Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent's Stealth Takeover of America

[Newest Reality]

For the intro quote, let's just cut right to the chase. This article is significant in many ways and relevant to what we are seeing right now. It fills in some big blanks concerning the Trump debacle, too. Our wells, so to speak, are being poisoned and its getting close to the end, now. Think about it.

<snip>
MacLean is not the only scholar to sound the alarm that the country is experiencing a hostile takeover that is well on its way to radically, and perhaps permanently, altering the society. Peter Temin, former head of the MIT economics department, INET grantee, and author of The Vanishing Middle Class, as well as economist Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon and author of The One Percent Solution, have provided eye-opening analyses of where America is headed and why. MacLean adds another dimension to this dystopian big picture, acquainting us with what has been overlooked in the capitalist right wing’s playbook.

She observes, for example, that many liberals have missed the point of strategies like privatization. Efforts to “reform” public education and Social Security are not just about a preference for the private sector over the public sector, she argues. You can wrap your head around those, even if you don’t agree. Instead, MacLean contends, the goal of these strategies is to radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter how destructive.

MacLean argues that despite the rhetoric of Virginia school acolytes, shrinking big government is not really the point. The oligarchs require a government with tremendous new powers so that they can bypass the will of the people. This, as MacLean points out, requires greatly expanding police powers “to control the resultant popular anger.” The spreading use of pre-emption by GOP-controlled state legislatures to suppress local progressive victories such as living wage ordinances is another example of the right’s aggressive use of state power.

Could these right-wing capitalists allow private companies to fill prisons with helpless citizens—or, more profitable still, right-less undocumented immigrants? They could, and have. Might they engineer a retirement crisis by moving Americans to inadequate 401(k)s? Done. Take away the rights of consumers and workers to bring grievances to court by making them sign forced arbitration agreements? Check. Gut public education to the point where ordinary people have such bleak prospects that they have no energy to fight back? Getting it done

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america#disqus_thread

[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. The sociopaths

Want to lie,cheat ,exploit,ruin,take,abuse,rape,pillage and dominate this country. They want to do what they want with 0 accountability and 0 responsibility. Absolute power over and accountable to no one.

They want ogliarchy but that's not thier only goal,they want a psychopath ogliarchy to act out thier sick pathology on anyone they choose to abuse and victimize and get away with it Everytime. .

[Newest Reality]

2. You said it.

I am glad you get it, though it is rather alarming.

I have been keep track here and there of that progression that really kicked in in the Reagan Era. I have also been aware of the Koch Brothers and ALEC, etc.

I knew this was happening, but I had no idea how on the brink we are now. Trump has distracted the focus from many things. This one is really shocking and hope more people will become aware of it even though it is not at all pleasant to find out you have been on the front lines of the class war, standing in a foxhole and you look up to see what is depicted in that article staring you right in the face.

This is not good and its the underlying theme of what is going on and where we are at. Maybe knowledge of it will help somehow.

Oh, and it even looks like Trump is laying down the tracks for that train and greasing the wheels, now.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. Sekulow is an

Asshole and arguing in court trump should get immunity(temporarily) ha ha ha. Power concedes nothing.

Fuck you sekulow.

[hedda_foil]

3. Another snip.

With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.

MacLean details how partnered with Koch, Buchanan’s outpost at George Mason University was able to connect libertarian economists with right-wing political actors and supporters of corporations like Shell Oil, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Chase Manhattan Bank, and General Motors. Together they could push economic ideas to the public through media, promote new curricula for economics education, and court politicians in nearby Washington, D.C.

At the 1997 fiftieth anniversary of the Mont Pelerin Society, MacLean recounts that Buchanan and his associate Henry Manne, a founding theorist of libertarian economic approaches to law, focused on such affronts to capitalists as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go, too: the scholars considered it a socialist project.

The Oligarchic Revolution Unfolds

Buchanan’s ideas began to have huge impact, especially in America and in Britain. In his home country, the economist was deeply involved in efforts to cut taxes on the wealthy in 1970s and 1980s and he advised proponents of Reagan Revolution in their quest to unleash markets and posit government as the “problem” rather than the “solution.” The Koch-funded Virginia school coached scholars, lawyers, politicians, and business people to apply stark right-wing perspectives on everything from deficits to taxes to school privatization. In Britain, Buchanan’s work helped to inspire the public sector reforms of Margaret Thatcher and her political progeny.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. That's the Koch brothers' messiah.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. That Guy's Brain...

...took a walk off the map LONG ago.
Even when he had a mostly positive reputation, he was a nut.
He got crazier from there.
There is actually very little professional respect for his theories in the economics community.