I'm not an economist, so I don't even dare try to get into discussions like this.

But, is there really proof that trickle down and great society like programs, even work? Both seem to be a slave to time, chance and people's fears and emotions.

As to the first, there is all the proof we could ever need that trickle down does not work. Inequality produces more inequality--that is the story of the last 30 years. And during the great depression, it was commonly believed that maldistribution of income was part of the problem. If too many people had too little income to spend, the broader economy was bound to suffer. We are replaying this now but the economics profession hadn't caught up.

As for "Great Society programs," the main ones still doing anything significant are Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provides care far more cheaply than private insurance, which, when you think about it, is obvious, since it doesn't make profits. Medicaid, I suspect, does also, but it has problems.

New Deal programs, including the Wagner Act, Glass-Steagall, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the FDIC, the TVA, the WPA, and the PWA, all contributed a great deal to America in one way or another but they are mostly either dead or moribund. It's only troglodytes like myself who even remember them. I was intrigued, by the way, at people complaining that Obama's jobs might benefit only unionized workers. That was a problem the WPA took on--it even had programs for artists and writers. The writers produced, among other things, an outstanding series of guides to the 48 states.

I was thinking about some broader issues last night. My son's school has had a remarkable improvement in its math scores. Reading is still lagging. (This is inevitable for some time to come because they start with fifth grade, with kids who have had five years of normal public education, and it takes a long time to make up for that.) But perhaps emphasis on math will help keep rationalism alive, because in math you can't fake the answer. That's something I always liked about it. I would say that no one is going to be an informed citizen nowadays who doesn't look at primary data and do some reasoning of his or her own, however. That's the world we live in now.

Originally Posted by Galen

The government can't do it because they end up subsidizing failure in the same way that corporate bail-outs do. I have seen a lot of it in my time which is true of most of Generation X.

This is part of the problem, I think. Xers are justifiably cynical of government because they've really never seen government *work* and provide good value for their tax dollars in the way some older generations may recall. This makes "more government" a hard sell for Xers, I think.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

As for "Great Society programs," the main ones still doing anything significant are Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provides care far more cheaply than private insurance, which, when you think about it, is obvious, since it doesn't make profits.

Don't forget also that Medicare reimbursement rates are often very low, often considerably lower than most private insurance plans. And as a result more and more providers are refusing to accept new Medicare patients. This also results in cost-shifting to non-Medicare recipients (which is another factor in Medicare operating "far more cheaply."

I'm not bashing Medicare here, just pointing out that there's a lot more than just the removal of that horrible profit motive involved here. The other cost advantages I mentioned, for example, would go away if we moved to a "Medicare for all" type system.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

The other cost advantages I mentioned, for example, would go away if we moved to a "Medicare for all" type system.

Not if the doctors refused to work at Medicare reimbursement rates which as you point out is already happening. There is no solution for medical costs as long as we stick to a fee for service system.

James50

Originally Posted by Galen

Yes it is a depression. A depression being made worse by using similar policies that made the Great Depression worse than it had to be. You have described the results of regulatory capture very nicely. So how does increasing power to the very organization that you say these people own solve these problems? It doesn't and it can't. You would do well to look at why the trusts and mergers did so badly at creating monopolies at the end of the nineteenth century. Here are some lectures on the subject by Murray Rothbard to his students.

Murray Rothbard is a quack ideologue. The boom of the 1920s could not be continued or restarted. Such isn't pure economics; such is also the generational theory. The latter part of a 3T (1920s, Double-Zero Decade through 2008) features a speculative boom that can only fail because of the intensification of economic inequality. The 4T requires the end of bad behavior that got the world into its sorry predicament and attention to the sectors of the economy that the political and economic leadership had neglected during the latter part of the 3T.

As long as government is permitted to choose the winners and losers then what do you expect?

When Corporate America and the political process intertwine as they did from 2001 to 2006 and again in 2011 and surely into 2012, then Corporate America itself decides who wins (giant bureaucratic powerhouses) and who loses (small business and working people everywhere). Such happens when a few institutions run by people without conscience get all the power; they try to buy the political process to get subservient reactionaries, retainers in all but name, to do the politics on their behalf.

There have been fewer such charities since the sixties since the government moved in. The government has been doing the job very incompetently, only the federal government could spend what it takes to put a student through Harvard and still fail to teach them how to be a fry cook.

Uh...

1. Some people are uneducable. Those are the sorts of people who become fry cooks and retail cashiers at best. Private training is more easily directed. Job Corps was intended to show people that they might be something else, and sometimes that worked.
2. College education used to be fairly inexpensive. College professors, let alone grad students obligated to participate in teaching because such is part of the program of graduate education, didn't have to be paid much more than high-school teachers. Colleges started bidding up a few professors and went on building binges. Students now pay for that.

As I pointed out it the previous paragraph these programs have been less than successful in general because they end up subsidizing failure. As one who uses evolutionary systems to solve problems I understand the math behind them and why these programs can only fail to achieve their stated goals. In computer science terms, these program alter the fitness function in ways that encourage dysfunction.

All growing institutions have their faults. The owner of a small restaurant can staff his business with relatives because most of the work is routine and repetitive. A chain has problems when the principal chairman starts pushing his relatives and perhaps his old buddies into positions for which they are intellectually and temperamentally unsuited. No business entity ever outgrows its inner faults by simply expanding its operations; its inner faults grow with the firm. When giant entities succeed at crushing their competition they also set up the possibility for their eventual ruin.

In order to avoid the short term pain you would consign people to suffer under these corrupt organizations forever. This process has been underway since at least the beginning of the twentieth century it is illogical to expect correction to be painless. This is not a process that I look forward but rather something necessary to avoid a greater evil. You can look at other examples of crony capitalism to see where this process must inevitably lead. Socialism is of course not the answer as the Warsaw Pact nations managed to prove and the mixed economy isn't working much better, partly due to the problem of regulatory capture.

No -- to avoid a calamity like the fall of Weimar Germany you take drastic measures to prevent an immediate collapse. FDR saved the banks in 1933 and prevented an economic disaster that would have led either to a proletarian revolution or a fascist takeover of America. The same mechanism that saved what few banks that survived the 1929-1932 meltdown operated automatically this time.

I frequently make the case that much of our overall distress results from the sorts of people -- bureaucratic game players, often sociopaths -- who manage industry. Remedies of such pathology will take major reforms beginning in the educational system. That has huge influence upon the quality of life for most of us. Such is more a moral question than one of economic analysis, but the economic consequences of a bureaucratic elite whose members show no conscience include a climate of fear and a lack of hope that themselves tear people down.

We need economic policies that foster small business -- perhaps at the expense of 'everyday low prices' that entities like Wal-Mart can get by squeezing suppliers as independent operators can't, and a tax code that favors small businesses. As it is, small businesses do the bulk of hiring of people of limited skill and education. Giant entities -- even the oil companies -- have been cutting payroll even in good times despite their profitability.

As for socialism -- you have confused two very different things. Soviet-style 'socialism' in which the government owns and operates all productive industry is an unmitigated failure. As a rule the system offers few incentives for honest work, delays innovation except in privileged sectors (typically munitions), precludes alternatives that would result from competition, and rewards people largely for bureaucratic game-playing through power plays that sociopaths do well. We have much of that developing now -- and if things go certain ways, all that will differ in America will be that the system will make no flattering references to working people. Soviet 'socialism' became a new form of feudalism in that the worker had only one possible employer who had no responsibility toward the employee -- and American capitalism in the recent 3T trend continued forever will be a new form of feudalism in which the profit motive is available only to a few and all are obliged to suffer for the greed of the few.

The other sort of socialism implies a system -- social democracy -- that depends upon a well-operating capitalist system that dictates how much of the income will be spent -- as on medical care for everyone (essentially Medicare for All, which is what the Democratic Left wants in America), education through grad school, a strong national defense, and economic security for all. Sweden is capitalist - not socialist. Note well that most countries that emerged from Soviet-style 'socialism' had to privatize much of the Soviet-style economic machine to get the benefits of social democracy.

In this 4T we may have to choose between a New Feudalism and social democracy. We had better choose well.

I wouldn't say that since Obama has pretty much continued on the same path as his predecessor. This would seem to be the crux of the problem since both major parties are pretty much moving in the same direction. This has been true for a little over a century.

1. Dubya was a clear reactionary, a firm supporter of a largely-capitalist system with 'privileged industries' and 'public-private partnerships' in which the public sector absorbed the risk but the private sector took the profits (accentuated through his tax cuts on behalf of economic elites).

2. When the economy went into free fall in 2008, Dubya acceded to the "financial coup" of September 2008 in which the troika of Treasury-Secretary Paulson, SEC Chair Summers, and FED Chairman Geithner practically dictated what would happen, essentially a nationalization of failing entities. Such is in a way socialism in the defense of capitalism. I figure that that troika had already had discussions with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the ground that a financial collapse would have horrible effects upon national security. Dubya did something completely out of character for himself. Dick Cheney would have refused in the event that the President had to resign. Can you say President Nancy Pelosi?

3. President Obama has presided over the biggest privatization in American history. "Government Motors" became a private entity. The banks bailed out largely paid back the infusions of cash with a profit to the government. You can't fault him for that, can you? In any event, during the first two years of his Administration, he got a flurry of legislative activity, most of offended America's elites. Those elites, not surprisingly, funded right-wing populist causes (especially the Tea Party) and right-wing stealth groups that funded every reactionary running against a liberal. In 2010 those groups won and put an end to the liberal tendencies in the US government.

4. Don't neglect the generational cycle. Remember that the 4T must reverse the bad habits -- the bad business practices, the reactionary politics, the corruption, and the mindless mass culture of a 3T. You seem to be betting on the Hard Right that prevailed when Dubya was President and the Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress to solve everything; it has solved nothing but has made things worse. We solve our problems of inequality, corruption, misplaced investment, and the depraved mass culture during the 4T or someone else will solve those for us -- on terms dictated from elsewhere, as by a Lucius Clay or a Douglas MacArthur. In the last 4T we solved the problem of productivity growing faster than consumption by turning mass unemployment into leisure (the 40-hour week) and did much the same in Germany (at least the western sectors) and Japan. In the previous 4T we abolished the horror that was chattel slavery. In the one before that we cut off ties to a monarch who became an absolute ruler.

It is highly unlikely that Americans will accede to the Hard Right dream of a return to the norm of the 40-year lifespan and 70-hour workweek for industrial workers and child labor as a norm, the effective disenfranchisement of all but the rich, and the de facto establishment of Protestant fundamentalism as political and educational orthodoxy.

Galen, what's the alternative to a Hamiltonian system or a variant thereof? In Hamilton's time, his chief opponent was Jefferson, but Jefferson himself recognized that a minimal-government system such as he preferred was appropriate only for an agrarian economy of independent small farmers, which he also preferred. Hamilton wanted to industrialize and Jefferson did not. Hamilton wanted an economically active government and Jefferson did not. The second conflict between them was a result of the first one.

If you want a Jeffersonian system of governance, you also have to have a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer economy. You cannot have a Jeffersonian system trying to govern a Hamiltonian economic reality. That won't work.

Regarding pulling oneself out of poverty, as I find conservatives often do you are confusing two separate questions. One question is, "What can I, as an individual, do to achieve economic success?" The other question is, "What are the conditions that create poverty?"

A poor person and you. His own actions compared to you are what make him poor instead of you. But his own actions are not what make him poor instead of nobody being poor. It's a competitive economy, and there is only so much success in it to go around. Naturally, that success goes to those who are the most successful at earning it. But that's a separate question from how many success-slots exist.

I thought this was interesting from Kasim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta.

A ‘small depression’ among black voters could devastate Obama, says Atlanta mayor

”We do need to acknowledge that it is more difficult for this president because of the historical nature of his presidency to have the kind of conversation that many in our community would like to have focused solely on African-American people.

But I hope that that’s a political trap the president won’t walk into.

“If the president were to start speaking directly to African-Americans about what he’s doing for them, what he has done for them, as the first African-American president, that during a general election campaign, that could have very adverse results. And I believe that black people understand that….

“I’d also like to talk to my friends in my own community who are raising these issues, to make the point that if you weaken President Obama in the black community, you seriously hamper his chances of being re-elected. A small depression among the African-American electorate could be devastating for this president, and I think that black people understand that.

“And I’d also like folks on the other side of this conversation to tell me who the alternative is that’s going to do such a better job for black people. Will it be Michele Bachmann? Will it be Mitt Romney? Will it be Rick Perry?

“Are those the individuals who are going to feel so much more deeply about the African-American people? So it’s time to start having a conversation when we compare the policies of President Obama to the alternatives. We’ve been comparing this president to the Almighty long enough.”

Kasim Reed is highly intelligent and has proved adroit in navigating the turbulent waters of Atlanta politics. His real-politik comments illustrate the worries that Obama has created in the black community.

James50

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Don't forget also that Medicare reimbursement rates are often very low, often considerably lower than most private insurance plans. And as a result more and more providers are refusing to accept new Medicare patients. This also results in cost-shifting to non-Medicare recipients (which is another factor in Medicare operating "far more cheaply."

I'm not bashing Medicare here, just pointing out that there's a lot more than just the removal of that horrible profit motive involved here. The other cost advantages I mentioned, for example, would go away if we moved to a "Medicare for all" type system.

IMO a part of this is because doctors here in the US are paid more than in other developed nations. Why? because they need that extra income to pay off the insane costs of their student loans for med school. Also, the AMA restricts how many people get medical licenses in order to restrict the supply of doctors.

Originally Posted by Odin

IMO a part of this is because doctors here in the US are paid more than in other developed nations. Why? because they need that extra income to pay off the insane costs of their student loans for med school. Also, the AMA restricts how many people get medical licenses in order to restrict the supply of doctors.

Yes, there are many moving parts that add up to a system which is generally very high-quality for those who can access and afford it, but it feels like that's fewer and fewer people. The problem I see with what some nations do -- essentially pay for med school with the promise of working "cheaply" for many years -- is in some sense a form of indentured servitude. At some point I guess we just have to "name our poison" which we believe has the fewest toxic side effects.

And yes, make no mistake -- the AMA has a cartel with a vested interest in limiting supply of health care providers. Obviously we want high standards for their licensing, but that shouldn't mean a strict quota of licenses to practice.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Galen, what's the alternative to a Hamiltonian system or a variant thereof? In Hamilton's time, his chief opponent was Jefferson, but Jefferson himself recognized that a minimal-government system such as he preferred was appropriate only for an agrarian economy of independent small farmers, which he also preferred. Hamilton wanted to industrialize and Jefferson did not. Hamilton wanted an economically active government and Jefferson did not. The second conflict between them was a result of the first one.

If you want a Jeffersonian system of governance, you also have to have a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer economy. You cannot have a Jeffersonian system trying to govern a Hamiltonian economic reality. That won't work.

Regarding pulling oneself out of poverty, as I find conservatives often do you are confusing two separate questions. One question is, "What can I, as an individual, do to achieve economic success?" The other question is, "What are the conditions that create poverty?"

A poor person and you. His own actions compared to you are what make him poor instead of you. But his own actions are not what make him poor instead of nobody being poor. It's a competitive economy, and there is only so much success in it to go around. Naturally, that success goes to those who are the most successful at earning it. But that's a separate question from how many success-slots exist.

Yup, this is what a lot of "Small Government" Jeffersonian types forget. Jefferson opposed industrialization because he KNEW it would destroy his libertarian ideal. government intervention in the economy and industrialization go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. First the new Industrialist Class empowers the government to help them, then the Working Class forces their way in by making the Industrialist Class fearful of revolution.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

A poor person and you. His own actions compared to you are what make him poor instead of you. But his own actions are not what make him poor instead of nobody being poor. It's a competitive economy, and there is only so much success in it to go around. Naturally, that success goes to those who are the most successful at earning it. But that's a separate question from how many success-slots exist.

Even today, some poverty is clearly self-inflicted -- drug and alcohol abuse, criminal histories and yes, some sloth. But yes, increasingly the impoverished are not just the ones with self-inflicted wounds.

I think about how society is becoming more competitive, as you say, and it takes more and more effort to "make it". I view it as an economy which "grades on a curve" even as all the students are forcing themselves to learn more, to start preschool at age 2, and all that stuff. A level of absolute performance (as on a "straight percentage) which would received a B three decades ago might be a D+ today because the bar has been raised more and more. And no matter how good everyone in the class may be, when you grade on a curve, there will be Cs, Ds and failures.

In short, the recent "academic arms race" in the college admissions game is manifesting itself in the economy overall. And it's burning people out. It's killing them.

Obviously eliminating the drive and the incentive to succeed aren't the answers. But this is a concerning trend to me.

Originally Posted by Odin

Yup, this is what a lot of "Small Government" Jeffersonian types forget. Jefferson opposed industrialization because he KNEW it would destroy his libertarian ideal. government intervention in the economy and industrialization go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. First the new Industrialist Class empowers the government to help them, then the Working Class forces their way in by making the Industrialist Class fearful of revolution.

Agrarianism was more likely to see most people being self-employed, or "employed" in the sense that they worked on the family farm, generally for the common good of that household unit. Once you build a society based on being employed by other industrialists, creating a situation where the economic interests of the worker and the employer are no longer aligned, the laissez-faire argument gets weaker, especially given the discrepancy in power and bargaining power a billionaire industrialist and an unemployed job-seeker trying to feed her family have relative to each other.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Don't forget also that Medicare reimbursement rates are often very low, often considerably lower than most private insurance plans. And as a result more and more providers are refusing to accept new Medicare patients. This also results in cost-shifting to non-Medicare recipients (which is another factor in Medicare operating "far more cheaply."

I'm not bashing Medicare here, just pointing out that there's a lot more than just the removal of that horrible profit motive involved here. The other cost advantages I mentioned, for example, would go away if we moved to a "Medicare for all" type system.

I am becoming an expert on all this, for obvious reasons. Most seniors function on Medicare plus a supplemental and the supplementals are much cheaper than normal health plans. My older brother has had some huge procedures done since turning 65 and he hasn't paid a cent.

Originally Posted by Galen

It is very hard for me to explain this without being able to use the math symbols I would normally use and I fear that there are few people on this board that have the math background for this. …. You show the common boomer trait that is best summed up by Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" which is why I call you Eric the Obtuse.

and from your high horse to me a week or so ago -

Originally Posted by Galen

... I have way too much to do without writing major papers for people who don't want to be bothered to think.

So we're supposed to just accept your conjectures as superior because of your claim as a math whiz and don’t have the time for us lesser beings?

Perhaps the phrase - either put up or shut up - applies?

Reminds me of a recent cartoon from Tom Tomorrow -

http://dailykos.com/blog/comics/?via=topbar

Originally Posted by James50

I thought this was interesting from Kasim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta.

A ‘small depression’ among black voters could devastate Obama, says Atlanta mayor



Kasim Reed is highly intelligent and has proved adroit in navigating the turbulent waters of Atlanta politics. His real-politik comments illustrate the worries that Obama has created in the black community.

James50

I think you're missing the Mayor's primary point -

So it’s time to start having a conversation when we compare the policies of President Obama to the alternatives.

- once the real comparison begins with the actual GOP nominee, Obama's prospects begin to look a lot better.

The real hope for the Dems is that all the negative attention on Obama right now allows Perry to become the nominee. With his written postions on Social Security, he is a dead man walking.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Even today, some poverty is clearly self-inflicted -- drug and alcohol abuse, criminal histories and yes, some sloth. But yes, increasingly the impoverished are not just the ones with self-inflicted wounds.

I think about how society is becoming more competitive, as you say, and it takes more and more effort to "make it". I view it as an economy which "grades on a curve" even as all the students are forcing themselves to learn more, to start preschool at age 2, and all that stuff. A level of absolute performance (as on a "straight percentage) which would received a B three decades ago might be a D+ today because the bar has been raised more and more. And no matter how good everyone in the class may be, when you grade on a curve, there will be Cs, Ds and failures.

In short, the recent "academic arms race" in the college admissions game is manifesting itself in the economy overall. And it's burning people out. It's killing them.

Obviously eliminating the drive and the incentive to succeed aren't the answers. But this is a concerning trend to me.

IMO it's a chicken-or-egg problem: what came first, the poverty or the behaviors that can perpetuate it?

Additionally, a problem we are having is that it is becoming increasingly impossible for people of low intellect to find decent, good-paying jobs. 50 years ago such a person would work at factory for decent pay, now such people are relegated to working at McDonald's or Wal-Mart, or are even stuck in an institutionalized workshop environment meant for the truly mentally disabled.

It just occurred to me that there is one circumstance in which secession and general dissolution of the nation will be possible: if the next few elections were to somehow propel a Tea Party radical-right full domination of the federal government.

No government can endure without the support of its people, meaning a majority of the people. Even when the electoral system is rigged in some way, as ours is by campaign donations, or completely meaningless, as it was in the Soviet Union, still when the people turn against the government it falls and is replaced. A revolution ensues.

In a federal system such as the U.S., however, revolution at the center may be less likely than dissolution of the union and individual revolutions in the component parts. The Soviet Union experienced that, with all of the component republics (including Russia) severing their ties from the central government.

The Tea Party agenda is wildly unpopular in most of the U.S. If the government were to actually try to implement it (eliminating Medicare and Social Security, eliminating all federal aid to the poor and all financial aid to students, a flat tax or other regressive tax system falling mostly on middle and lower income people, holy war against Islam, etc.), and if no fix for this was perceived through the electoral process, the rebellious energy that would arise as a result would flow more naturally into regional secession than into centralized revolution.

The precedent has been set that there is no legal right of a state to secede. Under the Constitution, if parts of the country were to secede from the U.S., the U.S. government would have a legal right to use the U.S. military to put down the secession and reunite the country by force. But while that legal right is clear, the ability to exercise it is not automatic. In the Civil War, the seceding states constituted a minority of the nation's land area, population, and industrial capacity. Against the remaining U.S., the seceding states were decidedly fighting out of their weight and predictably lost. But what if the seceding states constituted a majority of the nation?

Suppose that the following states seceded from a Tea Party dominated United States: California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Those states would constitute a majority of the population and resources in the country and a near-majority of its land area. As established in the 1860s, the government would have a legal right under the Constitution to reassert its authority by force -- but could it?

How would the military respond to this? Would they obey orders to occupy and impose martial law over so much of the country? Would military forces based in seceding territory be loyal to the president or to the state government? (Not an easy question as we no longer have locally-derived military units.) How about foreign countries? If the U.S. were to break apart and go into civil war, what would happen to our relationships with foreign countries?

Worst case, suppose that the military did obey those orders and impose martial law on half the country. (None of the seceding states would have the forces to fight them in open battle.) What would happen to the economy? What kind of terrorist campaign would be waged thereafter?

It seems to me that regardless of the internal outcome, this development would be the end of the U.S. as a superpower.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It just occurred to me that there is one circumstance in which secession and general dissolution of the nation will be possible: if the next few elections were to somehow propel a Tea Party radical-right full domination of the federal government.

No government can endure without the support of its people, meaning a majority of the people. Even when the electoral system is rigged in some way, as ours is by campaign donations, or completely meaningless, as it was in the Soviet Union, still when the people turn against the government it falls and is replaced. A revolution ensues.

In a federal system such as the U.S., however, revolution at the center may be less likely than dissolution of the union and individual revolutions in the component parts. The Soviet Union experienced that, with all of the component republics (including Russia) severing their ties from the central government.

The Tea Party agenda is wildly unpopular in most of the U.S. If the government were to actually try to implement it (eliminating Medicare and Social Security, eliminating all federal aid to the poor and all financial aid to students, a flat tax or other regressive tax system falling mostly on middle and lower income people, holy war against Islam, etc.), and if no fix for this was perceived through the electoral process, the rebellious energy that would arise as a result would flow more naturally into regional secession than into centralized revolution.

The precedent has been set that there is no legal right of a state to secede. Under the Constitution, if parts of the country were to secede from the U.S., the U.S. government would have a legal right to use the U.S. military to put down the secession and reunite the country by force. But while that legal right is clear, the ability to exercise it is not automatic. In the Civil War, the seceding states constituted a minority of the nation's land area, population, and industrial capacity. Against the remaining U.S., the seceding states were decidedly fighting out of their weight and predictably lost. But what if the seceding states constituted a majority of the nation?

Suppose that the following states seceded from a Tea Party dominated United States: California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Those states would constitute a majority of the population and resources in the country and a near-majority of its land area. As established in the 1860s, the government would have a legal right under the Constitution to reassert its authority by force -- but could it?

How would the military respond to this? Would they obey orders to occupy and impose martial law over so much of the country? Would military forces based in seceding territory be loyal to the president or to the state government? (Not an easy question as we no longer have locally-derived military units.) How about foreign countries? If the U.S. were to break apart and go into civil war, what would happen to our relationships with foreign countries?

Worst case, suppose that the military did obey those orders and impose martial law on half the country. (None of the seceding states would have the forces to fight them in open battle.) What would happen to the economy? What kind of terrorist campaign would be waged thereafter?

It seems to me that regardless of the internal outcome, this development would be the end of the U.S. as a superpower.

Of course, I really don't think that there will be a split within the union even if the Tea Party gets it preferred candidate elected president next year. But in theory it is possible.
To bring about such a case something like the following would have to happen.
First, I suspect that this economic crises is a true depression and I believe that the policy that a GOP/Tea Party government would impose of continued and expanded austerity for most, but with continued rent granting to the well connected civilian and military contractors within the elite will worsen the depression to the point that as the 2014 midterm approaches the Tea Party/GOP will face being effectively wiped out of power or else patten unless they do something that may trigger either a succession such as claim a national security emergency and cancel the 2014 election. This could lead to something like the following.

In this worse case scenerio I could see CA, OR, WA, HA and likely NV forming a Republic of the Pacific.
It would be geographically coherent and relatively defendable.

The eastern succession would be a bit more problematic as certain midwestern states and I'm thinking mostly of Ohio and Indiana and maybe Iowa may play the role more that the border states in the CW 4T. Which is to say, there is an active succession movement within them but they either don't succeed or else they split themselves north/south along the I-70 / US Route 40 corredor, which has historically been a dividing line between the zones of northern and southern culture within the midwestern states.
This split could leave the eastern/midwestern group of succeeded state split thus likely leading to this area being the major focus of any military campaigns.

But enough of this. It is time to awaken from this nightmare to the grim enough reality that hopefully won't lead us there.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Agrarianism was more likely to see most people being self-employed, or "employed" in the sense that they worked on the family farm, generally for the common good of that household unit. Once you build a society based on being employed by other industrialists, creating a situation where the economic interests of the worker and the employer are no longer aligned, the laissez-faire argument gets weaker, especially given the discrepancy in power and bargaining power a billionaire industrialist and an unemployed job-seeker trying to feed her family have relative to each other.

Precisely! An agrarian order depends upon largely self-sufficient farm families tested in the market place only by their ability to acquire and hold land and their competence as farmers. Maybe they would buy a few implements and textiles... but around 1880 even the building materials and fuel (wood) would be incredibly cheap -- even a waste product.

A commercial order as was developing in New England (where farming was marginal at best, New England farmers often leaving the stony and nutrient-poor soil of New England for better farmland in New York and Michigan at the earliest opportunity) in which the people making money were in commerce, commercial fishing, and early manufacturing. But such was not so much the Jeffersonian ideal as it was necessity.

Agrarian cultures solve most of the big problems (unless they become slave systems) early. Peasants might not have been rich, but they became the cornerstone of conservative parties in Europe as aristocratic classes lost the monopoly of the vote. And, yes, it is the most rural parts of America (unless the rural people are non-white) that are now the most conservative politically.

Small farmers distrust big government; others need it.

HTee:

Geographic military defensibility may be a moot point. There is no way the seceding states could build up a military force capable of withstanding the U.S. military. Of course, the remaining states wouldn't be able to maintain the current military, but that's all the more reason for them to strike quickly, before the whole thing evaporates.

If that were to happen, everything would hinge on whether the soldiers would obey orders or themselves rebel. If they did, the Crisis would enter a very ugly phase indeed involving martial law, denial of civil liberties, essentially the imposition of a bleak totalitarian state until it could be overthrown from within or without or a combination. If not, then the secession succeeds. There's no way the seceding regions could have a prayer of defending themselves no matter what their geography.

EDIT: It's not just the radical reactionary nature of today's Republicans that might provoke a secession. If that were the only thing going on, the obvious solution would simply be to vote Democratic. But that combined with the Democrats' being a corporate-owned party, not quite as bad as the GOP but in no position to implement the solutions we actually need to restore prosperity and fairness, might lead enough people to turn their backs on the system, given a sufficiently shocking electoral and policy outcome.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Small farmers distrust big government

As well they should. Way too much of the aid to "farmers" is in the form of corporate welfare to Big Agribusiness. Don't get me wrong; we need all the food production we can reasonably get. But these conglomerates don't need subsidies, and they sure as hell don't need to be given additional competitive advantages over the family farmer even beyond what their size and capital base already give them.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

As well they should. Way too much of the aid to "farmers" is in the form of corporate welfare to Big Agribusiness. Don't get me wrong; we need all the food production we can reasonably get. But these conglomerates don't need subsidies, and they sure as hell don't need to be given additional competitive advantages over the family farmer even beyond what their size and capital base already give them.

Yup, there was a story not too long ago about several organic farms getting shut down because they were selling raw milk. And people on my side wonder why "those hicks" hate the government. I mean jeez, I've had raw milk before and it is delicious, I never the good folks who sold us the milk were breaking the law.

Originally Posted by Galen

They have the same features so they are the same system.

Why do they have the same features?

It is very hard for me to explain this without being able to use the math symbols I would normally use and I fear that there are few people on this board that have the math background for this. When I see socialism and its related economic systems as an impossibility it is because the math tells me this. I do not rejoice in the selection process that must exist in any evolutionary system but I accept its necessity because everything else is worse. You show the common boomer trait that is best summed up by Adam Savage, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" which is why I call you Eric the Obtuse.

You will reject science and math in order to pursue your Utopian quest even though you disparage Christians for doing the same thing. You are closer in outlook to your opponents than you will ever truly be able to understand.

It is fine to support your ideas with math and stats, but it is not true one has to be an esoteric math whiz to tell from stats if policies work or not. I have seen stats before that made it clear that the anti-poverty programs worked. Poverty was reduced after the 60s and increased again from the 80s on, although mitigated somewhat in the Clinton years. But I don't have time this morning to fully research them, or look at the ones you linked, so maybe later.

It is not only a question of boomer traits, but a question of philosophy. The Social Darwinism you believe in (and express clearly above) is not acceptable to me. Whether it "works" or not is only one consideration, though an important one. It is obvious that under the current 30-year rule of Social Darwinism, and also its rule during the Gilded Age and early progressive era, that what resulted was extreme inequality and lots of poverty, whereas under progressive policies from FDR to Reagan a much more equal and fair society resulted, and has also resulted in Europe until today. That is well documented, as recently shown on the PBS Newshour program that I linked here before. But the other questions, are whether Social Darwinism is ethical, and whether it is an accurate set of assumptions. I think it is a lens which will inevitably distort one's view of reality, as fully as you say my social idealism does.

Boomers are prophet-visionaries archetypally, and Xers are nomads who are pragmatists. Both views are useful, because unless one has a clear vision of where you are going, reality alone will not get you there. There is the matter of the way things are, and what has worked (and clearly social darwinism has not worked), but there is also the matter of what we would like them to be. Unethical and cynical views of human reality like social darwinism are simply degrading, and promote mistreatment of people. So it's true, I will always be an idealist, being typical of my generational archetype (though not all Boomers are as typical prophets as I am, or Xers as typical nomads as you are). You call that obtuse; I suggest taking a broader view of the important roles of different generations. It is after all why we are here.

Originally Posted by Odin

Yup, there was a story not too long ago about several organic farms getting shut down because they were selling raw milk. And people on my side wonder why "those hicks" hate the government.

Ah, yes -- the limousine liberal intelligentsia. To them, "progressivism" often doesn't seem to include populism. This is the group that loves to use the offensive term "white trash." It's okay to ridicule the less educated and the less successful if they are white (and perhaps vote Republican).

And thinking on it now, I think I see why this group and the Tea Party can't stand each other. The Tea Party has elements of populism with no progressivism, and the latte liberals tend to preach progressivism without the populism. On a Venn diagram, their "intersection" is pretty close to the null set.