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Wednesday 21 September 2011
The Wall Street Protests and America's Choice

Yet looking at the national debate — the emergence of the Tea Party, of the protesters in Manhattan, and prophecies of rioting by the Mayor of New York — you can’t help but feel that something in the U.S. is different now than any time in its history. That change may force America to do something it’s never had to do before: work out which of its two values it holds most dear.

What’s causing this? There are two overarching trends that are converging to force the argument.

The first is income inequality. It’s hard to look at a newspaper, a periodical, or listen to the radio without seeing more and more about inequality in the U.S. And this isn’t just happening because those at the top are winning. In real income terms, those at the bottom have been going backwards.

This trend continues with every passing day given the “jobless recovery” the country is experiencing at the moment. While corporate profits are beginning to return to their pre-Financial Crisis numbers, unemployment is not budging.

Yet simultaneously, the importance of money in politics has grown to its greatest level in the past 50 years. Ever since the 1996 President election, the amount spent in Presidential campaigns has roughly doubled in each subsequent election — $239M in 1996, $343M in 2000, $717M in 2004, and last Presidential Election in 2008, it topped $1.3 trillion. The chart looks exponential.

But it’s not just that the amount of money that’s required. What has changed is who has a voice in the process. In 2010, a hugely important decision was made by the Supreme Court in a split decision on the Citizens United case — that Government is unable to place restrictions on how Corporations spend money in general elections. If the importance of money in winning an election was already going up at an exponential rate, then opening the treasuries of one the wealthiest constituencies in the world — America’s corporations — will accelerate that. Capitalism will have the power to dictate the politics of America.

It’s when you put these trends together that you begin to understand why the U.S. may soon be faced with a choice unlike any other in its history: the primacy of democracy or capitalism. So far, the decision, whether explicit or not, has been that capitalism matters more. The symptoms of this decision have created a self-reinforcing loop that has continued to magnify the two trends above.

On one hand, an ever-increasing concentration of resources amongst a smaller proportion of the population has meant their voice has been magnified. They’ve been using it to pursue policies that have grown the economic pie, all the while sharing it less and less. On the other hand, those at the other end of the spectrum are struggling to a degree that is almost unheard of previously. Many are barely managing to put food on the table, let alone make donations to politician candidates. Yet those donations are the lifeblood of any modern political campaign. Without them, a candidate is simply a nonstarter.

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    Without capitalism, there is no democracy. We are in a moment of correction, adjusting to new realities. There will...
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