New Light on Political Options to Start the New Year
The Challenges are daunting but Maine has some new advantages
I have often heard that Boothbay is the grayest region in the grayest county in the grayest state in the USA. I do not know if that is true, but according to the 2020 report on Older Americans, Maine ties with Florida for the highest percentage of the population over 65
The leaders of Boothbay want young people but only the ones from wealthy families or what is described as the professional classes to be tenants of affordable workforce housing which, should the developers and realtors get their way with the ordinances, will be on smaller plots of land than was allowed when I was raised on the Peninsula marking another notch down in the standard of living for most, an effect brought about by the Boomers in the eyes of the younger generations.
None except the wealthy can indeed afford to live in Boothbay these days but grid housing for the working classes is a terrible solution that will only continue to serve as a Petrie dish for societal resentments. These solutions remind me of the projects that were nearby Pratt Institute when I attended in the sixties. We were told to stay away from the projects because they were very dangerous with many drug dealers. Myrtle Avenue was safe because the Mafia controlled it.
The fact that the housing conceived as professional housing is synonymous with workforce housing indicates that in developers’ minds professionals are the workforces of the large corporate world. This is the culture that developers want to attract to Boothbay. The envisioned reduction of living spaces on practically non-existent plots of land benefits the developers and realtors but is out of tune with the message coming from the Great Resignation from the large corporate world which expresses great resentment toward the Baby Boomers. The workforces blame the Boomers for the continually decreasing opportunity to partake in the American dream as the hope of attaining a middle-class home, with space, and a front lawn slips farther and farther away.
A business in a home requires space. The idea behind the Museum of American Designer Craftsmen is to make homes with enough space to accommodate a business in home affordable through non-profit funding as a project of the museum as a fiscal sponsor. It’s a new model for the working classes.
“Workforce housing” is a concept based on inhabitants working at corporate headquarters and having no need for extra space of their own for extracurricular activities. Large public spaces can take the place of private spaces for extracurricular activities, following the Chinese Ghost City model, with its skyscraper grids to house the workforces and the large public buildings where extracurricular activities take place, like fifty-million-dollar school-workforce training centers.
During my generation, the wealth redistribution channels were linked via legal structures into one continuous infrastructure that I call the public-private for-profit nonprofit wealth concentration and redistribution industrial complex. That’s a long name, for short, I could call it the Mafia, but that term does not capture its breadth and width.
Recently I have been reading stories by Jan D Weir, a business professor at the University of Toronto. In How Wall Street Created the New Divisive America, Mr. Weir follows the relationship since 1993 between Wall Street and the federal government that jointly expanded the wealth gap at a time when the public was already outraged by the stagnating pay for the workers and the escalating pay at the executive level.
The story told by Mr. Weir has two central themes, one sourced in Wall Street and the other in the government, the two mutually benefitting hands of the public-private relationship.
Be it a Democrat or Republican administration, the man from Wall Street is appointed to the highest position in government. Larry Summers is an academic exception but Summers was appointed Deputy Treasury Secretary by his mentor Robert Rubin who spent twenty-five years at Goldman Sachs before entering government.
The growth of the wealth divide generated by Wall Street is a story about the continual development of unregulated financial instruments that are untethered to any real economic growth in the larger economy. In part, they go unregulated because they are difficult to understand, especially by the general public and therefore regulating such instruments is less likely to become a political talking point affecting the electability of politicians.
The wealth divide is expanding so aggressively that the workers are dropping out of the system that offers no hope for the future for most. Civil war has become more plausible than ever.
This is a time when third parties can make a difference if they will act as third parties by campaigning on what the mainstream parties are reluctant to take on.
Third parties need to introduce talking points that set them apart from the duopoly that consistently appointed Wall Street leaders to positions of high power in government.
One issue explained in rigorous detail by Einer Elhauge is THE GROWING PROBLEM OF HORIZONTALSHAREHOLDING. Horizontal shareholders invest across an industry rather than in individual corporations and by so doing they eliminate the function of competition which helps to keep product prices lower. When there is no competition because the shareholders of one company are the same as the shareholders in all companies in an industry, prices can be raised arbitrarily for no other purpose than increasing profit. In turn production decreases.
During the same 1999-2014 period when the probability that two competitors had a large common shareholder went from 16 percent to 90 percent, we have had the highest growth in corporate profits and greatest decline in labor’s share of national income since World War II. Further, the study showing that horizontal shareholding in concentrated markets has driven the gap between high corporate profits and low corporate investment confirms a connection to economic inequality. The reason is that those high corporate profits go to shareholders who are disproportionately wealthy and reflect high prices that are disproportionately born by the non-wealthy, and the lack of corporate investment depresses employment and wages in a way that also disproportionately harms the non-wealthy THE GROWING PROBLEM OF HORIZONTALSHAREHOLDING BY EINER ELHAUGE page 10
In THE GROWING PROBLEM OF HORIZONTALSHAREHOLDING BY Einer Elhauge lays out the case for regulating horizontal shareholding as an antitrust action. The ability to get such legislation passed depends on getting legislatures and administrators into office that are not beholden to Wall Street, a daunting challenge in contemporary politics but no more daunting a challenge than reversing the wealth divide that has advanced to the point that it threatens to rip the fabric of American society apart.
Knowledge is power. It is the role of the media to educate and the responsibility of the public to seek to educate themselves. For better or for worse, we have a new dynamic in the media today. It includes the proliferation of fake news and disinformation as well as knowledgeable independent journalists conveying what they know from every walk of life.
Because of Rank Choice Voting, Maine is in a special leadership position for challenging the entrenched system and because of Judge Lance’s recent court ruling that strikes down as unconstitutional, obstacles to the growth of Maine’s third parties, embedded into our statutes, this is a critical moment when newly opened avenues in Maine’s political culture interact with the entrenched national political culture. At the same time, we have seen a new population moving into Maine. All of this makes for a political culture brewing that is not the typical fare.
This can be an invigorating caucus season.
This is a message from Biddeford- for a Biddeford Green Caucus but It is also an offer to help other areas with their Caucuses so I am passing it along. Who would like to be a caucus convener in Boothbay?
Following are emails sent as a general notice to those with an interest in convening a Maine Green Independent Party caucus.
Benjamin Meiklejohn
Hi all,
I have made initial contact with most of the prospects for caucuses and need some more prospects to expand our search.
Please let me know of any Greens you know of who might be interested in attending a caucus.
Thanks,
Ben
Alan Brown
Thank You for the reminder, Ben…
As we discussed I will be shooting for January 4th 5th 10th 11th
So that we can figure out logistics for a Covid sensitive Hybrid Zoom in Person Caucus…
I will be needing help with phone calls, and or a mailing… hopefully using L2…
I will help others in return so that their caucuses will be a booming success too…
I will be the Guinea Pig Caucus…
As mentioned in an earlier conversation with Ben, I would like to showcase at all caucuses the 2022 candidates, and elected Maine Greens that the electoral committee and others have searched out…
I believe that a database/spreadsheet exists for this purpose…
Cordially,
Alan Brown
Chairperson Biddeford Green Independent Committee
207-283-4700