Reliance on markets to deliver all human needs is the definition of neoliberalism, which is what all but a few politicians are promoting in our political system. As the government fails to safeguard the weak and shore up the middle class with its mandate to create currency “for the common welfare” (Article 1: Section 8 of our Constitution) even the money supply has been delegated to private banks, holding credit over our heads as it becomes harder and harder to pay bills and retire debt on time from lack of public money with any velocity.
The incessant drive to create profits for shareholders, ignoring stakeholders, has consumed America’s vast wealth via neoliberalism that privatizes every aspect of life. Kids are now turned away from obtaining lunch at school unless their parents can pay the company that the school cafeteria, paid for by local taxpayers and subsidized by federal payments, hired to manage.
Healthcare markets that can’t justify the administrative costs of insurance are simply abandoned, mostly in rural and poor areas where the population density of insured patients is low. Many patients in the rural markets find themselves transported via helicopter to urban medical centers and pay more for the transport than the treatment, even with “good” insurance.
Urban poor people are increasingly utilizing cabs or Uber, often while suffering pain or in peril of dying, to avoid the cost of ambulance service, which used to be part of municipal services supported by taxation but was made into a “market” by neoliberal politicians in the constant zeal for “efficiency”. Never mind that no private for-profit service can ever be as efficient as a tax-supported service. The politicians got the responsibility off their shoulders by falsely claiming it would be cheaper, but don’t tell people that it’s only cheaper for those who have the most expensive properties and can likely afford the insurance to cover it.
The bulk of innovation of the last century was accomplished with federal spending and public or federally subsidized colleges. Much of it was during the New Deal and directly following WWII when military technologies were converted to use in commerce. Hydroelectric dams and millions of miles of wire purchased with federal spending electrified most of the country. Telephone lines soon joined the electric cables on rural poles and helped unify the country. Radio, and eventually TV, were highly subsidized or simply funded via the federal government’s spending to bring us all closer and keep us informed and entertained.
The pharmaceutical field, now a big money maker for the masters of markets, is still mostly funded by our government while many people face the choice of meds to stay alive or housing to stay alive. Of the 300+ patents granted to pharma companies between 2013 and 2016 every one was originally developed with federal financing, but the current consensus is that no one can claim entitlement to them without paying for them via the market price, which the government that funded them in the first place cannot regulate because “socialism”.
This is not the same America that went deeply into debt when it was barely fending for itself to fight evil on the other side of the world. It is not even the same America that dug its way out of that debt and produced the greatest economy in history by empowering unions and striving for fair pay and labor practices against extreme opposition from capital. That America was the one that taxed its extremely wealthy at as much as 90+% to avoid exactly the America we have turned into.
Going back to the America we once were may be possible, but that ship is about to sail with major support from the people’s government, now just the propaganda and protection arm of the oligarchs. Sadly, so many Americans believe that “they” will have to pay for any beneficial spending by the monopoly issuer of the currency that needs no “revenue” that just about any program can be defeated by simply shouting socialism, or asking “how will you pay for it?”. Both are false representations of our monetary reality, but they resonate well with the budgeting process of the voters, so are quite easy to sell, as ignorance usually is.
