Recession! It's the big new word at present -- but at any given time, you can always find some subset of economists, pundits and politicians who profess to see one on the road straight ahead -- or maybe it's here with us right now! Oh, noooo!
There's even an editing war over the word in progress at Wikipedia; people who want us to be in or entering a recession shading, slanting and blowing on the dice, while people who hope we're nowhere near slant, shade and put a thumb on the wheel; you can track it in the edit history and that's a bit of an education in and of itself.
But a recession is a creature that only shows up in the rear-view mirror.* They cannot be definitively identified until they are over. By that time, you are either enjoying the recovery, too busy to bury economists up to their necks in anthills -- or enduring a depression, wondering what kind of second-hand socks make the best soup.
Recession or not, boom or bust, inflation, stagflation or G-rated flation for the whole family, the blame lands on the President's plate, with a kid's table set for Congress. Nope, sorry, "The Economy" is not actually a knob on the President's desk. For most of my life, business was happier when there was a Republican in the White House and they had a majority in Congress, and that often (but not always, hey Mr. Ford?) meant the economy would be good (occasionally on borrowed money, irrational exuberance or the back of a nondeclared war). The Democrats were not so friendly to business, though they varied widely (and business loathes unpredictability), so times might not be so good, especially for the top ten percent. But it's all smoke signals and speechifying, occasionally tinkering with taxes. The Federal Reserve has some control -- but it's crude and laggy at best, and the things they try rarely have the desired effect.
Republicans were, mostly, pro-business. Democrats were neutral at best, with strong lean to regulation and hostility.
That's changing. The GOP is taking aim at Big Tech, with an eye to breaking them up. Big Tech is Big Business these days. And the GOP's become a lot less predictable. This isn't good news, especially for suits in boardrooms and major stockholders, and that pain trickles down to you, me and the kid stocking groceries every time.
The Republicans used to be the party of sober men (and very occasionally, women) in office wearing sober suits, speaking soberly about sober issues to one another over five-martini lunches. The Democrats used to be the "anything goes" party, welcoming shaggy-haired social experimenters with wild ideas and not much cohesion over anything but the lingering programs of FDR's New Deal. This has changed; we've got more Establishment Dems these days, while the GOP happily embraces fringe thinkers with their own social experiments brewing. Oh, there are still plenty of stiff-necked country-club Republican politicians, and no shortage of whackjob Democrats with zany notions in and running for office; but the handwriting's on the wall. There's either a slow turning, or we're going to have loons-in-office on both sides, in numbers large enough to create a cacophony -- and to keep business fretting no matter which bunch is shouting the loudest. You know who loses in that latter case? Hint: it's nobody in Washington or on Wall Street. It's nobody in corner offices or the Oval Office. It's no one in Congress or the boardroom. You, me, our neighbors: we get to carry that weight.
Saw news the other day that Andrew Yang and a few select friends are forming their very own political party, presumably with blackjack and hookers. "RT" --the former Russia Today -- is pushing it pretty hard, which tells me everything I need to know about the possible beneficial effects of this development: there aren't any.
Please vote for sane adults, if you can. If you can't, picking the least crazy might help.
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* Right up there with hoop snakes, behinders and sidehill cattle.
Increasingly, the Republicans may be the party of people who make things, while the Democrats are the party of people who say things.
ReplyDeleteBig Tech and Hollywood are Big Business, but they don't really produce things as much as content. Even when they offer some actual physical device or item, it is generally produced by someone else.
Anon, your notion had some truth to it thirty years ago. Now? Better look at the Apple and Microsoft hardware out there, at the operating systems, all from Big Tech. And "content" is a thing, as much as any nut or bolt -- the latter mostly made overseas. If you want to Buy American, buy content.
ReplyDeleteBoth parties are composed of people who say things. Both have their share of laid-off and/or can't-find-a-job people. Both have people who work hard every day.
But they don't share much in the way of news media. They don't bowl or do tai chi together, or even swim in the same pools the way their parents did. Their basal orthodoxy has diverged. And we'd better figure out how to fix that.
Anon said:
ReplyDeleteIncreasingly, the Republicans may be the party of people who make things, while the Democrats are the party of people who say things.
There are increasingly fewer of us that make things. Mostly we sell them. And Republicans have sold the notion that they are the party of "the working man". Well, I'm working my butt off, possibly to an early grave, but I'm not seeing their beneficence helping me in any way. Wait until "the working man" wakes up and figures out that the Republicans are helping the bosses, not them.
It reminds me of the Ford vs Chevy wars. So many pickup owners will only drive one or the other; they're loyal to their brand. Meanwhile, that brand has shipped their jobs to Mexico, and the best pickup is made by Toyota, which builds in the US.
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Roberta, the motives of RT are never clear. They could back the third party for no more reason than its disruptive effect. But it surely won't go anywhere.
Oh, I think there's a component to RT's motives that is entirely clear: they are out to weaken the United States. If it concerns this country, whatever their position is, it will be the one they think will do us the most harm. Don't confuse them with AP, CNN or even BBC: they are a direct tool of the Russian government, far less independent than, say, VOA.
ReplyDelete