Here's an Important Question to Consider As the U.S. Rethinks Its Global Policies: Is Bigger Still Better? Or Is Better Better?

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

May 25, 2009

William Greider's new book, Come Home, America, easily could have devolved into a rant.

A rant against U.S. corporations such as GE which collected more than $9 billion in grants from the U.S. government from 2001 through 2003 as incentives to encourage more investment in the U.S. and then cut its U.S. investments by 40%.

A rant against greedy money managers like Mark McGoldrick who left his $70 million a year job at Goldman Sachs in 2006 ($200,000 a day) to run a private hedge fund where he presumably made considerably more.

A rant against a system that created so many billionaires in recent years that 87 of them didn't make the cut in the 2007 Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans----billions of dollars made by a few during a long stretch where household income for most Americans stagnated or declined.

A rant against U.S. government leaders who have condoned and abetted trading policies that drain the country of hundreds of billions in wealth each year and that are stripping our manufacturing and industrial base of millions of jobs, and the technical know-how and intellectual property that go with them.

All of that is included in Come Home, America. And some of the details Greider presents us with will be shocking to many readers (like the fact that Wachovia Bank reported $4 billion in 2002 profits and paid no taxes).

Greider assumes that most of those reading his book already know how dangerously out of whack our tax, labor, trade and financial systems are, and have been for quite some time. In fact, he cites a 2007 Harris poll where 84% of the respondents agreed that corporations have too much power. To the question, which industries were “generally honest and trustworthy” oil registered only 3%, health insurance 7%, phone companies 10% and drug companies 11%.

No, Greider didn't write this book to be just another in a lengthening accumulation of “what's wrong with America” compendiums. He wrote it to point the way toward some solutions.

But his proposed solutions won't be popular with those already in seats of political and economic power. That's why you haven't been seeing many reviews of his book where the elite gather. These are bottom up ideas that would be adopted only if a huge and unmistakable grass roots effort gets behind them----and transforms our tax code, trade policies, business practices and labor laws into something quite different than we know today.

Start with trade. Current trade policies make the U.S. a wide open market. Greider would put a cap on the size of our annual trade deficit and force corporations to operate under that cap. Greider argues that the U.S. is the only developed country in the world that leaves its markets so unprotected. Greider would use protections already permitted in existing trade treaties to bring U.S. sales more in balance with U.S. imports----a major sea change from current policy, particularly trade with China, a country growing rapidly in strength and resources, largely feeding off of U.S. businesses and consumers.

Then there's the matter of the U.S. multinationals that keep moving plants, jobs and technology to low wage countries. Greider would rewrite the tax code to increase corporate taxes, and then provide tax credits as incentives for keeping plants in the U.S., hiring U.S. workers, increasing wages consistent with increased worker productivity, and having clean worker safety and environmental records.

While government policy matters, Greider is arguing for something more: a change of attitude away from more and bigger are better, to one that exalts the quality of life rather than the steepness of the growth chart.

“Here is the grand vision I suggest Americans can pursue,” says Greider: the right of all citizens to live larger lives. Not to get richer than the next guy or necessarily accumulate more and more stuff, but the right to live life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence...

"At earlier periods of U.S. history the sacrifices demanded by the engine of American capitalism were widely tolerated because the nation was young and underdeveloped. The engine promised to generate higher levels of abundance, and did. But what is the justification now, when the nation is already quite rich and the engine keeps demanding larger chunks of our lives?”

Greider is no ivory tower dreamer. For Come Home, America he traveled the world, interviewing hundreds of ordinary workers along with business and political leaders. One of his previous works, Secrets of the Temple, was a modern breakthrough in understanding the complexities of the Federal Reserve. Greider's Who Will Tell The People is still “an indispensible and comprehensive guide to the continuing meltdown of the American political system,” according to the New York Times.

Come Home, America has appeared at exactly the moment when Americans are questioning long-held assumptions about many economic and political “truths” we have lived by during the post World War II era. And it challenges us during a year when the nation is struggling with the specifics of the “change” agenda that captured America's imagination and votes during the 2008 elections.

During that election, Republicans tried to make a big deal out of an offhand Obama comment about “spreading the wealth around.” They failed to grasp the larger truth that through runaway trade, and expansive military and financial policies and practices, the U.S. has been “spreading the wealth around” to the world for decades, while shortchanging our own people here at home.

Greider wants us to Come Home, America. This may be a highly controversial call among the political and financial elites, but I suspect it resonates with truth and importance for the vast majority of Americans who are in a much better position to see the clouds masking the American dream.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.