The Arc of the Moral Universe

http://prudentbear.com/index.php/commentary/bearslair?art_id=10105

Unlike most ideologues, I admit I could be wrong … but we won’t know for several years, if ever, that “Obamanomics” makes things worse.

At least Mr. Hutchinson correctly identifies the main culprits for our current predicament: “It is here that one can most ferociously blame Messrs Greenspan and Bernanke and their decade of irresponsibly cheap money. By distorting price signals throughout the economy, and producing burst bubble after burst bubble without significant improvement in living standards except at the very top, they have enabled the left to claim that capitalism “doesn’t work” [at least not fairly] so we must bring in government and the unfortunate taxpayer to solve economic problems.” 

For my money, I hold that Keynes was correct – i.e. a Free Market economy (see Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 1962) is simply unlikely to ever truly exist.  One important reason I see is inheritance.  In short, no one can rationally argue that Cindy McCain has “replaced” (or even sustained) the economic “productiveness” of her father – so why should she control the firm he built?  Another reason is that democracies rarely tolerate the violent (see Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007) cycles, alternating between utter suffering and absolute bliss, necessary to attain and maintain Friedman’s theoretically “unencumbered” economy.

Thus government is never the only answer, but neither is plutocracy.  Recent history clearly demonstrates it is both economically unproductive and morally irresponsible to legally sustain, mostly through inheritance, a permanent two-percent ruling class containing unproven and sometimes catastrophically unsuccessful trust-fund-baby leaders like George W. Bush.

Thus some form of balanced compromise must be continuously struck.  And when the vast majority of citizens in any democracy experiences painful, quality-of-life-wrenching economic hardships, then I see no reason not to tip the scale in the opposite direction -- in this case toward increasing wealth redistribution.

Where is America today, for example, without both its Roosevelt Presidents?  Without Lincoln?  Thus, in stark contrast to Friedman and later Reagan dogma, government has a moral role -- even in economics.  As Obama’s seeming favorite quote (see Martin Luther King, Jr.) goes “…the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The time has simply come to favor more, egalitarian balance and opportunity and less George W. Bush and Cindy McCain leadership-as-birth-right.