George Will, Pandemic Ignoramus

(c) Mark Dempsey

George Will's column today laments the degradation of American thinking. For example, the political class has an "infantile refusal to will the means (revenues) for the ends (government benefits) they demand."

Yet the (federal) government literally creates the money. It does not require tax revenue for new programs. It can't. Where would people get the dollars to pay taxes if government didn't spend them first, without waiting for revenue? It's not "tax & spend"...that's the fiscal policy for a currency user like a household, not a currency creator. Sovereign fiat currency creators spend first, then retrieve dollars in taxes.

What do we call the dollars not retrieved, still out in the economy? Answer #1: the dollar financial assets of the population. Answer #2: the national 'debt.' Both answers refer to exactly the same thing. It took a Republican (Dick Cheney) to say it, but "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Will goes on to say "disorganized families" are "entirely absent from current discussions about poverty, race and related matters." The point of this particular whine is to throw all responsibilities onto individuals and families, and ignore public policy that has been sabotaging them for generations now, as there's been a bipartisan effort to defund social safety nets. Will helpfully points out Black families are worse off than the good...er, I mean white ones.

Finally, Will laments that "a significant portion of the intelligentsia...cannot think....much of America's intelligentsia has become a mob." Will then goes on to lament the "groupthink" promoted by modern campuses.

I won't quarrel with that one. A mature society understands that an educated public is an asset--human capital, if you will. Therefore, it subsidizes education. Yet in the U.S, the federal subsidy for higher education has diminished 55% since 1972. States have cut their universities' budgets even more.

The rise in tuition and student debt was the result, but even more subtly, professors can no longer fail the incompetent for fear they will make their institution less financially viable. The net result is for our educational system to issue certificates rather than educate the competent.

Led by the likes of the Kochs, there has been a generations-long movement to de-fund not just health care and education but the public realm in general, not to mention de-regulating, and disqualifying any government claim to authority. Will's attacks on the "lumpen intelligentsia" is just part of this campaign. As a matter of course, Americans are now openly scornful of any government claim of authority, and wonder  why we lurch from systematic crisis to systematic crisis, with no remedy in sight. Here's a hint: only intelligent, timely collective action (i.e. government) can solve systemic crises.

Meanwhile, Thailand, which has roughly double the population of California, just recorded its sole COVID-19 case and it was from someone travelling there, while in California (up 33 cases just yesterday), and the U.S. (up 39,475 yesterday) infections are still on the rise.

Consistent with the attack on the public realm, Trump administration has been defunding the Centers for Disease Control, specifically disbanding its pandemic response team. Gosh, I wonder why a third world country is beating our pants off in pursuit of public health?

Sue Frost Demonstrates Denial Not Just a River in Egypt

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Supervisor Sue Frost dismisses any move to "defund the police," or to reduce funding for prisons and jails. In fact she recently voted to spend $89 million to expand Sacramento County's jail. She reiterated her support for investing in more of the same in her recent newsletter.

Despite decreases in arrests and crime, the county jail remains full. Why? (Pre-COVID-19) roughly 60% of those in County jail were not convicted of anything, except being unable to afford bail. Cash bail is going away, but my bet is that Supervisor Frost will conjure up some other excuse to make poverty illegal in Sacramento. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve reports 40% of the American population can't afford a $400 emergency without selling something or borrowing. The U.S. average for those incarcerated without conviction is 20%, so Sacramento is three times more cruel than even the extraordinarily vengeful U.S. incarceration system.

How bad is U.S. incarceration? With five percent of the world's population, the U.S. is the world’s “leader," jailing 25% of the inmates--more in absolute or per-capita numbers than anyone else. The demographically-identical Canadians cage one-seventh as many people, per capita.

So is Canadian crime seven times greater than the U.S.? Nope. About the same. Similarly, medical treatment (rehab) has a far better cure rate for addiction, and costs about one seventh as much as incarceration. What we do now with addicts and the self-medicating mentally ill is like incarcerating diabetics because they’re dependent on insulin. It’s not just ineffective, it’s medieval.

For some perspective about the "police defunding" Ms. Frost deplores, consider this: U.S. population in 1981 was 229.5 million. In 2017: 325.1 million. That's a 42% increase. During that period, funding for the police went from $40 billion to $115 billion. That's a 187.5% increase. Could there be room to reduce police budgets? Gosh, I wonder!

During that period, public policy makers have been de-funding social safety net programs that would make police force less necessary. This includes closing asylums to evict mental patients, reducing welfare, and being miserly with Social Security Disability--one must typically hire an attorney to navigate a disability application.

I have friends who are policemen (and women), and I want their jobs to be safer. Americans used to acknowledge that social safety nets were a cheap way to ensure social peace. Now, despite low fraud rates in reality, it's common for people to believe only frauds and cheats ("welfare queens") get such support. Billionaire investor Warren Buffet acknowledges there's a class war going on, "And," he says "My class is winning."

Is American justice racist? "African Americans are 447 percent more likely than white Americans to be imprisoned and 521 percent more likely to be murdered. There is a five-to-one wealth gap between whites and blacks at birth, blacks live five years fewer on average than whites, and the black infant mortality rate is nearly one and a half times the white infant mortality rate. Wouldn't it be odd not to be angry?" (from Shankar Vedantam's The Hidden Brain)

Meanwhile, it appears Ms. Frost's answer to all this is that the beatings will continue until morale improves. And my police friends will have to handle avoidable peril because Ms. Frost and her peers continue to defund programs the promote public safety in favor of those relying on force and punishment.

Why has U.S. response to COVID-19 been so lame?

American elite culture today is oriented around hostility to people who have unpopular but accurate observations. Our laws and rules incentivize cheaters, looters, and superficial intellectual frauds. Of course we can't handle a public health crisis. https://t.co/dW8h0pHc1x

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 25, 2020

 

...and then there's this

The new visual signifier of American hubris and premature end-zone dancing, replacing the Mission Accomplished banner, is this chart https://t.co/I8oIYa3eFh with @MaxNisen @johnauthers @sarahhalzack and more pic.twitter.com/8iKRUwVgKv

— Mark Gongloff (@markgongloff) June 27, 2020

Adversity/Disagreement needn't be the end of the line

My son recently told me about a college friend--let's call him "M"--who essentially ended their friendship because my son hangs out with a Christian/Trump supporter (let's call him "J"), who may have some "buyer's remorse" about the whole Trump thing, but who remains politically different from both my son and M.

Meanwhile, M is a "woke" liberal who is appalled by Trump, and is disgusted with that whole scene. He concludes that Trump is a deal breaker when it comes to friendship to the point that he feels justified in selecting my son's friends, and terminating their friendship when the political disagreement is too great, at least in his eyes.

In this same conversation, I also asked my son if he could move some furniture for me. J has a pickup truck, and my son texted him to ask whether J and his pickup could help. His response:

No....

Problem...

Anyway, J is a dependable friend, whose political leanings are really just a tiny part of his identity, and my son says he's like another brother. In fact, his wife is Hispanic, as is my wife, and she's been looking for a connection to the Hispanic community, so my wife says "I've always wanted a daughter"...😁.

As we talked about J and M, my son also reminded me of a family story about the encounter between my Mom and my wife. The wife is Hispanic, and English is her second language. My Mom had a PhD. in English.

In addition to the usual suspicion accompanying the introduction of a girlfriend to parents--after all, parents have spent decades raising their "golden child"--the wife was not exactly the credentialed, accomplished person my Mom expected, and she felt it her right and duty to correct my wife's English, at least until my wife put her foot down and told her to stop.

That declaration was a sad moment of adversity in the relationship between my wife and Mom, and both were frustrated by the encounter. They backed off for a while, until my wife's kindness and generosity persuaded Mom to reconsider.

To make a long story short, they became fast friends. In fact one of the last memories I have of my Mom is of her hugging my wife, and weeping as they said their final goodbyes. Mom was 93 when she passed, and it was clear she wouldn't last long for a bit before that. The wife hates to fly, but felt compelled to fly out to the town where Mom was in nursing home care. They both felt a powerful connection, despite their differences, and both were grateful they had connected despite the adversity of their initial contact.

So...adversity, even disagreement, needn't be the end of the story.

The prophetic Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail lamented:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Economist Stephanie Kelton's new book about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) explains the fundamental difference between governments that are currency issuers and households that are currency users. Rather than "tax and spend"--the household pattern--MMT says people need dollars to pay those taxes, so government must spend them first before it can ask for them to return in taxes. It's not "tax and spend," it must be "spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes."

What do we call the dollars left in the economy, not paid in taxes? Answer #1: the dollar financial assets of the population. Answer #2: National 'debt.' Both answers describe exactly the same thing, just as your bank account is your asset, but the bank's liability. The idea of depositors marching down to their bank to demand it reduce its liabilities is...well, not very sensible, but it's literally the kind of thing proposed by deficit hawks like the late Pete Peterson. The Myth Kelton debunks is that deficits are harmful to currency issuers as they are to currency users.

For currency issuers, taxes cannot fund government spending, since spending must logically precede any tax revenue. Taxes are still necessary, though. Dollars are valuable because they retire the inevitable liability of taxes.

This contradicts popular perception Margaret Thatcher expressed: “the state has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves. If the state wishes to spend more, it can only do so by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more.” MMT reminds us that government makes the money, rather than confiscating our hard-earned dollars with its taxes. The constraints on government spending, like deficit ceilings, are self-imposed, and artificially limit government's ability to mobilize resources to address society's problems.

Kelton is careful to point out that, in theory, government can spend too much, and cause inflation. The real constraint for government spending, though, is resources, not finances. We can no more run out of dollars than the scorekeeper at the ball game can run out of points.

In any case, inflationary periods typically began with shortages of goods and balance of payments problems. The French army shut down the industrial heart of Germany (the Ruhr) after World War I, and the subsequent shortage of goods began the Weimar hyperinflation. Rhodesian farmers left Zimbabwe, and a country that had previously fed itself had to import food. Inflation followed that shortage.

And just "printing" money does not cause inflation: the Federal Reserve issued $16 - $29 trillion* in credit to the financial sector in 2007-8, no surge of inflation ensued. So a shortage of resources, not "printing" money is what starts inflation.

Kelton's experience in Washington offers a depth and resonance to her narrative too. She reminds us that MMT's policy recommendations like a job guarantee echo previous programs, like the New Deal's WPA. Perhaps most importantly, she reminds us that an unbalanced budget puts money into the economy mobilizing idle resources. It doesn't "crowd out" the private sector's access to resources, as conventional economics claims.

Kelton met with MMT founder Warren Mosler and Missouri congressman Emanuel Cleaver to explain MMT to the congressman. Mosler began to describe how an issuer of currency like our government is unique in the economy, and how it's fiscally unconstrained. Cleaver grew increasingly uncomfortable, until he had a "Copernican moment," and realized that MMT was accurate.

Says Kelton: "For the first time, the congressman was seeing the world through an MMT lens, and things had just come into focus. From that moment his entire demeanor changed. His eyes widened. His posture became confident. And then he leaned forward, clasped his hands, looked [Mosler] in the eye, and softly said 'I can't say that.'"

Kelton concludes that revolutionary insights like MMT gain traction not from the top down, but from the bottom up. When Cleaver hears MMT from his constituents, he can propose its policy recommendations. For that reason alone, Kelton's Deficit Myth is an important publication. It makes MMT accessible to those constituents.

Finally, Kelton talks about society's real problems: Not financing, resources. These include not only COVID-19, but healthcare generally, poverty, infrastructure, education, unemployment, and the looming climate catastrophe. MMT makes it clear that for public policy makers to plead that financial constraints keep them from solving these problems is malfeasance of the worst kind.

 

* The figures are from the Fed's audit.

--

Mark Dempsey teaches a "Heterodox Economics" class that covers MMT for California State University Sacramento's Renaissance (senior education) program. Those interested in a shorter version of MMT than Kelton's book can also consult Mosler's Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy

Kelton's book is the culmination of nearly three decades of popularizing MMT, a movement that now includes blogs (http://neweconomicperspectives.org), textbooks (Macroeconomics, by Mitchell, Wray and Watts) and a host of other media releases (search for MMT on Youtube, for one example). Among other things, Kelton served as chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee for the Democrats in 2015 and as a senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Barron’s named her one of the 100 most influential women in finance in 2020.

Update:

Mark Blyth interviews Stephanie Kelton

Dave Denison of the Baffler comments.

Update #2:

The 5 stages of reading The Deficit Myth (as conveyed to me by hundreds of readers)

1.) 😳
2.)🤔
3.) 🤯
4.) 🤬
5.) 💪🏼

— Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton) December 21, 2020

What does "defunding the police" mean?...pictures version

From https://www.laprogressive.com/defund-police/

Here's population: 1981 - 229.5 million - 2017 - 325.1 million. That's a 42% increase.

Police funding: 1981 - $40 billion - 2017 - $115 billion. That's a 187.5% increase.

The truth is that for generations, the U.S. has been de-funding the social safety net programs that would make police force less necessary. This includes releasing mental patients, reducing welfare, and being miserly with Social Security Disability (you typically have to hire an attorney to navigate a disability application).

I have friends who are policemen (and women), and I want their jobs to be safer. The social safety net used to be acknowledged as a cheap way to ensure social peace. Now, it's a commonplace for people to believe only frauds and cheats ("welfare queens") get such support. As billionaire investing genius Warren Buffet acknowledges, there's a class war going on, "And," says Buffet, "my class is winning."

Locally:

37% of Sacramento County's General Fund goes to the Sheriff's dept.

71% of Sacramento County's General Fund goes to Law Enforcement, Jails and Courts.

Meanwhile, there is an alternative:

"We had to change our tactics"

The US city that disbanded its police forcehttps://t.co/0nzinVG7wN pic.twitter.com/pXNYlHwL6h

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 18, 2020

Also worth a look: Occupied Territory: Why Chicago’s History Matters for Today’s Demands to Defund Police

Update:

From Maria Kreutter [LA Times] in the Sacramento Bee,16 Jul 2020

Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police use of force than white men are - but [Whites die] in greater overall numbers....

American police kill civilians at far higher rates than police in other wealthy nations. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice think tank, Americans are killed by law enforcement at rates 3.4 times higher than Canadians and 67 times higher than Brits.

The Essence of Religion

By Mark Dempsey (1/14/17)

Jesus is famous for his “Great Commandments”:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. — Matthew 22:35-40.

Jesus spoke Aramaic, which was translated into Greek for the New Testament, then translated into English for you and me. So when I suggest translating “commandment” as “observation,” I’m not proposing anything far out, at least when it comes to translating scripture. The idea that twice-translated speech can be perfectly accurate, never mind perfect, that’s far out.

The “observation” of loving one’s neighbor as oneself is pretty accurate too. You can’t really love your neighbor if you are consumed by self-loathing.

So then loving God is what consumes your heart, mind and soul. Whatever occupies your heart, soul and mind that wholly is your god. The connection to the Abrahamic God Jesus called “Father” may be there too, but I’d say we wouldn’t be out of line calling people’s driving passions “gods.”

If that’s so, then all the controversy about whether God exists is really beside the point. People are religious when they are passionately engaged, whether that’s in a church sanctuary or rooting for the Raiders. In fact that connection and attachment to the Raiders may be what Al Davis (the Raiders’ owner) took advantage of when he extorted stadiums from Oakland and Anaheim.

The commitment to so many non-religious “gods” also quashes a lot of Western secular arrogance. Bill Maher’s atheism may be terrific for comedy material, but it’s really beside the point in a lot of ways.

We may also have to rethink of the Western explorers’ culturally-limited reaction of feeling superior (because we’re Christian!) to Confucian culture’s ancestor worship (or Dia de las muertes), putting down people as “primitive” because they honored their ancestors (or the dead) with anniversaries and shrines.

Apparently the observation that families influence children’s behavior whether it’s acknowledged or not is foreign to the Western tribes and tradition. Actually, it’s not. Honoring parents is one of the ten commandments. But if that’s true, why not elevate it to consciousness with ritual? Insistence that ignoring family influence is correct is just tribalism (“My God is real, yours is voodoo”).

Similarly, ancient or traditional cultures (Romans, Greeks, Indians) often honored madmen. Julius Caesar was an epileptic whose fits gave him access to something transcending ordinary reality. Today we honor mad men too. They tend to be psychotic hoarders of dollars, but they’re obviously crazy...perhaps in a different way than the rest of us.

You might even say some kind of transcendent blessing is necessary for people to risk their lives. Modern societies rely on that kind of risk in their police, firefighters and soldiers. Try to think of a modern society that can do without those roles. You can’t.

So people are religious, whether they think they are or not, whether their religious sentiments fit within one of the historical, traditional religions or not. The big advantage of tradition is that it’s been tried; the downside: the solutions it offers may not apply in modern times without some metaphorical understanding of scripture, ritual or tradition.

So...we’re religious, but not necessarily responsible or without baggage. And religions are human creations too. That’s the real meaning of those prime directives / first commandments (“Have no other gods before me,” or “There is no god but God.”) You can’t, for example, be in the traditional religions and consider something earthly (e.g. the Bible) as divine or perfect (as fundamentalists do). That’s the meaning of idolatry: considering some interim item as ultimate.

So that’s religion for you: a mixed blessing.

Don't miss the New Yorker's suggested slogans for the Biden Campaign

Here...

Some samples:

A Return to Slightly Less Bad

Endorsed by Obama—Remember Him?

The best explanation of our current situation

From Matt Stoller (here). Excerpt:

It’s hard not to have sympathy for the aims of the protesters, considering the murder of George Floyd is just the latest in a long line of obvious and flagrant violent acts. I do suspect that the outpouring of anger reflects something deeper than frustration with police brutality. There’s a broad sense of impotence, and not just among protesters, a feeling that our social contract has broken down, that we no longer have the means to come together and address social problems via politics.

...read the whole linked article!

In short (from the Onion):

Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First...

But seriously, read the linked Stoller article.

The Story of Al Baydha: A Regenerative Agriculture in the Saudi Desert

Talking to the Sacramento Supervisorial Candidates

(c) by Mark Dempsey

Last Wednesday evening some members of the Sierra Club interviewed the candidates -- Rich Desmond and Gregg Fishman -- who are vying to replace retiring Sacramento Supervisor Sue Peters. Desmond is the choice of Sacramento's land speculators and Supervisor Peters.

Peters herself was one of the deciding votes allowing Elk Grove to expand by about a thousand acres, despite the presence of at least a thousand acres of unbuilt infill there. The land speculators will make a fortune on that expansion, and Peters has been their dependable friend.

Previously, Desmond worked for the Highway Patrol's liason with the state, and has the polite bearing of a military man who is also politically savvy. He repeatedly told us he was interested in collaboration, even with his opponents. He said he wanted to work with Sierra Club to make sure any proposed development was "sustainable."

By the talk that followed his mention of "sustainable," I understood Desmond plans to entertain outlying, edge-city development as long as it mitigates any wildlife habitat impacts. He also said that transit must be part of any proposed development he supports. The region's designed-to-fail transit would have only the tiniest impact on greenhouse gases emitted in the lengthened commutes edge-city developments require, but that's the kind of head fake local government gives the population as it shovels massive profits to the land speculators.

The speculators profit by buying outlying agricultural land cheap, and selling it to builders once they have the entitlements to develop. But there's nothing "sustainable" about outlying development, especially since the region has 20 years worth of undeveloped infill. Meanwhile, infill is only half as expensive to maintain as sprawl. Despite their protestations of limited  County budgets, that fact seldom appears public officials' deliberations when it might impact land speculators' profits.

Neither candidate committed to a public policy that would tax the speculators' profits--something that would put a stop to the "sustainability" and transit distractions, and to most outlying development. Unfortunately, this appears to be the best we can do.

I told Desmond that we will need radical changes to remedy the County's problems, and he answered that he would promote gradual change instead. But I doubt we'll get a choice like "gradual vs. radical" A virus pandemic and riots are what we have now, and we can expect more non-gradual crises that only public policy can address.

Candidate Gregg Fishman, a former Sacramento Bee police-beat journalist and currently a board member for SMUD, has been dealing with environmental issues for some time now, and has in-depth knowledge of the County's plan to anticipate the climate catastrophe barreling down the track toward us. That plan has not yet been adopted, but Fishman says he is committed to putting it back on the local government agenda.

What climate catastrophe? This:

In fairness, the fires pictured here did all occur, just not all at once. Nevertheless, the image of an entire continent on fire is concerning.  Nothing says the State of California couldn't look like that, too. After all, the ironically-named town of Paradise burned to the ground because of a climate-induced drought very much like the one in Australia. Fires like these do not indicate "gradual" is how nature has decided to go, and nature always has the last word.

Citizens are currently frustrated with empty government promises to remedy these crises. I've attended meetings where the frustration made the crowd so angry that the Supervisors retreated out of sight rather than continue to sit in the same room with them.

In any case, Sierra Club decided to endorse Fishman, if only because he has not been funded by the land speculators. Meanwhile, this race may be too close to call. Fishman's vote count during the primary was roughly half of Demings. Three other candates who did not survive the primary got enough votes to make up the difference...but would they all endorse Fishman? And if they did, would their voters show up to elect him?

Good questions!

Trump Puts an Ugly Face on the Empire

From Caitlin Johnstone: "...the real reason the political/media class has been behaving so weird the last four years....isn’t because Trump’s not a loyal empire lackey (he is), it isn’t because he’s a Russian secret agent (he’s not), and it isn’t because he’s a uniquely depraved president (he’s not). It’s because he allows people to see the perverse mechanics of a globe-sprawling murderous empire for the sick, evil thing that it actually is. That and nothing more."

...and...

"He that lives upon hope, dies fasting"- Benjamin Franklin

The Degradation of the Public Realm

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The following is a response to a Linkedin poster wanting to know what resources are in play to address COVID-19, homelessness and poverty:

Jesus Hernandez, a sociologist at UC Davis has an interesting presentation about the difference between public improvements in the rich vs. poor areas of the Sacramento region. Surprise! Poor people also don't get an enriched public realm (e.g. better schools, nicer parks, innovative transit-on-demand, etc.). Those things go to the rich neighborhoods.

Given the concerted attack on the public realm that has afflicted the U.S. for literally generations now, this is not a big surprise, but it certainly influences the level of services the poor, homeless, COVID-19 sufferers, etc. can expect.

Housing the homeless right now is certainly possible. In fact, I've read that San Francisco has five times the needed capacity for its entire homeless population in homes that are currently unoccupied. Vancouver taxes such vacant homes to discourage parking hot money in home purchases, but in California Prop 13 is sacrosanct don'tcha know. Anyway, it's not for lack of resources in our economy that people sleep under bridges.

It's widely acknowledged that, compared to the cost in police time and emergency room visits, addressing homelessness by giving the homeless a place to stay ("housing first") is actually cheaper. Finland provides its homeless population with guaranteed housing now, proving again that it can be done.

The problem is that the libertarian political right has promoted its anti-collectivist propaganda with just about unlimited funds, upset that some poor homeless person might get something s/he doesn't deserve, and/or that a powerful government might impair the plutocrats' social position, property or wealth.

This makes compassionate policy a hard sell to the American electorate. In fact, it's downright unpopular to provide the kind of robust public realm that could actually help those down on their luck.

One of the most frequently used excuses is austerity. "We'd love to do that, but we just don't have the money." Right. We have the money to bail out the banks ($16 - $29 trillion in 2007-8, says the Federal Reserve's own audit), or prosecute illegal Middle Eastern wars ($3 - $7 trillion for Afghanistan and Iraq, says Nobel Laureate economist Joe Stiglitz)...but when it comes to the poor, or grandma's retirement and healthcare... Nope! We're definitely out of money! (Please ignore that we "print" it without limit for the important people)

On the other hand, austerity has the support of the corporate wings of both the American political parties, and just happens to enforce what economist Michal Kalecki termed "labor discipline." The message is simple: "Take whatever crappy job is on offer, or suffer the indignities of poverty, even homelessness, ill health and starvation." In other words, austerity is the whip in the hands of the plutocrats.

How much has the political right spent to make these policies respectable? For one example, the Kochs (who oppose "collectivism"--their word) spent $889 million to influence the 2016 elections. Says the Washington Post: "Clinton's unsuccessful campaign ($768 million in spending) outspent Trump's successful one ($398 million) by nearly 2 to 1."... but of course they omit mentioning the Kochs' Political Action Committees' independent spending that outpaces both parties.

I've heard conservatives justify the Kochs' spending because they are supposedly just providing some balance to George Soros' spending. Never mind that Soros is a capitalist's capitalist (a currency speculator), hardly a lefty, or a friend of labor, his political spending in 2016 was $27 million (that's about 3% of Koch's spending, if your calculator's not handy).

But that's the range of the debate

This kind of money commands so much respect, that it means Margaret Thatcher can say "There is no such thing as society, only individuals and families"...a statement roughly equivalent to saying "You have no body, only cells and organs"... and it's treated as a respected bit of wisdom that justifies dismantling and sabotaging government and the public assets it manages.

The public realm is what's accessible to everyone, even the poor. And Thatcher's formula does work, in a way. Child poverty tripled after Thatcher got through with the Brits.

Across the pond, as Reagan was halving the income tax for wealthy, he cut HUD's affordable housing budget 75%. This followed Richard Nixon enforcing a moratorium on Federally-funded affordable housing. Gosh, I wonder why affordable housing is so scarce now?

Incidentally, between Reagan and Bush 41, payroll taxes increased eightfold. So...Reagan cut taxes on the rich in half, while he and Bush 41 ensured taxes on working America increased 800%. Gosh! I wonder why the U.S. has the wealth distribution of a banana republic, and 40% of its population can't handle a $400 emergency without selling something or borrowing.

So no, Reagan who didn't just reduce taxes, produced a budget deficit that exceeded the sum of all previous administrations' deficits. Dick Cheney said "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." This spending binge did produce that "Morning in America" economic "miracle" of the Reagan recovery that occurred during his administration, but Reagan also kicked off the massive wealth inequality that persists today. And it turns out "Morning in America" was an average business cycle recovery.

Reagan's "Morning in America" appears just to the right of the 1980 recession (the gray bar). Notice that far larger GDP growth appears during the New Deal, and during that big public works project we call "World War II"--all implemented when austerity wasn't in fashion.

In any case, the very idea that there's something that transcends individual capabilities--like a systemic problem--is something increasingly ignored in the current public policy debate.

Here's a systemic problem for you: You throw nine bones out your back door and send ten dogs to retrieve a bone. No matter how well-trained, responsible, law-abiding, etc. are the dogs, one will come up short. Sure, you can scold the dog for being lazy and shiftless, but you're wasting your time unless the system changes.

So an end to austerity, and systemic change is what's needed now, for homelessness, COVID-19, healthcare, immigration and a host of other problems. Which reminds me of what another Brit (Winston Churchill) said: "I can always count on my American friends to do the right thing. Unfortunately, it's often after they've tried everything else."

Update: The notion that police force can remedy generations of austerity is at least questionable. It used to be a common understanding that social safety net programs were a cheap way to purchase social peace. Not any more... In any case, expecting the police to perform "emergency surgery" on society after a lifetime, and more, of neglect, is a losing bet.