I suspect this assessment is myopic at best, and largely beside the point when it comes to comparing the Clinton and Bush II regimes. In the US, the trend toward greater wealth and income inequality began in the 1970s and continued full-steam through the Reagan and Bush I years, so Clinton inherited a tendency that was already built into the economy.
how and what exactly was built into the economy? Are you referring to the general law of accumulation as being built into the economy?
A significant portion of the increase in wealth inequality under Clinton was due to the stock market bubble, reflective in part of a robust economy that kept unemployment low, and since burst.
What contribution did the absence of accounting regulation play in that boom?
And I'm not sure what Pollin expected Clinton, or any one President for that matter, to do about the widening chasm between the richest and poorest 1% or 10% of humanity--insist that the UN adopt a progressive global income tax? Force the Gingrich Congress to increase US foreign aid to poor countries a thousand fold?
Did he try?
Also, what could Clinton have done to reverse the rising (pre-tax) ratio of CEO to average worker pay, and how much of a difference could it have made?
Bargain for more regressive income and capital gains taxes with promises of tax incentives for investment and R and D?
Domestically, Clinton did manage to get through a tax increase on the wealthy and a tax decrease for the middle class.
But didn't he also substantially reduce capital gains taxes?
On the other hand, to his eternal discredit, he went along with eliminating "welfare as we know it" without extracting from the Republicans, who were desperate to gut the welfare system, significant concessions for workers, like increased support for education, training, child support, etc., in return.
right.
Clinton, in other words, was a disappointment, and certainly not a leftist. Duh. But Bush II is an unmitigated, across-the-board disaster, and I think that those who insist there is no real difference between Clinton and Bush II are missing a key point. You think wealth inequality increased under Clinton? Clinton didn't call for eliminating the inheritance tax and dividends tax or for dramatic decreases in income tax rates on the wealthy.
and what did the Democrats in Congress do to oppose it?
Bush did, and got them with a sunset clause only as a political accounting shenanigan, and is now calling to make these tax decreases permanent. These regressive changes will surely lock in and further expand existing wealth inequalities.
ok but if you say wealth inequality is built into the economy in such a way that Clinton cannot be blamed much for its accentuation, then why blame Bush much for its accentuation. Why not just say that state can at best moderate the general tendency towards greater intra and international inequality in income and wealth? Bush may not be moderating it while Clinton would have to some extent. Then ask about the limits of the state to do more than that.
Also, the resulting massive structural deficit in the Federal budget will eventually render Medicare and Social Security infeasible; these programs would not have been seriously threatened under Clinton's budget management.
It depends on how deep the dowturn turns out to be. A prolonged recession could have rendered infeasible these social expenditures. There is no reason to believe that Clinton would not have responded to a prolonged downturn with profit-led demand management; that is, increasing the costs of withholding from investment through regressive tax and anti labor legislation.
And that is, of course only the beginning. Clinton favored signing the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Bush refused to sign it after saying that he would, and his administration has since censored reports on the issue by its own agencies in order to avoid dealing with it. The Clinton EPA actively pursued litigation against corporate polluters. The Bush EPA abandons much of this effort, raises nonenforcement to standard practice, leading several career EPA administrators to resign in protest, and introduces rule changes to let polluters off the hook re installing new pollution control equipment. Clinton didn't do much to reduce global income inequality? Bush shuts off medical and other aid for the poorest women in the world on the pretext of opposing abortion.
Deplorable.
Speaking of abortion, Bush has actively abetted the right's efforts to restrict abortion rights, while Clinton supported and defended these rights.
Deplorable.
And I haven't even mentioned the unfolding nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ashcroft's various incursions against personal freedoms,
Frightening. But the roots are there in the first Patriot Act.
the Bush administration's opposition to affirmative action....the list goes on. In sum, whatever Clinton's (considerable) failings, life is or will be worse for most people in and out of the US as a result of Dubya's policies.
Gil
And they would have been worse under that hypothetical third term Clinton as well since you admit that there is a certain in built tendency towards wealth and income polarization that the state is impotent to remedy. If you didn't think that then you wouldn't be so soft on Clinton.
Rakesh
