Enabling China’s Totalitarian Government

Mighty American companies, one after the other, bow down and sell their soul to China in exchange for a fistful of dollars.  The latest being the NBA’s acquiescence to China’s demands as noted in The New York Times, “American Basketball,”  October 13.

How sad it is that American companies are so hungry for ever greater profits from ever greater sales that they will sacrifice their principles in order to please the Chinese Communist government and thus have access to the huge Chinese market.  

The Chinese government is not evil on the scale of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.  But they are every much as totalitarian.  Anyone in China who dares to buck the Chinese government is treated like a criminal and taken into custody by the government with no rights.  

The fate of a democracy activist, or a religious activist, or a persecuted minority such as the Uighurs, is not that different in today’s China from what it was in fascist Germany or Russia.  They perhaps don’t fear death, but imprisonment at will is the norm.

Our opening up to China has in retrospect been a huge mistake.  We thought that exposure to Western products and ideas and increased prosperity would slowly bring a soft revolution in China; that people would demand not just economic freedom but political freedom.  

But while China has embraced a type of capitalism, our role in the economic transformation of China has created a monster that threatens our economy and our geo-political interests around the world.  American companies and farmers have become enablers of China’s totalitarian government.

It is past time to rethink our engagement with China, not for the reasons given by Trump, but because we are enabling a totalitarian government.  The dream of a soft revolution is just that.   What to do at this point is a huge question that requires careful and knowledgeable thought, so I am not going to make any suggestions, except to say that Trump's trade war is not the answer.

Making Trade and the Global Economy Work for the American Worker

The global economy is a fact and there is no avoiding it.  Trade is also a necessary fact of economic life.

The question is, how to make the global economy and trade work for America.  And by work I mean work for the American worker, not allowing corporations to prosper and investors to get rich at the expense of workers.  In today’s multi-national corporate world, we must remember that the interests of the corporation are often if not mostly not in line with the interests of their workers because of off-shoring and out-sourcing; we are increasingly not producing here to send abroad, but producing abroad to import here.

As I’ve stated previously, corporate interests have been the true driving force behind most government decisions in this as in all areas for the last 3-4 decades.  While that should continue to be part of our strategy, for the health of both corporations and investors are  very important to our economy, those interests should not be the driving force.  Instead, our most important goal must be to make the global economy work for the American worker.

As I stated in my 2004 book, We Still Hold These Truths, the American worker is the backbone of the American economy.  “Whether blue collar or white collar, whether skilled or unskilled, whether managing a major corporation or a local fast-food operation … each individual American worker contributes to and sustains the American economy.  He/she is both producer and consumer.”    I would note as an aside that American independent farmers, as opposed to big farm corporations, are self-employed American workers and so very much part of the backbone of our economy.

It is the American worker as consumer, together with constructive government action, that has enabled our economy to sustain itself and recover from hard times.   Not corporate America.

How would this revised decision-making perspective impact government policy in the areas of  trade, industrial development, infrastructure investment, worker education, and Third World development?  I am not an expert on economics, and so I will not pretend to have solutions or opinions on how best to implement such a strategy.  

We will need to develop new economic models that show how the American economy and its workers can prosper in this changed environment.  We must ask questions, like, are even “smart” free-trade deals that harm American workers while enriching corporations better for the economy and the worker than having no free-trade deals?  What is the role of government-funded infrastructure projects, so badly needed for our future economic health, to providing un- or under-employed ex-factory workers with good-paying jobs?  How do we encourage corporate investment in manufacturing jobs in the United States?  Is the best way of restoring the economic strength of the middle-class worker to bring development and rising wages to the Third World?

Let me just say a few words on this last point.  It is to the American worker’s benefit for our government to aid Third World development.  Why?  As the standard of living rises in the Third World, wages will rise and the benefit of off-shoring or out-sourcing work will decrease for American business.  That has already happened to some extent with China where companies have transferred production to lower cost countries in Southeast Asia.  When their wages rise, as they inevitably will, jobs will start returning to the U.S.  This is admittedly not a short-term solution, but it must be part of the strategy.

The Democratic Party must make this an important part of its 2020 campaign platform.  It fits seamlessly with the Democratic vision statement I proposed in my post, “The 2020 Election Is about the Survival of American Democracy, Our Historic Values.”  

And it provides an important differentiation between Democratic policy and Trump policy.  Despite his rhetoric, Trump has approached nothing, including the revision of NAFTA, with the interests of the American worker as the driving force.  It’s been business as usual, what’s best for corporate interests.  Democrats must make this startlingly clear.

Economic Justice for All - Why and How

We live at a time where there is no greater challenge for America (yes, even greater than the terrorist threat) than forging a nation of greater economic justice and income equality.  The existence of a large portion of the population struggling to keep their financial heads above water - who 40 years ago were solidly middle class and prospering - and another large segment who are poor and without opportunity -  as they have always been - creates a drag on our economy, a drag on the social fabric that holds us together as a nation, and a drag on the democratic strength of America.

The Declaration of Independence famously says that all men are created equal and that they are all endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Less well known is the fact that it further states that it is government’s purpose to secure those rights.

Thus whether from a sense of America’s founding values, a general sense of social justice, or a practical desire to strengthen America economically, we must find ways to reverse the trend of the past 40 years, recreate a robust middle class, and for the first time provide real opportunity for the poor to rise up from poverty.

Some will say that these are lofty goals and beyond our current means, that we are a country in financial stress with a huge debt.  To answer that I would say that we are a very rich country and there is in fact no shortage of available funds to meet these goals without further increasing the debt.  It is a question of priorities.  It is a question of how much revenue is raised and how that revenue is spent.  It will no doubt mean having to increase our revenue as well as shift current government spending patterns.  So be it.

Given the importance of the proposed actions to the health of our nation, such changes are not just warranted they are necessary.  If we want America to be strong as a nation and for its people to be strong in body and soul, then we must act.

What are the practical ways in which such a policy commitment to the American people would be carried out?  The people deserve to know.

1.  Through renegotiating international trade deals and changing the tax code, we will both shift many lost jobs back to the United States as well as encourage the creation of new manufacturing middle-class jobs here.  Our current free trade agreements and tax code have worked to increase the wealth of corporations while destroying much of our middle class by shipping their jobs overseas and either leaving them unemployed or underemployed in low-paying service industry jobs.

2.  We will embark on a massive infrastructure replacement program which is desperately needed to ensure a strong America.  Virtually anywhere you look, our infrastructure is both outdated and in dangerously bad repair.  By replacing this failing infrastructure with technologically advanced systems we will strengthen America, we will create new business for a multitude of American companies, and we will create jobs for millions of American workers.

3.  Through increased investment in education in areas of our cities and country which have historically suffered from a lower rate of investment and quality than those areas of greater affluence,  we will create the first generation of American children who truly will be able to experience equal education opportunity.  No child deserves to be left behind.

4.  No American, regardless of color, should be discriminated against.  It is anti-American, based on both the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  The laws already on the books against discrimination and ensuring equal opportunity must be more vigorously enforced.  Employers and institutions should be required to have plans in place that strongly discourage discrimination.  (This is already required by some states; it should be Federal law and thus uniform.)

In limited areas however, such as education, where Blacks and other poor people have not had access to equal education opportunity, we need to continue affirmative action to help bring the country into balance.  But once the education initiatives outlined above have been put in place and a generation of children have benefited from them, there would be no further justification for affirmative action.  Each person should be judged on their merit.

5.  To pay for these programs, in addition to shifting current budget patterns, additional revenue will need to be raised, as noted above.  A large portion of that increased revenue should come from higher income and other taxes (such as luxury) on the very rich.  

Let me be clear … it is no sin to be rich and the ability to become rich is a strong motivator in our society to perform well and succeed, which in turn benefits society in many ways.  However, there comes a point where a person has acquired so much wealth where not only does one have more money than one knows what to do with but where, from a social contract standpoint, it becomes obscene.  Such income should be taxed at a high rate.  Citizens who have profited to such an extent from the opportunities afforded by our economic/political system have a social obligation, as citizens, to pay back to the system to ensure that it stays strong and that more people come to have such opportunities.

Besides being what I think the country needs at this point in time, if Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party adopted such a slogan and program as a key element of the 2016 campaign (yes, many of my points are already included in the 2016 Platform, but a platform is cumbersome), it would go a long way … assuming it was presented enthusiastically, vigorously … to blunting Trump’s claim to be the savior of the forgotten.  It would maximize her chances of not just winning, but winning big and Democrats’ regaining the Senate and perhaps even the House.