Uncle Bernie the socialist warrior!
The US Presidential Election Campaign will end in November 2016 with the election of a new US Leader. And the 2016 US Presidential Election is proving to be the most interesting and pivotal in a generation.
OK. Bernie Sanders is a social warrior battling wealth inequality, the super rich and their elite backers. Trump and Sanders are the spearheads of a modern American revolt. The US working and middle class believes it has been shortchanged by the 1%: the owners of Corporate America. The 90% believes that the rich and powerful have rigged the political and economic system for their benefit. And the 90%, especially working class whites, are angry: very angry.
US Senator Bernie Sanders gave the establishment centrist’s dream candidate, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a beating at the New Hampshire Primary on February 9, 2016. Sanders beat Clinton by a very wide margin. Clinton is a pillar of the US political establishment. She lived in the White House for 8 years as First Lady, and she has been a US Senator and cabinet member. Even before that, she was First Lady of Arkansas when her husband President Bill Clinton was a southern governor.
Americans under the age of 40 do not consider Clinton an outsider. Neither do they consider Clinton the progressive that she considers herself. Being a political outsider is a great asset in the 2016 US Election Campaign. Being part of the political establishment is an albatross in the present US political environment.
What was even more amazing was that Sanders, the first Jew in US history to win a New Hampshire Primary, and a professorial seventy something, won among key demographics. He won the young under 30s vote overwhelmingly. He won among young women, and even older women. And he won among voters who view trust and honesty as important virtues of the modern politician. Interestingly Clinton’s strongest supporters are blacks and Hispanics. But even the minorities demographic appears to be in play to the benefit of Sanders after his New Hampshire victory.
Donald Trump also won the New Hampshire Primary on February 9, on the Republican side. He won for the very same reason Bernie Sanders did. The white working and middle classes, especially blue collar workers earning under 50K are “pissed off.” They have given the “middle finger” to the establishment and political and social elites in the USA. Why? Well, this segment of the US population has seen its share of the overall wealth decline in real terms since the 1980s.
Globally, the advent of the Supply Sided Economic Model of the Chicago School of Economics has since the early 1980s preached the virtues of a business driven, trickle down, and austere, social and economic policy. However, the result of Supply Side ideas has been a wholesale transfer of wealth to the top 1%, from the working and middle classes, the 90%.
The trickledown effect has really only benefitted the top 10%, or those persons that earn in excess of 100k per annum.
The USA has become the developed world’s most unequal country. However, this inequality is not the province of the USA alone. Around the world, countries such as the UK and Canada, that followed the supply sided economic model, also saw inequality rise exponentially.
Today, between 60 and 80 families own over half of global wealth. The US has returned to the early 1900s. This was a time when the “Robber Barons,” men with names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie, practically owned US industry, hook line and sinker. The rest of the US population depending on these men and the corporations they owned to eke out a living.
Trump and Sanders have become warriors fighting on behalf of the “suffering” working and middle classes. Trump is a populist; Sanders is a socialist.
Now, Mark Thoma writing in the Fiscal Times of February 9, 2016, stated the following about the working classes that support Trump and Sanders. ‘The poor and middle class have been deceived into believing that the 1% is the job creator class. That society should actually cut the taxes of the super wealthy. That, doing this will cause income to trickle down and help the working class. That never happened. In fact the opposite has taken place. Deregulation and tax breaks for the rich have caused wealth to trickle up instead. The wealthy classes have actually gotten richer while the rest have become poorer.’
Thoma argues the case for the 90%. ‘All they want is a fair share of what they have earned. They want the opportunity to improve their lives if they work hard and play by the rules. They want the security of knowing that they aren’t a pink slip away from living on the streets. They want to know that their kids can go to a decent college without being saddled with burdensome debt. They want available and affordable quality health care. They want to have the confidence that their children will do better than they did.’
None of these things is likely under the present political and economic dispensation. Instead what has happened is that the rich have gotten richer as the political system has become even more unresponsive to the needs of the 90%.
Politicians the world over would do well to heed the following words of advice. The health of an economy is not fully reflected in the unemployment rate, inflation rate, or GDP per capita numbers. The health of an economy also depends on the economic security people feel and the perception that the system, political and economic, treats them fairly.
The rise of a socialist such as Bernie Sanders and a populist named Donald Trump is a clear sign that the 90% is becoming increasingly frustrated. The working and middle classes are exasperated by a system that has been captured by wealthy special interests.
Consequently, the winds of change are blowing away the establishment and the wealthy donors that support that establishment.
Jack Mirkinson, writing in Salon Magazine after the New Hampshire Primary on February 10, stated the following. “The world is reeling from tectonic demographic and technological changes." The rot of oligarchy- the economic and social power of the 1%- is driving the politics in country after country into great upheaval.
In all four corners of the globe, humanity is waking up to the reality of inequality and the negative effects it has on human welfare.
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4 Responses to “Uncle Bernie the socialist warrior!”
All that is required for equality to become a reality is for people to pay attention to what is going on around them, what their governments are doing, and put the brakes on when they don't like what they see.
Governments everywhere are "DICTATING" to the voters what the people will pay for, rather than the other way around. Their scope of power has grown increasingly (because people have allowed it to happen) and they (government) have extended their reach into every single part of our lives, because we have let them.
The truth of the matter is that pretty much all GOVERNMENTS are way out of control. The primary function of government is to see to it that monies pooled from the collective (taxpayers) are used to develop and maintain necessary infrastructure that the taxpayers feel are necessary.
Sadly, laziness and lack of understanding on the part of the electorate have permitted power hungry governments around the world to take control of many things with which they have no business being involved, let alone operating as a government entity.
This laziness and lack of understanding from the general public has permitted governments everywhere to gain far greater control of our day to day lives than was EVER intended, outside of a strictly communistic or dictatorial society. The pendulum has swung so far and governments have become so large, that it would take a miracle for anything to ever change at this point.
It is government out of control that people are fighting in the US primary races. They are choosing people outside of the "establishment" because they don't know what else to do. NOTHING has worked for many years and the average voter has no say in much of anything. They have little to no control over anything once their ballots have been cast.
We vote people into power and they run amok, TAKING more and more power and more and more liberties based on their OWN personal beliefs rather than the wishes of the people.
If you don't believe this is true, take our own government as a for instance. The people were begging for greater gun control laws and penalties for how long? How long did it take? Have we seen the fruits of those efforts yet?
How long did it take our government to pass the new cyber crime law? This law has not yet been put to the test, but I guarantee that when it is, we will have our eyes opened wide as to just how much this law infringes on our rights and freedoms as individuals. WE allowed it to happen and it was rushed through the house. Why? Because they COULD and nobody stopped them.
Strong arm tactics like that are used worldwide, while the people sit back and moan about it, but do nothing. The PEOPLE have allowed governments everywhere to become massive and permitted them to DICTATE every little thing. We are all but slaves to the power we have FREELY given to them!
Correct me if I am mistaken, but it appears our government isn't even required BY LAW to account for monies spent in a timely fashion. Apparently, they can go for years without submitting audited reports. If there is such a law, then why hasn't it been enforced?