Macron Illustrates Why Neoliberalism Can't Save Democracy

France is currently being torn apart by massive protests after President Macron raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote (which he surely would have lost.) It goes against the wishes of the majority of French people, and probably of their representatives, too. There is a kind of irony to this, since Macron ran and re-ran as a defender of democracy against the forces of populist authoritarianism. His current situation ought to be a warning to centrist and center-left politicians who profess to do the same.

Populist authoritarians get mass support partially because they advocate a Herrenvolk nationalism that assures people in the “in group” that they will be taken care and the social state will not be pared back. Just think about the United States, where Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election by promising to make the public feel the hard hand of capitalism, and Donald Trump won after defending Social Security and Medicare against that type of Republican. While Trump’s policies involved massive giveaways to the wealthy, his rhetorical uses of Herrenvolk nationalism assured the less affluent parts of his base.

Like other neoliberals, Macron thinks the public needs to take their medicine no matter what. Neoliberals see this as a moral imperative, hence Macron’s monomaniacal push to raise the retirement age when the pension system is not in crisis. I am also reminded of the austerity policies in the UK that left its standard of living hobbled without bringing on any economic benefit. The Tories stick to those policies because they are on a moral crusade to save their people from “dependency.”

Neoliberals even take pride in bucking the popular will, to them giving the public less is not a bad thing, but rather a sign of courage. While they play these games, however, the populist authoritarians proclaim that they will take care of the in-group. Macron’s decision about retirement has probably done more to boost the National Front than anything Marine Le Pen has ever done. Similarly, Hilary Clinton’s tendency to defend neoliberal policies in the 2016 election did great damage to her.

The world’s democracies are on a knife’s edge. From India to Hungary to Israel to Florida we are seeing populist authoritarians gain power then use their positions to prevent their opponents from winning elections. Unfortunately, many opponents of these regimes still recite the old neoliberal creed. As long as they flout the wishes of the people so that they can punish them, these neoliberal centrists will be the second biggest threat to democracy because they enable the biggest threat to claim they are protecting “the people” against “the elites.”  

The Stakes of California's Surplus

Like Springfield, California is faced with a high stakes surplus

Yesterday brought the news that California has an almost $100 billion budget surplus this year, almost half of which can be spent on pretty much anything. This presents an amazing opportunity, one not just for California, but for the country at large.

In my lifetime state-level budgets and politics have been geared towards neoliberal austerity, and California has been no exception. A state where local public university students did not have to pay tuition now charges tens of thousands of dollars, for instance. Conservatives abhor budget surpluses because it does not allow them to proclaim that services must be cut and new programs avoided because "where is the money going to come from?" When I lived in Texas during the recession the state actually had a "rainy day fund" and didn't spend it during the downturn, using that as an excuse to slash the budgets of state universities. 

California has an opportunity right now to show the country what can be done with public money. In a state where housing costs are driving people out, it can fund new social housing. In a state where students are having to crowd into existing universities, it could build new campuses. In a state where the automobile rules, it could build more public transportation. In a state where schools crumble due to being starved by Proposition 13, it could rebuild them. In short, California can provide an example of how government can be used to benefit regular people.

It is hard for voters to think of social democracy as beneficial to them unless they see results. Otherwise, they will just be told by the other side that "wouldn't you rather have your tax money back in your pocket?" Texas likes to tout itself as an alternative to California in this regard. (Never mind that its regressive tax structure means that regular people there really don't pay lower taxes than in California.) Cheaper housing, modern schools, low tuition, efficient transportation, these are all things that would make an immediate impact.

I fear that the opportunity will be lost, that this money will be used to give gas tax rebates, build bigger highways, and give tanks and helicopters to police. The neoliberal state is okay with lavishing money, but only if it's car infrastructure and the carceral state. California has a tremendous opportunity to show another way forward. I hope they don't blow it. 

The Casino-zation of America

This week New Jersey governor Chris Christie went down toAtlantic City for a closed door meeting to discuss that city’s current crisis.  Four of its twelve casinos have closed this year, victimized by the expansion of gambling in New York and Pennsylvania.  Atlantic City is going into severe decline as the casino closings seem to be building on each other with startling regularity, with no end in sight. 

Gambling was once Atlantic City’s salvation.  Many Jersey Shore communities went into decline in the sixties and seventies, as greater alternatives for long distance travel drew vacationers to farther-flung locations.  Atlantic City was no exception.  I recently watched the film The King of Marvin Gardens, released in 1972 and shot in Atlantic City and its environs.  It is an emotionally brutal rumination on the false promises of the American Dream, and the run-down hotels and empty boardwalk make an ideal landscape to tell such a tale.  After all, Atlantic City is the town where the streets in Monopoly get their names from, and it’s also where Miss America is crowned each year.

The empty desolation chronicled by the film would disappear by the end of the seventies with the advent of casinos in Atlantic City.  Back then it was really the only place to gamble in America outside of Nevada, and the money rolled in.  Nowadays gambling is extremely common across the Unites States, and Atlantic City has lost its competitive advantage.  Basically, they bet the house, and lost.

That is less surprising than the fact that so many cities and states have decided to mimic Atlantic City by making casinos their economic foundation.  In a quarter century America has gone from a country where legalized gambling was extremely rare to it being ubiquitous.  I remember a time when this expansion of gambling was controversial, but now it's just accepted.  Even Republicans, supposedly the party of "family values" have been boosting the casinoization of America.  

That phenomenon attests to the neoliberal system that has been erected in the last three decades in this country.  State-level politicians try to do everything they can to spare the rich form any sort of tax burden, so cigarettes and gambling become an easy target for revenue, even though they are highly regressive in who they take money from.  It's also interesting that the paragon poster-child of capitalist bad taste is Donald Trump, who rose to prominence with his casinos in Atlantic City.  In the same decades that casino gambling has grown and grown, so has the biggest casino of them all: Wall Street.

Today Atlantic City crumbles, victim of its own realization at the beginning of the great neoliberal transformation in the late 1970s that America would become a nation of gamblers.  With so much uncertainty and a shredded social contract, why not throw some money away on the spin of the wheel or a lottery ticket?

Track of the Week: The O'Jays "For The Love Of Money"

I recently heard the sad news that the building that housed Philadelphia International Records is soon to be demolished.  That label put out some of the very best soul music of the 1970s and many of my own favorite tracks.  The O'Jays are my favorite of the group's labels, and I keep coming back to the 1973 smash "For The Love Of Money."

It's a song I heard a lot as a kid in the 1980s, used in soundtracks and incidental music, usually with the implicit approval of money-making activities.  It's funky effects-laden bass intro with the "money money money" chant was easily one of the most recognizable snippets of pop music out there, but I didn't know the name of the group or of the song until years later during the midst of my classic soul obsession.  (This began during my time in Chicago, where multiple stations played the great R&B of yore.)  I just thought of the song as "the money song."

When I actually listened to it as a complete song I heard the lyrics that were never included in all of the soundtracks and incidental music.  The song's title references a Biblical verse from Timothy that deems the love of money to be "the root of all evil."  I soon realized that this song was not a celebration of raking in the dough at any cost, but a denunciation of it.  In that regard it fits well with a lot of other socially-conscious soul music of the early 1970s, from Edwin Starr's "War" to the Chi-Lites "For God's Sake Give More Power To The People."

It is a testament to the demonic powers of late capitalism's culture industry that a song dedicated to warning people against pursuing riches over preserving one's soul has been twisted to mean the exact opposite.  I hear this song today as a very prescient warning, coming as it did right before the neo-liberal onslaught started gaining traction in the mid-1970s.  For forty years we have been living in a society where the "almighty dollar" takes precedence over all else, where everything has its price and anything can be bought and sold.  The results speak for themselves.