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the entire debate on taxation and the "burden" shouldered by those poor, persecuted wealthy people in america (boo hoo--it must suck t be wealthy in america--boo hoo) is unfolding along assumptions that i find ridiculous.
that the wealthy pay more taxes is a function of the (to say the least) uneven distribution of wealth---so this disparity is a reflection of the other, wider disparity. it is not a cause. pointing to it in isolation explains fuck all.
underneath this is a basic problem: conservatives here routinely act as though there is no obligation on the part of those who extract wealth from a social system to contribute to the maintenance of that system.
translated in to policy, this view is suicidal.
businesses cannot continue to function without a minimal level of social solidarity. businesses are obliged--in their own interests--to contribute to the maintenance of that social solidarity--this would seem logical, would it not? redistribution of wealth is fundamental to maintaining the legitimacy of the system itself. if you look at the actual world, and not at the tiny fiction that conservatives here confuse with it, this is understood as given. if there is cognitive dissonance involved anywhere, it is in the inability of the conservatives who dominate posting in this space (not all of them) to look at capitalism as a social system and to recognize basic facts about what enables it to function.
another way: the insistence from the right here that capitalism requires no social solidarity, that it floats above society is simply a fantasy.
cognitive dissonance comes from the inability to let go of this fantasy.
the consequences of attempts to actually implement this approach are legion: the radical expansion of the prison system, a drastic increase in the brutality of class divisions, a quarantining of the poor to areas wherein they turn the violence of the system on each other--is entirely destructive of the system that allows wealth to be accumulated at all.
the matter of home ownership has more to to with relaxed access to debt accumulation--and that means the whole system sits on a fundamentally social function--credit--enframed by social institutions--the banking system--that itself is part of society, and which is subject to breakdowns in political legitimacy (the effects of the irrationality of bushworld are not abstract)--and so is fragile. debt is also self-evidently politically coercive. i could go on about this last point, but i write this with no particular hope of anything like a meaningful interaction with the ustwo set. but who knows, maybe they'll surprise me.
nobody at this point---and i mean nobody--assumes capitalism is in fact a self-regulating system the normal unregulated operations of which produce outcomes that anyone can confuse with equitable. the world bank does not think so. the imf acted as though this was the case and its policies of structural adjustment were and are across the board unmitigated fiascos. so even the main institutions charged with articulating and imposing neoliberalism have been backing off it for a few years now. transnationals are self-evidently backing away from anything like this position for the same reasons--the political consequences of holding to it have been disastrous already, and the social consequences of it are threatening their future ability to generate profit. these folk already see what the american right has not even started to face.
so it is only in the stagnant, dank waters of populist american conservative ideology that neoliberalism is still confused with a functional view.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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