In the painful aftermath of George W. Bush’s eight years as President of the USA, Americans have suddenly become interested again in “The Economy,” especially in that spicy sauce called “economic stimulus.” Younger voters must now pay, after the fact, for Bush’s faith-based financial planning. 
Unfortunately, many Democrats who subsequently rode into power in Washington-DC with President Obama are now ready to throw taxpayer money in all directions, hoping that plentiful paper money on the ground will at least lift people’s spirits and trickle up through businesses and banks. Who knows? It could happen.
Meanwhile, Republicans who were not beaten into submission (or simply thrown out of office) in the last election have already begun calling for “more tax cuts!” This prescription, after eight years of Republican budget deficits and tax cuts which helped only the rich and emptied the U.S. Treasury, brings to mind the acronym “S.O.S.” — an expression favored by prison inmates when they are served the same old….food.
Sadly, most voters have trouble staying awake when TV commentators discuss economics, especially weird science like an “economic stimulus.” Worse, modern economists who could explain how these things work often have trouble communicating with the real world, and in any group of economists each seems to see things somewhat differently — rather like the ancient parable from India about six blind men who grasped different parts of an elephant and described the animal variously like a stone pillar, a rope, a tree branch, a handheld fan, a wall, or a thick pipe.
In September 1982, Scientific American Magazine published an entire special issue whose subject was The Mechanization of Work. Like so many important concepts found only in the best objective journalism, the big central idea in this magazine issue floated unnoticed over the talking heads in mainstream media. Pity, because much of what now torments the American economy was predicted by the Scientific American authors.
After an introductory article by Eli Ginzberg, the Scientific American issue included articles detailing how mechanization throughout modern history had made nearly all human endeavors (agriculture, mining, design and manufacturing, commerce, office work, women’s work) vastly more efficient and much less dependent on “employees.” Both the productivity increases and the labor decreases described were enormous. The last article concerning “distribution of work and income” explained calmly that highly-productive machinery, the concentration of factory ownership, and finally the near-elimination of human labor together mean that a modern industrialized economic system can no longer be managed automatically by market forces but instead must now include the forced recirculation of money to keep consumers active and the system running — or economic collapse and “social unrest” will ensue.
Laissez-faire, regulations-be-damned capitalists pondering the Scientific American conclusions will immediately erupt in anger, calling them “communism” or lazy “socialism” or much worse names. Do-gooder liberals (like myself) will strenuously object that a cold-blooded technical concept such as the “recirculation of money” in an economy ignores the true potential of democracy: benevolently sharing all wealth among all citizens, regardless of their “productivity” (this is merely a different recipe for disaster).
How does all this relate to President Obama, the United States Congress, and your wallet? We have already seen during the Bush years what happens to an economy: when wealth and ownership concentrate further among the already rich; when jobs disappear, pay less, or are merely sent overseas; when cheap imported goods replace domestically-made products; and when tax cuts for extremely wealthy individuals and hugely profitable corporations empty the public treasury. During this time, “high tech” information-processing and automation (such as robotic manufacturing) continued to make much human labor obsolete, so even fewer consumer became available to “keep the motor running.”
The hard truth revealed by the Scientific American issue The Mechanization of Work is that, whether you prefer greed or compassion when designing your economy, you can’t just let the system dry up and stop. Forget for a moment about home mortgages, the stock-market, affordable healthcare, alternative energy, and fuel-efficient cars. Whether an economy falters from technology-driven unemployment or from political mismanagement, the point is “Who can buy stuff anyway if they no longer have any income?”
Memo to Democrat big-government zealots: Always remember that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s successful economic-recovery plan didn’t just hand out money but created thousands of useful, good-paying jobs — many of them “permanent.”
Memo to Republican tax-cut enthusiasts: Do you really expect the thousands of voters who have lost their jobs, homes, retirement/pension funds, and kids’ inheritance to take you seriously? Voters will remember your promises of ”bi-partisan” government when the next Congressional elections take place. Have you been naughty or nice?
