I'm sure that most observers of the stimulus debate are aware of the shifting justification for public spending and public investment.
Instead of basing these investments and stimulus spending on "health" or "education" or "jobs", the explanation is that it is all connected together.
Eight years of tax cuts for the wealthy, an attack on Social Security, a major disaster of a prescription drug program for the elderly (with the cynical proviso that government cannot bargain for lower prices with the pharmaceutical industry), were based on core "market fundamentalism."
The market is always right to Republican fundamentalists, and whenever you must wonder into entitlement land (as with Bush's Medicare drug program) you make sure that the resulting program expands the role of the private sector in the Medicare program.
Getting the privatization nose under the Medicare tent has been a long-time goal for Republicans.
Privatization was always sold as improving government; in truth it was a predatory private sector looting public programs on behalf of corporate clients who support the administration in power.
Today things are changing and fast. Health care reform is treated as not just about health care anymore. Today and in the future it will also be about preventing personal bankruptcy because of huge medical bills. It will be about making corporations and small business more competitive (by reducing the burden of providing private insurance benefits).
It will be about keeping the automobile industry and the UAW in the United States instead of watching them decamp for Canada.
It will be about setting uniform standards across industry for all companies, forcing those who treat employees poorly to pony up. It will be about improving the quality of life itself by removing a chronic anxiety from the uninsured or the under-insured.
The key point seems to be that what we call the national economy and society is a complex and inter-related system of interests which must be addressed, adjusted, and reworked if the citizenry is going to enjoy not just growth but growth with an advancing quality of life for all.
No longer can we just say, "It's the economy, stupid!"
Instead, we are beginning to see the need for a social policy, one that addresses and adjusts the myriad, inter-linked interests we call the democratic body politic.
Creating the foundations of a social policy for our daily life is decades overdue. A social policy will help shift so much, in education and in employment.
No longer can economists in, say, schools of public health draw a downward-sloping demand curve on the first day of class and pretend it is Holy Writ, unlocking the deep secrets about how the world really works. Instead, economics can be treated as yet another tool for addressing the social policy of the U.S.
A social policy for health and jobs and the environment and energy is the confession that everything is connected to everything else.
Here is a list of what 6 economists say about what's missing in the stimulus plan.
Notice how many mention not just "jump starting the economy" but public investments for America's future.
Notice particularly James K. Galbraith's list.
Galbraith is the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, who, I predict, will soon be back in vogue among economists who suddenly appreciate that they need to know how institutions, not just markets, work.
Who knows, maybe I will check out from the Copper Queen Library one of John Kenneth Galbriath's old classics to better understand how the future works.
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