The Myth of "American Exceptionalism" Implodes

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signalmankenneth

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Tuesday 18 January 2011

by: Richard D. Wolff * rdwolff.com * News Analysis

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One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the rest, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt "middle class." A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees across the 19th century until the 1970s.

Then everything changed. Real wages stopped rising as US capitalists redirected their investments to produce and employ abroad while replacing millions of workers in the US by computers. Women's liberation moved millions of adult US women to seek paid employment. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor.

US employers took advantage of the changed situation: they stopped raising wages. When basic labor scarcity became labor excess, not only real wages but eventually benefits too stopped rising. Over the last 30 years, the vast majority of US workers have in fact gotten poorer when you sum up flat real wages, reduced benefits (pensions, medical insurance, etc.), reduced public services, and raised tax burdens. In economic terms, American "exceptionalism" began to die in the 1970s.

The rich, however, have gotten much richer since the 1970s, as every measure of US income and wealth inequality attests. The explanation is simple: while workers' average real wages stayed flat, their productivity rose (the goods and services that an average hour's labor provided to employers). More and better machines (including computers), better education, and harder and faster labor effort raised productivity. While workers delivered more and more value to employers, those employers paid workers no more. The employers reaped all the benefits of rising productivity: rising profits, rising salaries and bonuses to managers, rising dividends to shareholders, and rising payments to the professionals who serve employers (lawyers, architects, consultants, etc.).

Nevertheless, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labor and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism until the global crisis hit in 2007. Now, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, while no more hours of work or borrowing was possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.

The richest 10-15% -- those cashing in on employers' good fortune from no longer rising wages -- helped bring crisis by speculating wildly and unsuccessfully in all sorts of new financial instruments (asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, etc.). The richest also contributed to the crisis by using their money to shift US politics to the right, rendering government regulation and oversight inadequate to anticipate or moderate the crisis or even to react properly once it hit.

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Indeed, the rich have so far been able to use the crisis to widen still further the gulf separating them from the rest, finally burying American exceptionalism. First, they utilized both parties' dependence on their financial support to make sure there would be no mass federal hiring program for the unemployed (of the sort that FDR used between 1934 and 1940). The absence of such a program guaranteed that real wages would not rise but fall, along with job benefits. Second, the rich made sure that the prime focus of government response to the crisis would benefit banks, large corporations, and the stock markets. These have more or less "recovered."

Third, the current drive for government budget austerity -- especially focused on the 50 states and the thousands of municipalities -- forces the mass of people to pick up the costs for the government's unjustly imbalanced response to the crisis. The trillions spent to save the banks and other select corporations (AIG, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, etc.) were mostly borrowed because the government dared not tax the corporations and the richest citizens to raise the needed rescue funds. Indeed, a good part of what the government borrowed came precisely from those funds left in the hands of corporations and the rich because they had not been taxed to overcome the crisis.

With sharply enlarged debts, all levels of government face the pressure of needing to take too much from current tax revenues to pay interest on debts, leaving too little to sustain public services. So they demand the people pay more taxes and suffer reduced public services so government can reduce its debt burden.

For example, California's new governor proposes to continue for 5 more years the massive broad-based tax increases begun during the crisis and also to cut state services for the poor (reduced Medicaid funding) and the middle (reduced budgets for community colleges, state colleges, and the university system). The governor admits that California's budget faces sky-high interest costs and reduced federal government assistance just when the crisis increases demands for public services. The governor does not admit his fear to tax the state's huge corporate and private individual wealth. So he announces an "austerity program" as if no alternative existed.

Indeed, a major support for austerity comes from the large corporations and wealthiest Californians who hold the state's bonds and want reassurances that the interest on those bonds will be paid.

California's austerity program parallels similar programs in many other states, in thousands of municipalities, and at the federal level (e.g., social security). Together, they reinforce falling real wages, falling benefits, falling government services, and rising taxes. In the US, capitalism has stopped "delivering the goods." It now brings long-term painful decline for its working class, the end of "American exceptionalism," and rising social, cultural, and political tensions. The reality of ever-deeper economic division clashes with expectations built up during the century of rising wages before the 1970s.
 
:lol:

No mention in the article that it is a democrat that is cutting services to the poor; nor is their any mention that the biggest reason California is in the mess is due to the big public pensions that are sucking the life out of California.
 
One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic.

You start off with a false assertion and complete misunderstanding of the term, and you go downhill from there. "American Exceptionalism" has absolutely nothing to do with economics.

What makes America exceptional, is our unique form of government. We are not a democracy, we are a representative republic, but that doesn't make us unique in of itself, there are other representative republics. Ours has at its basis, a Constitution, which is derived from the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which lays out the foundation for our exceptionalism. America is founded on the principle that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator, with inalienable rights. This is the nucleus of American Exceptionalism. It has not a darn thing to do with economics.
 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy


de·moc·ra·cy noun \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\
plural de·moc·ra·cies
Definition of DEMOCRACY
1a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections


Now quit trying to rewrite the dictionary.
 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy


de·moc·ra·cy noun \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\
plural de·moc·ra·cies
Definition of DEMOCRACY
1a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections


Now quit trying to rewrite the dictionary.

a Representative Republic is a TYPE of democracy you dolt
 
:lol:

No mention in the article that it is a democrat that is cutting services to the poor; nor is their any mention that the biggest reason California is in the mess is due to the big public pensions that are sucking the life out of California.

Nah, the biggest reason is that Schwarzenegger, one of America's Worst Governors, screwed the state while pandering to special interests, and committing other ethics violations.
 
AND WILL YOU BE POSTING A LINK TO SUPPORT THIS CLAIM???

Accept the fact that your reputation as a lying, sh*t-stirring troll remains intact. :loveu: Here's something to get your redemption started:

* admitting that one cannot control one's addiction or compulsion;
* recognizing a higher power that can give strength;
* examining past errors with the help of a sponsor (experienced member);
* making amends for these errors;
* learning to live a new life with a new code of behavior;
* helping others who suffer from the same addictions or compulsions.
 
A representative republic?

Dude we are a democracy

A republic IS a democracy

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_representative_republic
I can't believe you used wikianswers to "prove" your claim.

Anyway, read about it. We're a republic. We were not created with Democracy as our form of government for specific reasons, not the least of which is against the tyranny of the majority.

Here's a decent link for you to just begin an education on this...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/659-qa-republic-if-you-can-keep-itq

A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

This exchange was recorded by Constitution signer James McHenry in a diary entry that was later reproduced in the 1906 American Historical Review. Yet in more recent years, Franklin has occassionally been misquoted as having said, "A democracy, if you can keep it." The NRA's Charleton Heston quoted Franklin this way, for example, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace that was aired on December 20, 1998.

This misquote is a serious one, since the difference between a democracy and a republic is not merely a question of semantics but is fundamental. The word "republic" comes from the Latin res publica — which means simply "the public thing(s)," or more simply "the law(s)." "Democracy," on the other hand, is derived from the Greek words demos and kratein, which translates to "the people to rule." Democracy, therefore, has always been synonymous with majority rule.


The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "Men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil — quickly followed by despotism — that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.

More at link...

While we vote for representatives and that is a form of Democracy, that does not make "Democracy" our form of government. If such were the case we'd be the legislators, the executive, the judicial and there would be no representatives, no judges, no President.
 
Funny how the wingnuts here can't defend the conservative ideology that got us into this mess. They'd rather argue some stupid democracy vs republic bullshit. Only because democracy has the term democrat in it. 30 yrs of trickle-down, voodoo economics, greed is good, outsourcing American's jobs to communist slave labor and market/regulation manipulation for profit has destroyed this country. And all they can talk about is some minor bullshit propaganda point Newt began in the 90's. You guys are so sad.
 
Nah, the biggest reason is that Schwarzenegger, one of America's Worst Governors, screwed the state while pandering to special interests, and committing other ethics violations.

:lies:
Your source is another left wing liberal George Soros funded group. I am not surprised that only Republican governors were on the list. Lets not worry about how Gov. Moonbeam gave big raises to all his union buddies, the first time he was in office, and it looks like he will continue to pander to the unions again this time around.
 
Funny how the wingnuts here can't defend the conservative ideology that got us into this mess. They'd rather argue some stupid democracy vs republic bullshit. Only because democracy has the term democrat in it. 30 yrs of trickle-down, voodoo economics, greed is good, outsourcing American's jobs to communist slave labor and market/regulation manipulation for profit has destroyed this country. And all they can talk about is some minor bullshit propaganda point Newt began in the 90's. You guys are so sad.

What is sad is, the OP begins with a false premise and understanding of American exceptionalism. What is even sadder, is Desh arguing that we are a democracy and not a representative republic. Conservatives aren't arguing democracy vs. republic, there is nothing to argue, the error was simply corrected. What has gotten us into this mess, as well as every mess we've ever been in, is liberal failure to understand and comprehend American exceptionalism and representative republics.

And we can talk about a lot of things, but the left doesn't seem interested in talking, they just want to spread more lies and propaganda, denigrate those on the right, and further push for socialist policies which will ultimately destroy America. I don't really know why they seek to destroy the greatest (and most exceptional) form of government ever known to man, other than jealousy or mental retardation.
 
Funny how the wingnuts here can't defend the conservative ideology that got us into this mess. They'd rather argue some stupid democracy vs republic bullshit. Only because democracy has the term democrat in it. 30 yrs of trickle-down, voodoo economics, greed is good, outsourcing American's jobs to communist slave labor and market/regulation manipulation for profit has destroyed this country. And all they can talk about is some minor bullshit propaganda point Newt began in the 90's. You guys are so sad.


The phrase "Democrat Party" doesn't have the word "democracy" in it, nor does it have any relation to it.
 
What is sad is, the OP begins with a false premise and understanding of American exceptionalism. What is even sadder, is Desh arguing that we are a democracy and not a representative republic. Conservatives aren't arguing democracy vs. republic, there is nothing to argue, the error was simply corrected. What has gotten us into this mess, as well as every mess we've ever been in, is liberal failure to understand and comprehend American exceptionalism and representative republics.

And we can talk about a lot of things, but the left doesn't seem interested in talking, they just want to spread more lies and propaganda, denigrate those on the right, and further push for socialist policies which will ultimately destroy America. I don't really know why they seek to destroy the greatest (and most exceptional) form of government ever known to man, other than jealousy or mental retardation.

"The rich, however, have gotten much richer since the 1970s, as every measure of US income and wealth inequality attests. The explanation is simple: while workers' average real wages stayed flat, their productivity rose (the goods and services that an average hour's labor provided to employers). More and better machines (including computers), better education, and harder and faster labor effort raised productivity. While workers delivered more and more value to employers, those employers paid workers no more. The employers reaped all the benefits of rising productivity: rising profits, rising salaries and bonuses to managers, rising dividends to shareholders, and rising payments to the professionals who serve employers (lawyers, architects, consultants, etc.).

Nevertheless, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labor and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism until the global crisis hit in 2007. Now, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, while no more hours of work or borrowing was possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation."

What part of this don't you understand? This is true whether you want to believe it or not. You want Americans to live in a capitalist society but you take away our buying power. Why? Because your leaders and the communist corporatists they represent want the wealth the middle class has accumulated and they want American labor to compete with slave labor. Their ultimate goal is to reduce the standard of living in the U.S. for their own short term profits.
This country is in the shape it's in because of 30 yrs of conservative ideology.
People banding together for a common cause is not socialism, no matter what Hannity tells you, it's survival.
 
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