New Gilded Age and the Military

The New York Times says this is the new gilded age, and it looks like it is. The are a lot of similarities to the beginning of the 20th century. Why didn't the US move into a new gilded age after World War II. Financially we were in even better shape than we are today, because almost every other industrialized country around the world was in shambles. The article asks why now instead of the 1960s or 1970s. One answer that keeps coming up is changes in regulatory and tax structure. Taxes today are lower; Glass-Steagall was removed from the books, allowing nationwide banking, etc.

Something the article doesn't mention is World War II. WW II is so far unique in our history in pulling the country together. Unlike Vietnam and Iraq, almost everybody served in the military and fought. Men from the upper classes and the Ivy League spent years with men from the farms and factories. There was a brotherhood and a sense of shared responsibility. Today there is none of that. The privileged classes don't fight in Iraq. There is less social mobility within American society.

After WW II men who served as officers and returned to run the business world felt a kinship for and obligation toward the less fortunate enlisted men they had fought with. Some of the elite, rather than going into business, went into politics and ended up passing some of the laws leveling American society, making taxes more progressing, limiting monopolistic practices, etc., the kinds of things that have been undone in the last 20 years.

While these men ran America, we had a somewhat golden (as opposed gilded) age where management and labor worked more or less together to make life better for everyone. Today there is very little of that. The head of FedEx is a Vietnam veteran, and while Vietnam was a very different war, FedEx probably espouses more social responsibility than most other corporations whose managers only know the brotherhood of business school at Harvard or some other elite university.

Checking Wikipedia for military service by some big business names, I found:

• Bill Gates (Microsoft) - No service
• Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway) - No service
• Sandy Weill (Citicorp) - Did Air Force ROTC; wanted to be a pilot, but apparently could not qualify and did not serve in the active military.
• Leo Hindery (AT&T) - No mention of service, but less than complete biographies.
• Sumner Redstone (Viacom) - Worked in the predecessor to NSA during WW II.
• Kenneth Griffin (Citadel hedge fund) - No mention of military service; sounds like he went straight from Harvard into managing hedge funds.
• Lew Frankfort (Coach) - No mention of military service in Business Week bio.
• Sheldon Adelson (Gambling/Las Vegas) - No mention of service in Forbes bio.
• Larry Ellison (Oracle) - No mention of service in Forbes bio.
• Paul Allen (Microsoft) - No mention of service in Forbes.
• Jim Walton (Wal-Mart) - No mention of service in Forbes.
• Robson Walton (Wal-Mart) - No mention of service.
• Sergay Brin (Google) - No mention of service.
• Larry Page (Google) - No mention of service
• Michael Dell (Dell) - No mention of service.
• Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) - No mention of service.

Enough!

Condi Rice Is Paris Hilton of State Department

Condi Rice is supposed to be a foreign policy professional, but things have gone to hell in hand basket on her watch as Secretary of State. Arguably things have not gone as badly 0n her watch as they did on Colin Powell's. We haven't gotten into any new wars. We've reached an agreement with North Korea on nuclear issues, rather than breaching one. But Condi was in the White House fighting against Colin Powell on these issues during Bush's first term.

Condi has turned out to be a light weight when it comes to foreign policy. She basically lets herself be pushed around by whomever she's with. At the White House, it was the war mongering neo-cons, and she backed them. Now, at State, she to her credit is taking a more statesman-like position, but due to the people around her, not to any good sense of her own.

She dresses nicely and is telegenic, but like Paris Hilton, there's not much "there" there, unlike Robert Gates who appears to be personally moving the Defense Department in a more reasonable direction.

Military Service Unimportant in Election

Reuters reports that few of the candidates for President have served in the military, and says that is no problem, because the general populace also has avoided serving and doesn't care about military service. All people care about today is money, not service. That's reflected in the makeup of the candidates, most of whom are millionaires, or billionaires, if you include Bloomberg.

This country has changed a lot. I think it's sad, but maybe when history looks back on it, it won't be so bad. Who it is bad for are the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This report shows more clearly that average Americans won't fight for their country. They let somebody else, probably somebody poorer who needs the money, do it. Families of New Yorkers in particular got millions from the government if they were killed in 9/11; now they party and profit from the stock market, while their poorer fellow citizens from southern and western states that New Yorkers spit on, die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Families of soldiers who die in combat, and families of victims killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, have gotten nothing close to the millions that New Yorkers got for 9/11.

US Not Serious about Iraq

The Washington Post article about the unwillingness of the government to staff the embassy in Baghdad adequately is to me the nail in the coffin for the future of Iraq. The US just does not care enough to try hard to win the war in Iraq. They send Crocker to be Ambassador and then they don't support him. Instead, when he gives his best judgment of what the embassy needs, he gets characterized as a panicky crybaby. What he is asking for is does not sound ideal for the State Department; it sounds like every Arabist and Arab speaker would be in Iraq, putting a hardship on other posts in the Middle East, but hey, is this a war we want to win or not? Not, apparently.

It convinces me that America got the government it deserved, a bunch of cowardly, inept, greedy SOBs. The best and the brightest declined to serve in Vietnam, as George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney did. Al Gore went to Vietnam, and had the election stolen from him as a reward. Now the best and the brightest refuse to go to Iraq. Hey, they can stay here and make billions in the hedge fund or private equity business. Look at Mitt Romney; he didn't serve in the military (apparently his Mormon missionary service exempted him), and when he made his millions in private equity, he avoided a large share of his taxes by taking much of his income as capital gains rather than salary, unlike the families of the ordinary people who died in his place in Vietnam, and now in Iraq.

This is a government that knows how to make OTHER people sacrifice, and like it. However, whatever they have been doing is now working in Iraq. It's a huge mess, but they will just walk away from it. The Republicans who are so concerned about saving babies from abortion are responsible for the deaths of many more thousands of babies in Iraq. They don't care, as long as they get their money.