On 9/8/2010 9:10 PM, Mike Beggs wrote:
> Now that the thesis is done
Hooray! Could you finish mine?
> It’s hard to see it as anything other than propaganda – but
> propaganda for who? Wall Street doesn’t benefit from demand restraint.
> It can only be Republican anti-Obamaism; it is not really a rational
> ideology for capital.
Exactly - thank you for pointing this out. This episode has been a great advertisement for the thesis that the interests of capital (or anyone else) are constructed based on history, ideology, norms, etc., and not given. Here in the US, in the emergency environment of early 2009, the Business Roundtable - the elite of the corporate elite, consisting solely of CEOs - strongly advocated stimulus. By the same reasoning, thy should be strongly advocating more now. But they're not, and I bet you it's because most CEOs are conservative Republicans and the stimulus debate has now become strongly anchored around the framing of "bigger vs. smaller government," so many are ideologically loathe to accept it - even though it would clearly increase profits.
On the other hand, I would think that had Republicans been in charge in 2009-2010 - and if they had any sense - they would have enacted a huge stimulus (without using the word) through a payroll-tax holiday plus some assorted mindless giveaways to the rich. There would have been no ideological conflict, since we are talking about a country that operates at an extremely low level of public discourse, so this would be framed not as "government stimulus" but as "tax cuts" and if it worked it would have been yet another vindication of Ronald Reagan.
SA