Crooks, Liars, Idiots, and Plutocrats
Economic historian Carlo Cipolla famously noted that human beings fall into four basic categories: the martyr who takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to others; the genius or prodigy who takes an action by which he/she makes a gain while yielding a gain also to society; the crook (and liar too) who takes an action by which he/she makes a gain causing others a loss; and the stupid person who causes losses to others while deriving no personal gain and even possibly incurring losses. At first glance, the shutdown of the government and the looming debt-ceiling crisis seem to indicate that we are dealing with idiots, the likes of Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, and other Tea Party Republicans.
After all, there is no rational reason to shut down the government to preclude what is essentially a Republican-designed health law (created by the Heritage Foundation), that would create the conditions for finally attaining universal health coverage in the United States, a goal that all the other advanced nations have achieved decades ago. In particular, the alternative to “Obamacare” proposed by the GOP is nonexistent, and basically means leaving millions of Americans without proper medical care. On top of that, the shutdown, together with the previous sequestration, and the overall contractionary fiscal stance, will most likely make the very slow recovery even slower, maintaining an unnecessarily large portion of the labor force unemployed.
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However, it would be a mistake to conclude that we have been dominated by a group of rogue and irrational idiots hell-bent on destroying Western Civilization in the name of Christian values and some crazy, ill-defined notion of freedom. It is important to note that over the last two years the radical elements within the GOP have actually achieved something. They have consolidated a contractionary fiscal stance, barring any possibility of the fiscal expansion that we need for a healthy recovery. They play in the United States the same role that the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) plays in Europe, and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has traditionally played in developing countries. And austerity is at the service not only of cutting expenses on services that affect the neediest in society, but also keeping wage demands in line, and so protecting the interests of corporations and the few that benefit from that.
So if the public faces of the shutdown are the Tea Party-ites in Congress, with Ted Cruz and his filibuster as their poster child, it is important to remember that these groups have received the backing of foundations and shadow groups controlled by a few wealthy plutocrats, like the Koch brothers. It is those wealthy at the top, who are not affected by the shutdown, that should be blamed for the current crisis. Class warfare, not stupidity, and the crooks and liars at the top, not the “idiots” in the public spotlight, are the problem.
From: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/crooks-liars-idiots-and-plutocrats.html