Message for Senator Elizabeth Warren and her supporters
On November 3, 2020, the 59th U.S. Presidential elections since 1788-1789 will take place and for a European observer it is a significant event. The U.S. politics are a matter for U.S. citizens but it has an influence upon the life of many people living outside of the U.S.A. Let’s position this observer in the center left of the political spectrum with considerations for social justice, order, economy efficiency and ecology by the following rule: “give to your children a better planet than the one you received from your parents”.
Isolationism or world power.
In the first place because of the importance of the factors. The U.S. are a world power because of the size of the national economy vs the world GDP while by population they are behind China and India and moved ahead of Russia with the fractioning of the U.S.S.R. For decades I have been told not to worry about the American challenge or the Japanese threat or When China wakes up or the India population or the communist Russia will never be competitive; in reality American corporations seized a good number of our leading manufacturers or service suppliers and, unfortunately, there is no European counterparts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google or Facebook. I can do without Facebook or Amazon but not without the two others.
In GDP and population European Union exceeds the U.S. and the foreign countries are slowly getting organized without America because the U.S. government decided to go by itself. It is a hard work and the underground battle launched by the Americans against the European unity doesn’t help. The impact of such a reactionary attitude will delay and frustrate, however it may be the price to pay for the Europeans to succeed. Such an adverse management aims at help U.S. corporations grow and protect U.S.A.; at the stadium, defense may be a winning tactic for some games but it has never made an enthusiastic show for the attending public paying their tickets.
U.S.A. may choose to isolate themselves but it has carried a number of historic disasters: Pearl Harbour, Korea, Viet-Nam, Afghanistan, Middle East have supplied cases less successful than WW I and WW II when the U.S. action made the winning difference. At home, from 1783 to 2019 there has been a long list of riots in American cities and History provided a tremendous list of casualties in dramatic events at home and abroad. Difficult to play alone.
On order from G.W. Bush “Lie After Lie: What Colin Powell Knew About Iraq 15 Years Ago and What He Told the U.N” recalls all the faults towards allies. The United Nations have been created to reduce the risks of war between countries and not to give a blind signature to the strongest.
Economics.
I will focus on four books as a basis for the analysis. If for centuries the evolution has been regular and relatively slow, we can say that the rhythm has accelerated since WW II, the market has shifted from a place in the street to computer screens and huge financial power has been built. Media may spread mass information but analytic capacity has somewhat vanished and manipulation of citizen-consumer-tax payer appears as a real possibility, information and advertising may look as propaganda, the promotion of a lifestyle by the business actors and the movie industry is an attack to national culture. McDonald and Coca-Cola are at every corner in countries where food used to have a specific taste and they bring with them obesity and diabetes. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was a precursor to the academic discipline of economics on how rational self-interest and competition may lead to economic prosperity. Freedom was the concept. Considerable scholarly debate has occurred about the nature of Adam Smith's religious views, however the key of the theory has been dropped by players in precipitation, they still run after dropping the ball like poultry with head cut.
Some VIPs of the U.S. capitalism opened strange doors: Michael Milken has been indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation and noted for his role in the development of the "junk bonds"- high-yield bonds; he has been convicted and sentenced following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Since his release from prison, he is regularly named “an American financier and philanthropist”. Bernard Madoff is a former market maker and a former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market; in 1999, financial analyst Harry Markopolos informed the SEC that he believed it was legally and mathematically impossible to achieve the gains Madoff claimed to deliver: it took him four minutes to conclude that Madoff's numbers did not add up and another minute to suspect they were likely fraudulent. Madoff targeted wealthy American Jewish communities; affected Jewish charitable organizations considered victims of this affinity fraud include Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, the Elie Wiesel Foundation and Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation. Jewish federations and hospitals lost millions of dollars, forcing some organizations to close. A criminal complaint filed stated that over 20 years, Madoff had defrauded his clients of almost $65 billion in the largest Ponzi scheme in history, his small yacht stayed for years by the French Riviera as another Flying Dutchman. Many American financiers have been honest and real philanthropists when others have just been bandits.
Numerous Monopolies and oligopolies constitute a severe obstruction against the basic philosophy of the America founders of freedom of choice and action and religion. Smith detected such a source of perversion of the system and used the term "the invisible hand" once in each of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. Every individual endeavors as much as he can to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and to direct that industry produce may be of the greatest value, every individual labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he could promote it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security and he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. The fact is that in the modern world the invisible hand or hand of Jupiter doesn’t exist much out of the corrections by Justice because official regulators are turned into intimidated scarecrows. The Free Market of Adam Smith shouldn’t be turned into a turf where referees discuss the straightness of the lines while players foul around the rules and thieves rob the public.
The other books that deal with the present frauds, out of the right way wrongdoings and inequalities among people are The Devil’s Derivatives, Capitalism and ideology, The Myth of capitalism together with The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State. It has not been obvious along the history that people wellbeing and pure philanthropy have been the drivers of the U.S. Corporate and Public Technostructures. The U.S. hourly salary has been reduced over the past decades while the dividends have greatly increased by these times of low interest rates; meanwhile the national debt reached the highest levels – who, indeed, is going to reimburse it in a country which invented the sub-primes tragedy for the world ?
A choice has to be made between the Freedom and the risk of fraud or a controlled economy? Use of socialism or communist is a voluntary exaggeration when the Freedom’s partisans exposed their request: $ may be liked abroad but Yankees and gringos are not so well accepted in many continents.
The American History have displayed nationalizations of failed corporations and industries (Automobile, Banking, Steel, Savings ..) when wrongdoings in the national economy have occurred making it look like Titanic. Being a competent manager can apply to both a State company or National Bank or a Corporation or a Small business. Breeding management experts is the key, not the Dream.
Religions and philosophy.
As a catholic, I went through enough literature not to think that we all come from Adam & Eve but from organisms getting out of water to live a long metamorphosis process to the present human being; the author of Hazard or the necessity got the Nobel Prize. While I am impressed by these families walking to the local church to get united to others in a ritual ceremony, I do not expect much from a man preaching for a war against the States of devil – mixing religious and political differences.
The Televangelism has been a complete mystery very hard to understand seeming far remote from the reason and a mass tragedy uniquely American - North and Latin.
Fromm, Marcuse, McLuhan, Paine (proposed a state funded old age pension), Gilman, Rawls, Weber, Oppenheimer, Russel, others have contributed, also Kerouac or Reich including Rolling Stone and many newspapers around the world. The authors of Grapes of Wrath, the Moveable Feast, The Great Gatsby did develop strong characters.
As industry and business have gained a great importance in modern world and have attracted many private individuals as investors, it is not absurd to think about. Capitalistic ownership means two things. First, the owners control the factors of production. Second, they derive their income from their ownership. That gives them the ability to operate their companies efficiently. It also provides them with the incentive to maximize profit. This incentive is why many capitalists say "Greed is good." Capitalism requires a free market economy to succeed, what about the lion’s share?
Social welfare.
Hospital which ask the patients first for a blueprint of their credit cards, expensive schools and universities, plans and lengthy arguments about Medicare cannot be discussed by a foreigner not aware of the details. However, it is an important point regarding quality and equality among citizens.
Union, State, Budget, Tax or a Wild bush.
Mr D. Trump has decided to repatriate the jobs from foreign factories to U.S. domestic locations. What about the impact on the economies of the foreign countries’ economy? He decided to reduce tax on the corporations for them to pay their tax in the U.S. rather than in the countries where they enjoy business. He decided not to be tied by commitment from previous U.S. governments. It works: Wall Street indexes goes up even if not as much as with Mr B. Obama who had to nationalize the most important parts of the U.S. economic engine to drive the country out of the dramatic financial crises Internet bubble and then Sub-primes generated through a wild capitalism and legerdemain. National public and private debt is increasing with regulators who do not have the means of actual control. It has to blow up again (again and again) in the future, speculators do not care more than in the past but the Great Depression is still in the minds of many Americans. A car running to crash against a concrete wall; for an observer the question is merely when to get out of the speculation? Official regulators still run far behind the thieves and without much equipment to trace them.
There is a unique scheme within the U.S. democracy system, the elected President may have received less votes nationwide than the opponent, in 2016, Hillary Clinton received 65,853,514 votes and Donald Trump 62,984,828. It may be a consideration given to the local motivations and respect for the diversity. The result may depend upon votes in given states and a voluntarily biased approach of the electors to gain the required votes. Leverage has proven faulty in Finance, it may well give an advantage to demagogy in democracy. To be elected like a detergent is advertised Mr Candidate consume a huge promotion budget, of course the Candidate financiers expect not less than a solid reward like an Embassy in an enjoyable country.
The US $ used to be pegged on gold, then Nixon came, unable to match the challenge he unpegged to allow the U.S. to print as many banknotes as the U.S. system wishes. So called Nobel Prize type U.S. economists have been identified as crooks or allies. The $ rises and decreases vs other currencies sometimes widely which cannot favor greatly the international trade and this is clearly demonstrated by Mr Trump’s acrobatics in economics simply short-circuiting the international institutions and agreements (Ecology, Food quality, ..).
The American dream.
The American Dream is the ideal that the government should protect each person's opportunity to pursue their own idea of happiness. The Founding Fathers put into law the revolutionary idea that each person's desire to pursue happiness was not just self-indulgence. It was a part of what drives ambition and creativity. By legally protecting these values, the Founding Fathers set up a society that was very attractive for those aspiring to a better life.
There is a very strong inequality within the today U.S. society when wealth is compared between the richest 1% and the others. The words of the tweets do not fit with the reality of numbers. For many, the American Dream is only a dream. Unemployment is extremely low in 2019, however the hourly income has decreased significantly over the past 10 years – on the way to match these of the Orient. Studies at the Universities are expensive and the original Americans i.e. the Amerindians have been either massacred or rejected into horrible Reserves while immigrants are facing a Wall like in Berlin; every American citizen has, indeed, been generated by immigrants.
We are seeing changes in the U.S. population which may constitute a Time bomb moving away from the belief that the best way to ensure national progress is to protect citizens’ right to improve their lives.
?James T. Adams first defined the American Dream “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement, not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
The American Dream is "the charm of anticipated success." So said French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in his book "Democracy in America." about the American society in the 19th century. This charm has drawn millions of immigrants to U.S. shores. It's also been a compelling vision for other nations.
It is up to the U.S. citizens to adjust the Dream to the present conditions and make it what they want.
Futurism.
The Gold rush, skyscrapers, landing on the Moon, 747 jets, cruising vessels, Big Research, management came out of this country. Futurism has moved to Asia in building and transportation. The U.S. economy has the size for efficiency. It is polluting the land and the atmosphere and not willing to stop. The clouds move around the world and lack of action in America is affecting other people: how long is it going to be tolerated? Lance Armstrong came to win several Tours de France, just to be disqualified of all his victories for fraud!
2020 will be a Presidential Year starting in the usual snowy conditions of Iowa and New Hampshire. Many candidates have been eliminated at this very beginning and others failed later on. Americans have projected world heroes, Roosevelt, JFK, Obama and Presidents who hold the Office genuinely.
A Candidate for President must have a very clear Program to maintain the Dream Program going.
Time has come for a Woman in the Oval Office. Good luck Ms Warren.
France December 2019.