We are told again and again that economic solutions dictated by simple common sense are politically impossible:
1. Shifting hundreds of billions of dollars of government expenditure from weapons procurement and warfare to civilian construction is impossible.
2. Creating an efficient single-payer national health care system is impossible.
3. Putting the unemployed to work rebuilding our infrastructure is impossible.
4. Reconstructing America’s intercity rail network is impossible.
5. Investigation and prosecution of rogue corporations is impossible.
Why are all of these things impossible? Because, ever since Ronald Reagan and his allied ideological vandals commenced an all-out assault on government, the American people have been barraged with plutocratic propaganda persuading them that the government that built the atomic bomb, landed men on the moon, established the Internet, and ended racial discrimination is worthless and incompetent.
The dominant political meme in Washington is still “everybody knows that the government can’t run anything properly.” This pernicious myth will drag us down into economic misery so deep that we will eventually be forced to discard it. No combination of individuals or corporations has the power and resources to get us out of the ditch we are in. Only the Federal government can pull us out. But as long as it remains reviled and discredited, we will lie in the ditch.
This is why things will get much worse in America before they get better. It took a huge amount of effort to poison the minds of the citizenry against their own government, and only a massive amount of suffering will bring the political realignment necessary to cleanse this poison. Until our people renew their trust in government, a widespread economic recovery will be an impossible mission.