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Old or new, Jacksonianism has always combined the pretense of egalitarian rebellion against privilege with the reality of domination by upper-class rentiers and crony capitalists.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/17/why_...ods/singleton/In the 19th century, the Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln and others, devoted to the Henry Clay’s idea of the “self-made man.” But in spite of conservative rhetoric about small business, today’s Republican economic orthodoxy does not promote the interests of entrepreneurs or industrial capitalism. Instead, it promotes the economic interests of rentiers — families with inherited wealth and Wall Street investors — the kind of people who make money in their sleep, in the words of the 19th-century classical liberal economist J.S. Mill, who despised them.
The GOP crusade to abolish the estate tax — the “death tax” — does nothing for American business in general, even as it chiefly benefits the trust fund babies of a few super-rich families. A lower tax rate for capital gains than for earned income means that the idle rich, and the hedge fund managers who manage their assets and are taxed at the capital gains rate, pay a much lower tax rate on their income than the majority of Americans who depend on wages or professional fees for a living. Self-made entrepreneurs? Hardly.
Nor does Republicanomics serve the interests of captains of industry.
If the Republican economic plan were drafted by CEOs of American-based companies that actually make things, rather than rearrange money, it would not necessarily please liberals but it would bear little resemblance to the rentier-friendly plans pushed by the Wall Street right. The emphasis would be on a permanent R&D tax credit, lower corporate taxes, depreciation allowances, public infrastructure investment, policies to lower the costs of energy and other inputs, dollar devaluation and other policies to promote the inshoring of production in America. Genuine captains of industry would not assign priority to estate tax relief and low capital gains taxes for the benefit of the trust fund set like the Bushes and Romneys.
The conclusion is inescapable. The Republican Party is not really a pro-business party at all. It is a pro-hereditary wealth party. Its platform serves the interests of those few Americans who are born into wealth and seek to preserve their fortunes, not those who start new companies or invent new technologies. Naturally, therefore, the party’s presidential candidates are chosen nowadays from among the pedigreed, hereditary social elite who are the chief beneficiaries of its policies.
Old or new, Jacksonianism has always combined the pretense of egalitarian rebellion against privilege with the reality of domination by upper-class rentiers and crony capitalists.
I agree with most, however, the estate tax issue (as one involved in a family business) can be tricky for those of us non blue bloods, as well.
With onerous estate taxation, there is often not liquid assets available to pay the tax on the valuation of a business as it passes from one generation to the next - without liquidating the asset (small business) itself. Large life insurance policies are the solution. There's a reason, IMO, W. Buffet is so in favor of the inheritance tax.
the selective emphasis given here reflects ill on Mr Lind's fair-mindedness, but I think he's at least part right, too.
It's a very simplistic take and the equation is well worn: the GOP as the money party. The novelty of the OP is Lind using Andrew Jackson a a modus for ideology critique. It kind of works, because it points to a place in US history when Americans were keenly aware of the threat posed by financial combinations, and the threat this awareness posed in turn was coopted by political populism.
meh, Obama is a blue-blood dipped in chocolate
compared to Kerry and Gore? hardly.
Repugs are the party of the 1%/Haves, always defending/enriching them, while attacking the 99%/Have-nots.
They sucker Have-nots into voting Repug and against the Have-nots' best interests with social issues like Guns, God, Gays, Abortion, and illegal immigrants.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 01-18-2012 at 01:35 PM.
except for the part about about "God, guns, gays and abortion," that's a fair restatement of the article
lol boutons bait
There are lots and lots of areas for agreement and disagreement in Mr. Lind's opinion piece. Enough for two or three threads, imo.
I do believe that Mr. Lind has some historical issues going on. It is certainly a fact that the GOP has tended to nominate so-called 'blue-bloods' as president much more than middle or lower middle class candidates, at least in the recent past, but to see why that is potentially contradictory to the populist movement in the current GOP is to miss the big change that Nixon (a non-pedigreed candidate) and Reagan (another non-pedigreed candidate) brought about in the modern Republican Party.
Nixon consciously began (and Reagan continued) the courting of the southern white lower-middle-to-working-class voting bloc. Nixon did it because he saw in that voting bloc a way to pick up electoral votes that had previously gone democratic from the 'dixiecrats' who were so ticked off at the democratic Party of JFK and LBJ and their civil rights agendas.
One of the characteristics of that same voting bloc was a deep evangelical christianity that had characterized that population for well over a century.
So you have the core of the populists of the current GOP. Reagan expanded on that base by courting the non-southern evangelicals through the 'social values' agenda.
It is this core of populism that is relatively new to the GOP (new as opposed to pre-Eisenhower).
The 'pro-business' Republicans of old are the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, who were so upset with Teddy Roosevelt
for trust-busting and who backed the Hardings and Tafts and Hoovers of the pre-FDR days.
That old core's opposition to FDR and all of his social contracts and heavy hand with taxation, etc. is what set up the Robber Barons against Democrats. The opposition to the social agendas of the '60 and '70s Democrats brought in the blue-collar workers and evangelical Christians that had previously been either Democrats (the union guys) or Dixiecrats (the southern evangelicals).
Thus, the myth of the current GOP as being pro-business is merely a harkening back to earlier positions that have become part of the ins utional memory of 'establishment' republicans. Simultaneously, the populism of today's Republican base is a function of the more current move to attract disaffected Democrats who disliked the social policies of the mid-20th century Democratic Party.
THUS, (LOL) you have a Republican Party 'establishment' that claims a mantle of being Pro-Business (because their grandfathers who made the family fortunes were) and who nominate from 'their own ranks', and a rabble-rousing populist group that wants the social and religious agendas that are consistent with their century (ies)- old value set.
Right now, the establishment has been winning the nominating battles. But the populists are becoming more and more powerful within the party. And they don't like the establishment guys anymore that they like democrats.
That is one of the reasons why the current Republican Party is so fractured.
The entire Jacksonian thing is another matter.
^^^imho. Lol
Enter, Ron Paul?
I appreciate the degree of historical nuance there, EVAY. Not that I agree or disagree, but not everyone takes so much care to say what they mean.
"the myth of the current GOP as being pro-business"
MYTH? are you joking? MYTH!!!
your tea bagger/Repug so-called populists' main points of Taxed Enough (when actually lowest taxed of all industrial countries) and "destroy Big Govt" are profoundly, primarily pro-business (and financed by Kock Bros, etc) and pro-wealthy.
Sorry, the reason I wrote "myth" of pro-business was in relation to the author's distinction between the Republican's PR of being pro-business, as opposed to the author's insistence that they were actually NOT pro-business per se, but instead were "pro-inherited wealth"."the myth of the current GOP as being pro-business"
MYTH? are you joking? MYTH!!!
your tea bagger/Repug so-called populists' main points of Taxed Enough (when actually lowest taxed of all industrial countries) and "destroy Big Govt" are profoundly, primarily pro-business (and financed by Kock Bros, etc) and pro-wealthy.
That does not imply that the Republicans today are not beholden to Corporate Interests, but that they are not the FOUNDERS of those businesses in the same way that Republicans were prior to and during the tenure of FDR.
The entire point of the author and the discussion was whether or not today's Republican Party is more interested in advancing businesses or maintaining their wealth.
Well, imo, Ron Paul takes the 'limited government' role of the traditional Republican platforms and drives straight off a cliff with them.
I happen to like the guy personally because I think he is so sincere. But his policies are not exactly practical in 21st century America.
"more interested in advancing businesses or maintaining their wealth."
what's the difference? the "or" is bogus. Both are equally targeted and simultaneously achieved.
The Repugs defend, protect, enrich, "tax-expend" the UCA which is heavily "owned" by wealthy investors and stock speculators (like Congressmen as insider traders).
neither is the plain meaning of the US Cons ution but it's still the cons ution, isn't it?
Indeed.
Therefore???
What is your suggestion?
The Republicans used to cultivate the black vote up until the 1970s when the Dixiecrat exodus happened. its hard to get a good feel for the policy shift that occurred because of the Democratic domination from the 1930s to the 1960s but the likes of Nixon and Bush are a far cry from Lincoln and the first Roosevelt.
i would have been a Republican 100 years ago, no doubt about it. These current genized incarnations of pluralism just make me sick. The baby boomers push for the primary system in the 1960s and 70s was so unbelievably misguided.
More of an observation to my mind, but there are things to be prized and cherished, even though they are sometimes very inconvenient and not too au courant. Like due process.
I agree totally that due process has been almost destroyed in the last two administrations, and our nation is all the poorer for it. My issues with Paul have to do with his extreme (imo) positions on wanting to get rid of so many cabinet level departments because he believes that the Cons ution means
not only smaller government than what we have, but virtually no government at all. For example, Perry wants to get rid of three departments...Paul wants to get rid of 5 of them.
Paul wants to seriously get rid of the Fed. I believe that the Fed has become overly politicized in the last few decades, but getting rid of it all together would be akin to Jackson getting rid of the the National Bank.
The solution to the Fed being politicized is to change the Fed, not destroy it.
^^^When Carter was president, the Fed (under Volcker) put in extreme measures to combat inflation. The economy suffered, but the result was a stronger economy.
When GHW Bush was president, the fed again tightened money, and the economy again suffered. MANY people blamed the Feds actions for his loss to Clinton (particularly and significantly, Bush Jr.).
Subsequent to that, the Fed has been reluctant to ever 'take the long view' monetarily, thus pouring money into the economy in order to ease recessionary times (remember after 9/11 when we went into a recession and the Fed kept piling on money until we got out of it?). It is as though they don't ever want to be accused of hurting any given presidency, so they just keep the money rolling.
That needs to change (or the Fed guys need to grow a pair), but Paul considers the Fed uncons utional. I think that position is clearly impractical in this day and age.
"When Carter was president, the Fed (under Volcker) put in extreme measures to combat inflation."
Inflation and the corresponding anti-inflationary Volcker high interest rates didn't really become pre-occupying until the Iranian oil-shock of 1979 was fully felt in late 1980 thru 1983.
I understand your point, b-d, but I remember all too painfully getting my first mortgage in 1975 and paying 14% interest on it.
I was sort of preoccupied by it.
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