Election USA 2016

US Election 2016

People we've got to talk about this US Election. Because on Tuesday November 8 the most powerful democracy on Earth will elect the next "leader of the free world". 

The free world is in danger right now. Not from Communists, North Korea and Cuba couldn't bring down the free world if they tried. Not from Al-Qaeda – they couldn't organised a chook raffle anymore. Not from ISIS, they have some power on social media, but are losing the Syrian civil war to the Assad regime and the Iraqi civil war to the Iraqi government. No this time the threat to the "free world" comes from within.

Democracy in the Hard Times and the Good

Democracy was defined by Abraham Lincoln as "government of the people, by the people, for the people...". It's as good a working definition as I have heard, although Churchill's "the worst form of government except for all the others..." is also quite enlightening.

But what is the danger of which I speak? It's those pesky people. The ruled. The ones who make up the nation.

How can the people be the threat in a democracy ruled by the people? The answer is of course that the people are unhappy.

Why are people unhappy?

Such things are hard to quantify but the answer is usually economic. Economic hard times have always produced instability in Democracies.

Indeed The fledgling democracy of Russia's February revolution was cut down by the more permanent October revolution. Why? World War One. The people were suffering and dying in what they perceived as a "rich man's war."

The aftermath of WW1 in Italy gave rise to the conditions which brought Benito Mussolini to the fore.

The horrendous war debt imposed on Germany by the treaty of Versailles brought the German people of the inter war years to the point of economic collapse. They of course turned to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party who modeled himself on Mussolini.

In the UK Sir Oswald Mosley became the head of the British Union of Fascists during the inter war years. The BUF boasted 50,000 members and noone will be surprised to learn that the BUF was enthusiastically endorsed by that great publication. The Daily Mail.

In Australia Lt Colonel Eric Campbell formed the society for returned servicemen called the New Guard. The New Guard were the expression of an Australian form of fascism. They were vehemently anti communist and while achieving little electoral success they did manage to bring about the deposing of the socialist Premier of New South Wales Jack Lang.

But the Economy is Good Isn't It?

Today in the USA all the economic indicators are pointing upwards.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/28/u-s-economy-surges-to-strongest-growth-in-two-years/

GDP is growing at 2.9% right now which is quite strong for a developed economy in 2016. But dig a little deeper and you will find some startling facts.

In 2014 the Pew Research Center showed that real wages in the USA had not risen noticably since 1964.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

If that is the case purchasing power has flat-lined, however innovation has driven productivity far higher. So who is seeing the results of that productivity?

Putting the GINI Back in the Bottle

Inequality of wealth is measured by something called the GINI coefficient. The OECD has put much work into understanding wealth inequality throughout it;s member states and has published findings here. http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49499779.pdf

Here is the list of OECD countries by GINI Coefficient. They are ranked from most equal to least equal.

Gini coefficient, after taxes and transfers

Country	mid-70s	mid-80s	around 1990	mid-90s	around 2000	mid-2000s	Late 2000s
Slovenia						0.246	0.236
Denmark		0.221	0.226	0.215	0.226	0.232	0.248
Norway		0.222		0.243	0.261	0.276	0.250
Czech Republic			0.232	0.257	0.260	0.268	0.256
Slovak Republic						0.268	0.257
Belgium		0.274		0.287	0.289	0.271	0.259
Finland	0.235	0.209		0.218	0.247	0.254	0.259
Sweden	0.212	0.198	0.209	0.211	0.243	0.234	0.259
Austria		0.236		0.238	0.252	0.265	0.261
Hungary			0.273	0.294	0.293	0.291	0.272
Luxembourg		0.247		0.259	0.261	0.258	0.288
France		0.300	0.290	0.277	0.287	0.288	0.293
Ireland		0.331		0.324	0.304	0.314	0.293
Netherlands	0.263	0.272	0.292	0.297	0.292	0.284	0.294
Germany		0.251	0.256	0.266	0.264	0.285	0.295
Iceland						0.257	0.301
Switzerland					0.279	0.276	0.303
Poland					0.316	0.349	0.305
Greece	0.413	0.336		0.336	0.345	0.321	0.307
Estonia						0.349	0.315
South Korea						0.306	0.315
Spain		0.371	0.337	0.343	0.342	0.319	0.317
Canada	0.304	0.293	0.287	0.289	0.318	0.317	0.324
Japan		0.304		0.323	0.337	0.321	0.329
New Zealand		0.271	0.318	0.335	0.339	0.335	0.330
Australia				0.309	0.317	0.315	0.336
Italy		0.309	0.297	0.348	0.343	0.352	0.337
United Kingdom	0.268	0.309	0.354	0.336	0.351	0.331	0.345
Portugal	0.354		0.329	0.359	0.356	0.385	0.353
Israel		0.326	0.329	0.338	0.347	0.378	0.371
United States	0.316	0.337	0.348	0.361	0.357	0.380	0.378
Chile				0.427		0.403	0.394
Turkey		0.434		0.490		0.430	0.409
Mexico		0.452		0.519	0.507	0.474	0.476

At the top are the model societies of equality. These nations often are the most highly developed. Nations like Slovenia, Denmark and Norway. At the bottom are the nations who struggle to lift their poor out of poverty. They are often afflicted by domestic strife. Mexico has the drug cartels. Turkey has the Kurdish problem and ISIS on their doorstep. Israel has thew Palestinian question. But nestled just below Israel is...The USA. This is disturbing in the extreme. Some form of inequality is important for a capitalist nation to function, but grinding poverty and inequality at the levels recorded by the USA is extremely dangerous.

For one it acts as a massive handbrake on economic growth. A poor populace cannot and will not consume the goods it produces.

Secondly a poor populace will create political instability. These conditions appear to be present in the United States.

WHAT MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN REALLY MEANS

Much has been written on the character of the people who vote for Donald Trump. They are mostly white. Mostly poorly educated. Mostly older. The come from rural America. Surprising to some, their net wealth is higher than expected. I don't find this surprising. These are people who have worked through life, established good homes for themselves but seen the possibilities for their children diminished. When a generation feels it cant provide as good a life as they had for their own children THEY HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO BE ANGRY.

They say they want to take their country back. It's understandable. The America they grew up in was a land of milk and honey. (If you were white). Remember Superman's childhood home? Smallville. It was a piece of rural America where the neighbors were friendly, everyone had a good job where you could grow up to be Lex Luthor and be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

The reality was that many of these rural utopia's were hollowed out during the 1990's. Globalisation under the NAFTA treaty sent many of these rural American jobs offshore. Often the whole town was centered around supporting one industry. When that factory/mine/whatever closed this utopia turned quickly into a distopia. Unemployment skyrocketed, anyone who could get a job elsewhere (usually in a big city) left. This made the support industries (like retail) less viable again. Triggering a secondary hollowing out. The town was left highly unemployed. Dirt poor. With only the retired who have any form of wealth.

Substance abuse surely follows until methamphetamine production becomes one of the few viable industries in these towns. The crime and criminality that surely followed turned Trump's apocalypic RNC convention speech in Detroit into an every day reality.

The military represents one way to better yourself and break the poverty cycle, but it's not without risks. After 14 years of solid war the rural poor of America have given many sons and daughters back to the soil, killed in far off places like Afghanistan and Iraq. While their family and nation continues to suffer at home.

President's named Clinton and Bush seemed to do everything in their power to hasten the downfall of rural America. The free trade deals they signed meant that those doing well did better, but those shut out already did worse. Much worse. Is it any wonder that nominees Clinton and Bush are unpopular with the rural poor? It's just self interest.

Rustbelt Economy

Industrial areas of the USA fared no better than the rural areas. Great cities like Cleveland and Detroit that once shook the world with their economic power were devastated by industrial closure after industrial closure. You can now buy a house in Detroit – the home of the Automotive Industry in the USA for $500.

http://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/buying/the-downsides-of-buying-a-500-house-in-detroit/news-story/e426a84e4c0cd0bdff131a5aec63be84

Workers who had known prosperous lives were now laid off. Many of them had built enough wealth that they were able to retire. Many more had not. Whatever their financial situation, these people had seen their whole way of life destroyed. First the oil shocks, then free trade had decimated their lives.

These workers remembered a time when their industrial output drove America to lead the world. Now it was gone. When Trump promises to "Make America Great Again" this is the future they see. Is it any wonder people would vote for him?

Worldwide Phenomenon

This phenomenon is not just an American one. The english speaking world has been controlled by economic liberals since the 1980's. Another highly developed nation stands out on that list.

The UK is a long way down the list as an extremely unequal nation. Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May only got the job because her predecessor David Cameron massively screwed up trade policy.

Cameron went to the last election facing tremendous uprisings of euro-skepticism from the hard right of his party. He was also afraid of leaking hard right votes to Nigel Farage's euro-skeptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

So he promised the In/Out referendum we know as BREXIT. Brexit leave voters were on the whole – poorly educated, older, whiter, and more northern than their London dwelling richer younger remain votors.

These voters had usually had their own careers, gained some wealth, but feared for their children's future. "We did this for you" was the common cry of the boomers to the millennials.

The industrial heartland of the UK has been hollowed out massively since the Thatcher years. The Conservative government of the early '80's sought an end to union dominance in an attempt to drive competitiveness by lowering wages. It was somewhat successful. But it had the side effect of impoverishing a whole region.

Then came the expansion of the European Union from nations with roughly equivalent wealth to poorer ex eastern bloc countries like Poland and Romania. Factory workers in the UK simply could not compete with lower wage countries. To say nothing of competing with workers in China or Bangladesh.

The same issues generally apply to the UK workers as to the US workers. They remembered a time when life was good. You went to work at the town factory or mill or whatever, brought up your children in comfort and they were employed in the same factory. That stability is gone. Now you have to educated to have a good life in the UK. Many low wage jobs are also being filled by immigrants from former eastern bloc nations who are willing to work for less money and drive down wages and conditions for all.

Another point of convergence between the two events is border security. Trump has declared that the Mexican border is permeable. That people can flow to and from the USA with ease. Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers were against the signature policy of the EU. That of free movement within member states. The resentment to a perceived flood of workers from a lower wage nation to a higher one is repeated in both the USA and the UK.

Racism – The Elephant in the Room

Of course there's been another element both to Trump's campaign and to the Brexit shock. Sheer bloody minded racism. The moment Trump descended from on high (down those escalators) he declared that Mexicans were sending criminals and rapists across an open border.

It was buried a little deeper in the Brexit debate. But not very deep.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-racism-uk-post-referendum-racism-hate-crime-eu-referendum-racism-unleashed-poland-racist-a7160786.html

Trumping Reality

All this might sound like a full throated endorsement of Trump. Believe me it isn't. Trump is a demagogue, a narcissist, a racist, a sexual assaulter, a liar, a con man, a poor business man and has an intellectual curiosity level that makes George W Bush look like a genius.

Trump lies at every appearance and whenever called on it he denies he ever said it. No candidate for high office in the english speaking world has ever had such a tenuous relationship with reality.

The truth for Trump is just what he needs it to be at the time.

He is unfit for office. Any office. Anywhere.

So What Are You Saying?

On November 8 most likely America will elect Hillary Clinton as their new President. Hillary seems to represesnt business as usual. But Business as usual is not an option. The people of the free world have been trampled on for too long. In a democracy if you ignore the wishes of the people for too long that democracy itself falls.

“Fantasy. Lunacy.
All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.” 
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

The western world is experiencing nasty and unexpected rumblings deep in it's gut. We are at a time when we can still turn away from the revolution. But that time will not last forever. Our leaders all need to focus on the widening gap between rich and poor, not just for the poor, but for themselves and the rich because when the time comes, like the Ancien regime of France in 1788, the rich will be the ones beheaded in the public squares to the cheers of the every man.