Peter Radford — The End [of Reaganism] Is Nigh!

The end, that is, of Reaganism.

The Republicans have shut down government because no one is taking their demand that health care reform is abandoned seriously.

In a nutshell the fight is over the part of reform that increases taxes on the top 1% of income earners, reduces subsidies to insurers within the Medicare system, and thus can afford to provide health care to tens of millions of previously uninsured people. That’s it. The Republicans failed to defeat these things during the law’s passage; the law stood up to challenge in the Supreme Court; and subsequently a presidential election was fought, with the winner being the advocate of the law. That’s pretty conclusive. The reform has been constitutionally and electorally approved.

But the extremists now running the Republican party think they can ignore all that. They abhor reform and so have taken to insurgency. Their defense of the wealthy to the detriment of the poor and the sick is open class warfare. It can be construed in no other way. Unless the extremists go through some radical change, their intransigence and defense of the privileged will lap over into a fight over the debt ceiling.

Which is odd, isn’t it? Because the privileged stand to lose the most when our credit worthiness is undermined. They are, after all, the holders of most of our collective wealth.

Only odd in that the elite would rather have more of smaller pie than a larger slice of a bigger pie.

I see this in historical terms.

Our current plight is the natural, if chaotic, end point of the Reagan counter-revolution.

Excellent analysis follows.

So Reaganism is solving the wrong problems. It is preventing an orderly change in society as diversity entrenches ever deeper into our way of life. It is protecting a smaller and more privileged group than the revolutionaries who launched it upon us envisaged. Their revolution, like all revolutions, was co-opted and subverted along the way. Whether it was ever going to deliver the misty eyed visions of Reagan is questionable. That it has delivered in spades for the wealthy is not. Nor is the opposite effect: the vast majority of Americans have suffered under the grip of the revolution. Inequality is unprecedented. Profits have boomed. We have lived through three asset bubbles. The economy is less stable and more risky. And all that extra risk has fallen on the less privileged. Wages have stagnated. Employment is less certain. Retirement more fragile. And our health care system fallen way behind those abroad.

The irony is that, by undermining the safety of the economy, the Reagan counter-revolution has put in place the foundation for the next wave of progressive politics....

But, I doubt, by any of our current leaders, none of whom seems to have the desire or the vision to begin the rebalancing. I suspect that it will not be before 2020 that we will, retrospectively, realize that the debt and budget crises forced on us by the extremists this year were the moment that the pendulum began its long and slow swing to the left. 

Real-World Economics Review Blog
The End Is Nigh!
Peter Radford

What Radford doesn't mention is that the pendulum may not swing naturally but be catalyzed by a depression or war. Moreover, by 2020 the world will be in the grip of the climate change that is likely going to be the background theme of the 21st century, resulting in profound social, political and economic change.