Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank, the best-selling author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, the book that explores why voters in southern and rural states vote against their economic interests by voting for Republican economic policies, is back with a new book that explores the more recent phenomenon of the Tea Party rise and how the collapse of the economy in 2008 resulted inexplicably in a populist surge that celebrated an extension of free-market policies that actually caused the collapse, instead of a reversal of policies toward more economic regulation, taxation, and governmental intervention as happened after the Great Depression. For me, this book went a long, long way to explaining this shocking diconnect in American discourse (and worldwide, for that matter, as Europe has followed the same austerity-based destructive path to recovery as we did) and helped explain the "why" of the Tea Party's rise and why there continue to be a large swath of the American public so disenchanted with government that they have actually bought the Republican talking points of lower taxes and less regulations and "job creators" hook-line-and-sinker, even though these prescriptions are in fact anethema to economic growth (because, and I've said this a million times, without demand from the poor and middle class, the job creators ain't going to create jobs no matter how low you make their taxes...) The book was written before the Occupy Wall Street revolution that came this fall, and if Frank had waited, he would probably say that was exactly the rebellious movement that would have been expected after the collapse of the economy in 2008, the protests against the people and corporations who collapsed the economy, not the protests against the government that the Tea Party represented and that millions of misinformed middle and lower-class Americans continue to thrust their misplaced anger (or on each other, the other poor "living high on handouts with their cell phones and nice sneakers", one of the most BS attack lines created by the wealthy so we don't notice how the government has stacked things so nicely towards them and not the actual poor, who, you know, are fucking poor). But I think Frank would say Occupy came too late at this point and even as it's changed the narrative of some in the media, it's not enough outrage and, crucially, there's no political party in the country and very few actual politicians (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are a couple exceptions) who are giving voice to the 99% in the halls of power. One wonders what it will take to change the narrative or to actually fix things in this country from the state that they are in. But understanding how we got to this point -- the rise of far-right economic fervor in the face of a massive economic collapse predicated on policies proscripted out of far-right economic theory-- makes this informative book a must-read for all Americans.
Frank is definitely biased in his writing, and a Tea Party member would probably dismiss most of what he's saying, but I'd try to argue that his bias is based on reality (you know, facts) of history and economics that run counter to the fantasies that the Tea Party believes in, but he explains why the Tea Party believes in these fantasies. And here's the truth of it... because the Republican Party, after the humiliating defeats to Obama and Democrats in 2008 in the wake of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street (and Bush and Clinton-era policies) were the only ones smart enough to tap the populist anger over (a) the bank bailouts and (b) concommitant unemployment. TARP may have been enacted under the Bush presidency but it was a bi-partisan effort and Obama agreed with it and continued it once in office. The act basically gave massive sums of taxpayer money to the actual banksters and Wall Street-ers who spent a decade turning our home mortgages into a casino lottery until it collapsed. And what did we get out of it? No accountability, no punishment, no increase in employment, just a continuation of business as usual that started with bonuses going to AIG employees in March 2009, just as Obama had taken over. Now, most of us who were sensible understood that Obama had nothing to do with the economic collapse and very little to do with TARP or AIG and though we elected him to save the economy, we knew we had to give him time to do so. But there was still all this anger out there -- at both Wall Street and the governmental institutions that allowed it to happen -- and Republicans were the able to capitalize on this anger in the spring of 2009 by turning the focus off Bush's failed presidency (Bush was out of sight and out of mind at this point) and reinforcing one simple message, the same one they'd repeated for over 30 years: "
The free market will cure all ills."
It didn't matter that the free market caused the economic collapse. It didn't matter that more regulated markets between the 1940s and 1970s had resulted in zero economic collapses and that freer, deregulated markets of the last 30 years had created huge booms and busts and multiple recessions and zero overall growth in income for working families. These were all nuanced facts that the common man without an understanding of history or economics might not comprehend. "The free market will cure all ills" got repeated over and over again by the Rush Limbaughs and Beck Hannitys of the world until the unfocused rallying call of anger at Tea Party rallies, which were originally sparsely attended and focused mainly on the bailouts, became "the government is the enemy of free markets" and the bailouts -- government handouts to failing private companies were the epitome of that fact. No matter that more government regulation would have prevented the collapse in the first place or that a Republican president presided over the bailout. The message was simple and to most in the audience (particularly small business owners or practicioners like private plumbers -- "Joe the Plumber") it rang true. And you want to know why it worked? There was no argument against it.
Occupy Wall Street embodies the argument against this "free markets rule all" mantra -- and the facts, the realities, that politicians on both sides of the aisle have passed policies that support corporations rather than small businesses or the middle class or the poor has only been emphasized in recent months. Before that, there was a deep yawning chasm of silence from the leaders of the Democratic party, right up to President Obama, who should have been on the populist side of the argument, arguing as FDR correctly did after the Great Depression, that we needed more regulation, more taxes, more deficit spending to get us out of this economic crisis, bringing all of those most affected -- the poor, middle class, and small business owners, together against the true powers of the economy -- the corporations, the banks, Wall Street hedge funds, and yes, entrenched politicians giving them favors. But what did the Democrats do? The opposite. They hired or re-hired Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke -- inside Wall Street people who presided over the collapse -- to run the economy. They compromised their way through the stimulus bill to appease Republicans who didn't vote for it anyway until it was watered down too much to help enough. They took a populist outrage over the health insurance industry and turned it into a massive giveaway to health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in order to appease corporate interests and Republicans, again trading in populist sentiment for liberal ideals like a single-payer system to some amalgum of private industry expansion that no one (except for health insurers) was happy about. And all the while, Republicans kept fomenting the rage at the government, a government that was not turning the economy around quick enough, and they won massive gains in 2010 as a result. They were running on rage and running against competency. Democrats were too timid or ineffective to deal with the economic crisis with the rage it needed. And so Republicans -- even with wrong-headed proscriptions that would and will never work -- seized the vacuum of ideas and flooded the masses with thoughts that if we just gave the banks a longer leash and just gave corporations more tax breaks and just cut teachers' unions power and just kicked that lazy mother with 4 kids she can't afford off welfare and unemployment that our economy would return to normal and our jobs would be safer. None of that is true, of course -- in no realistic way would any of those things help our economy or make our own jobs safer or increase demand for consumer goods to do either -- but the Republicans and their Tea Party followers were the only ones talking -- loudly -- while Democrats got caught up in the process of trying to pass bills and make laws and compromising and moving to the center. And they failed. Miserably. And of course, as Frank makes clear in the final chapter of this book, part of the reason is that Democrats in power themselves are now almost as rich as Republicans and are nearly as dependent on campaign funding from the same Wall Street banks as Republicans. The reason the GOP won in 2010 was not because their insane policy proscriptions would help the masses or were even understood by the masses. But because there is no party that represents the masses anymore. I was certainly fooled into believing Candidate Obama would be that politician who would finally stand up against the corporate welfare policies that have ruined our economy for 30 years now. But he wasn't. Obviously the Republicans aren't either -- and anyone angry at Obama for their economic misery but not angrier with the GOP side is, let's be honest, an idiot. But idiots vote too. And in the absence of an alternative, a "free market rules!" message, repeated enough, was more than enough to force the country to abandon the policies of FDR in favor of the policies of Herbert Hoover, led by a Democrat of all things in the office of President.
Anyway, it's a great book. I'm still voting for Obama because Romney is obviously much much worse but... yeah. It's hard to feel optimistic about anything in our country's politics anymore. Occupy's latest efforts to try to tackle campaign finance really could be the solution -- taking money completely out of the process by having public funding and shorter campaign seasons would seem to be a way to stop having rich people run our lives -- but the odds of that being successful seem awfully low to me.
Buy it here
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