What Trump must reverse, but won't

How Liberals Are the New Autocrats - The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast is hardly a journal of the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, but it cuts directly to the quick: with the concentration of wealth in the self-appointed elites, democracy around the world is fading fast:

Increasingly the call is not so much for a benevolent and charismatic dictator, but for an impaneled committee of experts to rule over our lives. Former Obama budget adviser Peter Orszag and Thomas Friedman argue openly that power should shift from naturally contentious elected bodies—subject to pressure from the lower orders—to credentialed “experts” operating in Washington, Brussels, or the United Nations.

The new progressive mindset was laid out recently in an article in The Atlantic that openly called for the creation of a “technocracy” to determine energy, economic, and land-use policies. According to this article, mechanisms like the market or even technological change are simply not up to the challenge. Instead the entire world needs to be put on a “war footing” that forces compliance with the technocracy’s edicts. This includes a drive to impose energy austerity on an already fading middle class, limiting mundane pleasures like cheap air travel, cars, freeways, suburbs, and single-family housing.

Read the whole thing.

At an increasing pace, politics in the West, especially in America, is the surest way to wealth, a 180-out from the West's history. As I explained almost two years ago in, "America is adopting the Middle East model, and it's not Islam," in the Middle East "wealth came from political power because there was no means to create wealth of significance apart of political power."

So for centuries, nay millennia, the way to become wealthy there was first to gain political power. This pattern survives to this day. Saddam Hussein, for example, was a nobody of no material means until he literally murdered his way into power in Iraq in 1979. It was after gaining control of Iraq's government that Saddam became wealthy beyond all avarice.

Now the point of this little history lesson is this: In the United States, the means to create wealth and the exercise of political power in public office are being steadily unified. We are already well along to adopting a Middle East model. Since the Obama administration came into being, the wealthiest counties of America and the most politically-powerful counties of America have for the first time become the one and same - all concentrated in and around Washington, D.C.

Through minute regulation of economic activity, America's political class is deliberately suppressing wealth creation over the broad expanse of the country, while funneling tax dollars to favored cronies. Remember, for example, Solyndra?

At the same time, the political figures are using their offices to gain personal wealth. 

Heretofore, the means to create wealth was dispersed. As the result, political power was dispersed along with it. Wealth gains political power, but political power was not needed just to create wealth.

How bad has political thievery become? James Bessen of Boston University Law School says it is so deep that political lobbying is now the second-largest influence on profits for America's large companies.

Government gets bigger and more powerful, which lures companies into viewing Washington as a profit center, which then leads to more policies that expand the size and power of the federal government, which leads to further opportunities for rent-seeking behavior. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 What kind of government is this? "Classic Liberal" blog explains: 

What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life. ...

Sound familiar? It ought to: this has been the economic policy of both parties for at least the last 50 years, with different emphases by one party or the other. American federal polity long ago became centrally located on a less-lethal version of Lenin's question, "Who? Whom?" For Lenin, the question was about who would die and who would live. But for both the Republicans and the Democrats it is about money and power:

• Who will receive the largess they will use tax dollars to provide?
• Whom will be the class they plunder to get it? 
• And how will they spend it to suborn, corrupt or crush so they can keep power?

That is not merely the primary principle of American federal governance today, it is almost the only principle there is. Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, the American Left is not socialist at all; it is fascist, which began in and never departed from Leftism. (Mussolini had been an active member of the Communist International before resigning to start the Fascisti party.) The Republicans are fascist, too, just not as much. But give them 15-20 years and they'll catch up. 

This is what Trump must reverse. But he won't.