The U.S. economy is showing signs of stagnation – that is, slow economic growth combined with ongoing high unemployment – ever since the financial crisis and deep recession in 2008-2009. When economic stagnation first showed up in Europe in the 1980s, mainstream U.S. economists blamed the European social democratic policies of high taxation and extensive social welfare programs like universal health care. Then economic stagnation spread to Japan in the 1990s and again mainstream U.S. economists blamed the Japanese government policy of supporting certain industries.

Now the third center of world capitalism, the United States, has joined Europe and Japan. With unemployment still more than 8% almost three years after the official end of the recession, it would take about six more years at the current rate of job growth just to gain back the jobs lost during the last downturn. The U.S. economy has followed a much more free-market approach of deregulation of industry, cuts in social welfare programs and attacks on unions since the 1980s. But Wall Street bankers, freed from regulations dating back the Great Depression, let their greed run amuck, leading to a boom and then bust in the housing markets that ultimately led the biggest financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In a capitalist economy production of goods and services is done to make a profit. This drive for profits leads businesses to pay their workers less than the value of what the workers’ labor creates, which is what Karl Marx referred to as exploitation. This can be seen today in the United States as the purchasing power of wages has been flat while the value of what an average worker produces has been rising. This has led to record corporate profits, while more and more working people are living paycheck to paycheck and sinking into poverty.

At the same time, competition among businesses leads them to reinvest most of these profits into expanding their businesses and introducing new technology. This is what Marx called the accumulation of capital, which leads to the ability to produce more and more goods and services. But this ability to produce more comes into conflict with the fact that exploitation limits the ability of workers (who make up 90% of the population in the United States) to buy the goods and services that they have produced. The result is crisis of overproduction, or what are called recessions today.

During a recession, goods and services go unsold – not because they are not needed or desired, but because they cannot be sold at a profit. The most glaring example today is in the housing market, where there are a record number of homes standing empty at the same time as there are record numbers of homeless (counting not just those on the street, but including people living in cars and staying at friends and relatives).

This can explain the regular pattern of alternating periods of economic growth and recession, or what is called the business cycle. Here in the United States there have been 33 such cycles over the last 200 years.

For more than a hundred years, huge corporations have developed in more and more types of businesses, so that a small handful, or even just one, giant corporation can dominate an entire industry. What Marx called the concentration and centralization of capital can be seen in the recent takeover of more and more types of retail businesses such as office supply, bookstores and hardware stores by two or three companies.

These giant corporations can cut back on production to limit overproduction, but then end up with overcapacity, or the ability to produce more than they can produce and sell on the market for a profit. This overcapacity can be seen in many industries: car makers can produce more cars than can be sold, steel producers can produce more steel than there is a market for, etc.

With the ability to produce more than what can be sold, corporations are sitting on literally trillions of dollars of profits that are not being spent to expand business. This is what leads to stagnation: the lack of reinvestment of profits means slower economic growth and fewer jobs, i.e. the economic stagnation that we see today.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats offer a real solution to the economic woes for working people. The Republicans want to increase corporate profits by increasing the exploitation of workers using the methods of cutting pensions, smashing unions, limiting health care benefits and cutting unemployment insurance and other social safety net programs. In addition the Republicans would cut taxes and regulation on business to make them even more profitable. But this would only increase the contradiction between the limited purchasing power of workers and the ability of corporations to produce more, leading to another crisis of overproduction.

The Democrats would prefer to use the government to increase corporate profits through subsidies and loans for selective industries with new technology (like electric batteries and solar panels) or the health insurance industry (with the health care reform law). While the Democrats talk about helping out working people with cuts in payroll taxes and extending unemployment insurance, their support for balancing the budget will lead to more austerity: higher taxes and cuts to social programs, including the two biggest, Medicare and Social Security.

Only a socialist economy, where production is aimed at peoples’ needs, not for profit, can overcome the cycle of boom and bust and the economic stagnation that we face today. A socialist economy, with government and collective ownership of the means of production (and not just the extensive social welfare programs as seen in Europe), cannot be won at the ballot box, since both major parties are in favor of the 1% that benefits from capitalism. Only mass struggle can bring about the fundamental economic change that will benefit working people.

#UnitedStates #WallStreet #Socialism #crisisOfCapitalism #recession #Capitalism #republicanParty #democratParty

Ron Paul is attracting a lot of attention, including some attention from some people in the anti-war movement, because of his views on foreign policy. Paul has demanded that the president “bring the troops home.” He reflects popular opinion when he says that President Bush overstepped his powers in starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without a declaration of war. In general, Paul is known as an isolationist, rather than a pro-war candidate. However, Ron Paul supports assassinations and other ‘covert actions,’ acts, which are both illegal and anti-democratic, against other countries. In the Republican debates, his campaign tends to put little emphasis on his anti-war stances. Still, to find a candidate of either party who is against the wars is viewed by some as refreshing.

Many supporters of Ron Paul have also been reaching out to the Occupy Movement. But when Ron Paul ran for Congress in 2010, he said, “We should cut payroll taxes and give workers the opportunity to seek better returns in the private market.” While Ron Paul claims to want to protect Social Security, he is in fact backing a privatization of Social Security that would be a boon for Wall Street. His campaign plays the same tune as Wall Street when he says that Social Security is “broke and broken,” when in fact the Social Security trust fund grew by some $70 billion last year, to almost $2.7 trillion.

That said, there are many other big problems with Ron Paul, including his views and policies on racism and discrimination, women’s rights, GLBTQ rights, workers' rights, the environment and even civil liberties. The solutions Ron Paul is selling will not solve the problems of working people or create more equality. They will create more poverty and oppression, just like those of the other Republicans.

Ron Paul's views on African-Americans are especially ugly. A newsletter he put out for years was full of racist rhetoric. One quote out of many says, “We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational.” Another time, Paul referred to the Martin Luther King holiday as “national Hate Whitey Day.” Though Ron Paul says he did not approve these statements, they appeared in his newsletter and under his name over the course of years.

It gets worse. Paul states that he’s against the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act was one of the greatest victories in the struggle for equality for African-American, Chicano, Asian American and other oppressed nationalities. While it is true that all sorts of discrimination and inequity still exist, it is also a fact that the 1964 Civil Rights Act provided the legal framework that ended Jim Crow – including outlawing separate and unequal schools, banning employment discrimination against oppressed nationalities and women, and desegregating restaurants, buses, and hotels. But Ron Paul says it “destroyed privacy” – meaning white business owners should be able to discriminate against African-Americans and others, in the ‘privacy’ of their own businesses.

Ron Paul's views on immigration are sure to appeal to the worst sort of racist. Paul is against any sort of legalization that would fix the problem, even for immigrants who have been in the country for decades. Paul favors tougher enforcement of immigration laws, breaking up families and expelling hardworking people. He even favors eliminating birth right citizenship, which was written into the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in order to guarantee rights to African Americans. This means children born in the U.S. would not automatically be citizens, which was a racist demand by the anti-Chinese movement in the 1880s and is still pushed by those opposed to immigration from Mexico and Central America today. Ron Paul places the blame for what he sees as the “immigration problem” on the U.S. “welfare state,” instead of a system that destroys the economies of other countries and exploits low cost labor. Ron Paul’s view flies in the face of the obvious fact that immigrants are among the most hardworking people in the United States. Immigrants often do the most unpleasant, most dangerous and lowest paid jobs in the U.S. and deserve full equality and legalization.

Ron Paul's newsletters were just as offensive to the GLBTQ community. A news article bearing his name said: “Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.” Despite claiming to be for civil liberties, his current positions on gay rights are not much better. In 2005, Ron Paul sponsored a bill called the “We the People Act”, to prevent federal courts from enforcing any civil rights claim relating to sexuality. Ron Paul also supported the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. Until this law was passed in 1996, a marriage that was carried out in one state was valid in any other state. But under this law, that is not true for marriages between two people of the same sex.

On women's rights, Ron Paul's record is also dismal. While claiming to stand for individual freedoms, Paul would take away a woman’s right to choose. Ron Paul would undo Roe v. Wade and allow states to make abortion illegal again. Paul also says there should be no legal protection against sexual harassment at work, opening the door for an employer to coerce or intimidate an employee to have sex with him or lose their job.

When it comes to organized labor, Ron Paul seems to think that union activities violate the constitutional rights of employers. He boasts on his website about taking the side of big business in every modern legislative fight between unions and employers – opposing card check and the Employee Free Choice Act, supporting the so-called “Truth in Employment Act” and misnamed ‘right to work’ laws, which lower wages and worsen work conditions. In December of 2011, Paul said he is opposed to the existence of the National Labor Relations Board, even in its weakened condition.

Ron Paul is also a global warming denier. Several times he has called global warming “a hoax.” But global climate change is very real, with the droughts and floods growing more severe in recent years. Climate change has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries, causing crops to fail, and every Texan knows about the summer 2011 record-breaking heat wave, drought and wildfires.

Ron Paul is known as an advocate of civil liberties, but the reality is different. Just recently, Congress passed a bill, called the NDAA, allowing the president to arrest people and hold them as long as he likes without trial. Ron Paul did not vote against this bill, for all of his talk about civil liberties – he didn’t vote either way. More importantly, Ron Paul and other supposed ‘libertarians’ are failing when it comes to the FBI raids on Carlos Montes and 23 anti-war activists. More than a dozen members of Congress, such as Representatives Keith Ellison and Dennis Kucinich, wrote to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to express concerns about these raids. Grassroots supporters of Paul, working with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, asked Ron Paul to write a support letter, with no result. Ron Paul’s anti-war and civil liberties sentiment only extends so far.

Many activists in the anti-war and Occupy Wall Street movement interact with Ron Paul supporters. Sometimes, we find ourselves working alongside them. But in the end, Ron Paul's ideas simply are not what working people need. Ron Paul’s purpose is to deliver votes to the Republicans at the end of a mind numbing and lengthy Republican primary season. The problem in our society is not that government is out of control. The problem is that the government, the economy and most of our world, are under the control of a handful of very wealthy people.

Taking government out of our economy is not possible, nor will it fix things. During the Great Depression, the federal government acted to insure bank deposits, started Social Security and unemployment insurance and welfare as a safety net for the elderly, jobless and poor families. At that time, one quarter of Americans were out of work, and starvation was not uncommon. In the 1960s, another wave of federal legislation led to civil rights laws, Medicare, and federal financial aid for college students (the Pell Grant).

Even with government regulation, working people continue to experience financial crisis, unemployment, poor living conditions, housing foreclosures and other problems. But Ron Paul's so-called solution – removing the government from the economy – will not solve anything. It will make things worse. It will give more power to the 1% and the corporations.

Ron Paul will not win the Republican primary, and he will not be President. We do not need to worry about what would happen if he were elected. In 2008, he did not win a primary in one single state. He is not on track to win any this year.

But the problem with Ron Paul are the ideas he represents, which confuse working people and keep them from seeing what is really behind the problems in the country. We need people to build the movements in the streets, like Occupy Wall Street movements. Most people now are focused on the fact that the economic crisis is caused by the big banks and the billionaires who control both parties. The last thing we need is good people with anti-war sentiment, or supporters of the Occupy movement, wasting their time chasing the pied piper of the Republican Party – Ron Paul.

#UnitedStates #Editorials #republicanParty #OccupyWallStreet #RonPaul #Libertarianism

While the many of the specifics of the budget will be worked out over the next few days, the broad outline of what’s intended is clear. Governor Dayton decided to take one of the pre-shutdown Republican offers, which means that payments to school districts will be delayed and bonds will be issued for tobacco settlement money. Dayton abandoned the approach of taxing Minnesota’s rich – even though that is what he campaigned on and why he got elected. Get ready for a wave of attacks on programs that serve working and low income Minnesotans. Health and Human Services will be the number one target for the proposed cuts.

That said, the future is unwritten. In the days ahead, it is vital that progressive forces work to torpedo the budget agreement and insist that cuts be voted down in the special session of the legislature.

Minnesota’s budget crisis did just happen. It is not an act of God nor is the result of ‘mistakes.’ Instead, it is a recurring, politician-made problem that gets worse every time there is an economic crisis. Since the mid 1990s corporate taxes have been cut. Individuals making big money have gotten break after break. The abolition of the corporate sales tax, the abolition of corporate property taxes, $300 million here another few million there (with local property taxes going up) and we arrive at a place where there is a budget crisis all the time. And for that matter, there will be one when the legislature meets next year.

While it is better to have funding shifts than cuts, all the shifts do is delay the day of reckoning. Take for example the funding shift that delays payments for schools. School districts will have to borrow money and pay interest on it to make up for the delayed state payments. The added costs will be made up on a local level. In the next state budget you will have a corresponding shortfall for the delayed state payment to schools (about $700 million) and you will a have the same reactionary politicians who endorsed this approach saying this is evidence that the state “is not living within its means.”

The only reasonable and progressive approach to the state budget is to tax the rich. The rich are the ones who have the money. Far from being job creators, the big corporations that lay people off are in reality job destroyers. The rich have done really well these past few years. They are the ones who should pay for the crisis.

#MinneapolisMN #PublicSectorUnions #GovernorMarkDayton #republicanParty #governmentShutdown #Minnesota

Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Dozens of students and community members protested Karl Rove at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM) on April 25. Karl Rove was George W. Bush’s Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff, and among those responsible for engineering the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan which have cost millions of lives. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) led their second protest against Rove, demanding Rove return an estimated $50,000 he has been paid for two visits to the school. SDS demanded that money go to Iraqi and Afghani children who have suffered at the hands of U.S. occupation.

Students formed a picket line in front of the registration table, chanting “No Justice, no peace, U.S. out of the Middle East!” The energy of the protest was compounded by the fact that UWM students were locked out of the event – which was paid for by their own student fees. Seeing hundreds of empty seats inside, dozens of protesters attempted to enter the event. Almost all of them were turned away by the extremely heavy police presence. As the protest moved toward the doors to the event, school officials threatened to have SDS members arrested. Still, several people managed to disrupt the event from inside.

The money awarded to Rove was approved by a student government committee headed by the president of the College Republicans. At the same time, the committee denied funding to oppressed nationality groups such as the Black Student Union, and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA).

As Wisconsin’s governor attempts to slash funding and privatize UWM, his allies in the College Republicans continue to steal student money from this working class university to pay representatives of the extremely wealthy ruling class such as Karl Rove and Ann Coulter. Their willingness to rob working students and oppressed nationality student organizations is in line with the attacks coming from Governor Walker’s office. SDS has joined campus unions in fighting back against the right-wing attacks represented by Rove and Walker.

#MilwaukeeWI #AntiwarMovement #StudentMovement #StudentsForADemocraticSociety #KarlRove #republicanParty