Economics, MAGA Christians, and Ecology
Rock, Tree, Fog, photo by Martha Ture
When Senator James Henry Hammond stood up to make his speech in the Senate, his 300 slaves were working on his 22 square miles of South Carolina plantations.
"In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life...It constitutes the very mudsill of society," Hammond said.
The year was 1858. Hammond had married money, a shy, plain 17-year-old named Catherine Elizabeth Fitzsimmons with a very large dowry. He was elected South Carolina governor, member of the House of Representatives, and then Senator; he repeatedly raped and abused four teenaged nieces, and wrote about it in his secret diary, and the young women were ruined socially. None of them ever married. He also repeatedly raped his slaves, some of whom were his children.
In his speech, known as the Cotton is King speech, Hammond went on to say “..."You dare not make war on cotton — no power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is king...But what guarantee have we...that you will not plunder us with tariffs; that you will not bankrupt us with internal improvements and bounties on your exports; that you will not cramp us with navigation laws, and other laws impeding the facilities of transportation to southern produce? …”
Senator Hammond’s 1858 oration summarizes the philosophy of today’s Christian economic policy makers quite succinctly. Societies have the right to consign people to an underclass to perform the drudgery of life, and this is a right given by Jesus.
As South Carolina Governor, Hammond wrote "I firmly believe that American slavery is not only not a sin, but especially commanded by God through Moses, and approved by Christ through his apostles. ... I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson that 'all men are born equal.'"
Other deities, separation of church and state, are not germane to those who build their economics on their views of the wishes of one of the planet’s numerous man-made supernatural beings.
Between Senator Hammond and today, we have had Keynesian economics and Reaganomics, aka Supply Side Economics, and today we are dealing with the consequences of the repudiated supply-side philosophy, while the fundamentalist Republicans in Congress persist in Foxing on and on about Democratic economic policies being satanic socialism, and the need to make America Great Again by restoring some version of supply-side philosophy. We also have Ecological Economics.
Having had a ringside seat to supply-side economics, I can summarize its tenets and consequences.
It disproportionately benefits the wealthy and exacerbates income inequality.
It leads to rising budget deficits and reduced government revenue. The claims that tax cuts would pay for themselves through higher economic growth have been widely disputed. Data shows that large tax cuts in the U.S. over the past 40 years did not increase tax revenues.
There is no evidence that it created more jobs, investment, productivity gains or significant economic growth. Studies have found little correlation between tax cuts and expansion of output, employment or business investment. Instead, the beneficiaries of the Reagan tax cuts took the money and ran. They did not invest in more American plants. They sent their work overseas, where labor is cheaper.
The assumptions of the Laffer curve are unrealistic. There may be an optimal tax rate to maximize revenue, but it’s probably higher than supply-siders proposed.
It was all about tax cuts and deregulation. It ignores human needs, human capital, technology, and infrastructure investment – all crucial for society to thrive. For that, we are seeing work being done by the Biden administration.
The trickle-down belief, like the belief in Santa Claus, that cutting taxes for the rich will benefit the whole economy through their increased spending and investment, did not materialize. Shock.
In sum, supply-side economics then and now promises economic growth through tax cuts and deregulation, but all it really does is increase inequality and deficits, and stir up the anger of the Fox watchers. Tax cuts for the rich don’t benefit the world. Wow, who knew.
The economic policy we need is Ecological Economics. Ecological economics postulates three main goals: sustainable scale, just distribution, and efficient allocation. To achieve these goals, ecological economics advocates for:
Maintaining economic activity within the sustainable limits of the ecosystem and natural resources (sustainable scale).
Ensuring an equitable distribution of resources and environmental costs/benefits across society (just distribution).
Allocating resources efficiently to maximize social welfare while respecting ecological constraints (efficient allocation).
Ecological economics recognizes that the economy is a subset of the larger ecosystem, and economic policies must account for environmental impacts and resource constraints. It challenges the assumptions of infinite growth and unlimited substitution of natural capital in neoclassical economics.
Some key principles of ecological economics include:
Implementing policies to control the scale of resource use within biophysical limits.
Using a mix of market-based incentives and regulations to internalize environmental costs.
Transforming institutions gradually through adaptive management, rather than radical changes.
Increasing public participation in environmental decision-making processes.
Overall, ecological economics aims to integrate economic activity with ecological realities to achieve a sustainable steady-state economy, providing a decent standard of living for all within the planet's carrying capacity.
Some working examples today:
Ecological tax reforms shift taxation from economic "goods" like labor and investment towards "bads" like pollution, resource depletion, and waste. Examples include carbon taxes, waste disposal taxes, and removing subsidies for fossil fuels.
Initiatives like eco-villages, transition towns, and community gardens/forests that apply ecological economics principles to create self-reliant local economies and lifestyles within environmental limits.
The key theme is restructuring economic and social systems to operate within the planet's biophysical limits while providing sufficient living standards for all.
The UK, Australia, and Canada have implemented natural capital accounting to track the depletion and degradation of natural resources along with traditional economic indicators. The goal is to better measure sustainability and inform policies.
Programs that provide incentives to landowners, communities or nations to protect ecosystems that provide valuable services, such as paying to avoid deforestation, and payments for watershed protection policies.
For more information on Ecological Economics, please see https://theconversation.com/what-is-ecological-economics-and-why-do-we-need-to-talk-about-it-123915.