The above line of questioning shows simplistically the divide in the American landscape between the aspirations of the people and their fear of taxes to pay for it. This is the real issue in the national presidential debate, when we aren’t being distracted by “lipstick-on-pigs” remarks and other red herrings. This is also part of the crux of California’s budget battle as well as the local struggles in cities across this state dealing with budget deficits. Some observers might call this a bipolar condition––a type of political schizophrenia or worse.  And the core problem of declining tax revenues, particularly at the state and local levels, is that it isn’t going to get better given that a significant portion of the tax base is linked directly to the falling property values. What’s a government to do? Raise taxes or cut services? They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t––and the stalemate goes on.

Meanwhile, in the center of the hallowed corridors of Wall Street––home to our most revered free market devotees– –Lehman Bros., AIG, and WaMu have lost several hundreds of billions of dollars, seemingly overnight. This week’s stock market plunge felt eerily like a hi-jacked terrorist plane aimed at the core of our capital marketplace just over  seven years after 911. When I read about the huge losses, I stopped and asked myself, how does a brokerage like Lehman Bros lose $693 billion? Did it fall out of someone’s pocket at the racetrack? Just where does all that money go? It seems to just evaporate into thin air! As the mainstream media and the investment advisors call for calm amidst the panic of this market, the peeled back truth is that the stock market is not much different than the roulette table at a Vegas casino. The chips are worth what the house says they are worth and that only really matters when you cash out. Otherwise it’s all about playing the game. Even the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith likened the stock market to just another form of legal gambling, which shouldn’t be used to support our monetary system.

The fact of the matter is that once our national currency was taken off of the gold standard, which was in itself an antiquarian abstraction, the idea of our dollars as having some inherent value became even more abstract.  With the advent of plastic money, debit cards and the like, the concept of money being something more than a digital blip on a computer screen or a cash register seems even more bizarre, possibly even to the extent that when we look back at certain native cultures who once used sea shells as wampum that it all starts to make sense.

What I am searching for here is the explanation that our financial problems are as much a result of our (mis)conception of money and value as it is the imbalance of certain segments of our capital sectors gaming the system. And contrary to the commonly held belief, unregulated free markets do not always work to the benefit of or create democracy.  The current crisis in capitalism will in fact have a very deleterious affect on both our republic, and in the end our liberties. So much for Milton Freedman and his theories on capitalism and democracy. This current banking mortgage crisis, as well as, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980’s, two bookends of cause and effect, are a direct result of the “less government is more freedom” philosophy. Reagan, Bush I, even Clinton to some extent and now Shrub (the lesser Bush) all have drunk the Kool Aid on this one. McCain isn’t far behind in believing in this madness too.

The core issue is that there is plenty of money around to bailout some big Wall Street brokerages or to save Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae (who hold some $15 trillion in home loans) but to pay off the state deficit of $20 billion or the LA City deficit of $409 million, well we’ll just have to tighten our belts, suck it up and/or raise taxes.  In the end what we are going to witness is a rather severe reevaluation of our already declining standard of living and the selling off of our public assets.  

Perhaps we could sell off Yosemite to the Chinese or Yellowstone Park to the Saudis? But even this wouldn’t bailout our democracy. The real issue is that both political parties are so entrenched that neither one can come to new solutions. This last week for instance came the uncomfortable revelation that certain employees of the US Interior Department, who manage the mineral assets on public lands, were literally sleeping with the oil companies they negotiate with! Now isn’t that an explicit metaphor for what’s been happening to our government for so many years?  We all know we’ve been getting screwed at the pump, but now this, the perfect example of who, how, and why!

A complete audit of our government spending would end all of Rush Limbaugh’s conservative crying about welfare cheats and point out the really big welfare given to large corporations and the corruption by others costs us more than our collective state, city and national deficits combined. This is how we would pay for cleaning up our polluted skies, providing universal health care and fixing our highways and schools. Just ending the corrupt contracts in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be a sure start to ending this mess. But why is it that for the most part Republican administrations are so willing to give up the public trust to the private sector for next to nothing and the Democrats are so gutless to do anything about it?

It’s no wonder that the corporate lobbyists own so many politicians. So maybe we should just sell them the whole damn government, pay off the public debt with the proceeds and let somebody else run this place?  In short the people could just retire from being citizens of the democracy and of course we wouldn’t want to pay any further taxes either. Does anyone want to buy a slightly used democracy?