybi\ody that doesn’t accept their particular nostrums for the ideal way of life?

  Oh and BTW, when are you guys going to start exporting freedom and democracy to Burma? I mean if ever there was a case for demcoracy denied it is that sad counry. I guess thouhg when you don’t have oil, you don’t count.

  Posted by Jane Doe on Sep 25, 2007 at 1:36 AM

  Hi again, Hippity,

  Sorry —You won’t get any argument from me on the stupid economic policies of the U.S.  I have been concerned for decades.

  This is going to affect the global economy in a big way. As spendthrift U.S. consumers run out of credit sources the world will need to sell to people perhaps less willing to blow their pay and mortgage their futures.

  It will be interesting to see if greed continues to be the universal language and simply migrates.

  ———————

  BTW — How long could you do without oil down there?

  I expect if things get really tight on supply it willl be much easier to get a coalition of “the willing” to go to war over it.

  International cooperation behind the scenes is a better way to handle wacky religious murderers. Let’s hope for more of that approach.

  Posted by whattheheck on Sep 25, 2007 at 1:19 PM

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