简体中文
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., April 28, 2021. /VCG
**Editor's note: **Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Reflecting more on U.S. President Joe Biden's April 28 speech before a joint session of Congress commemorating his first 100 days, it's clear that the United States is entering a new political paradigm. U.S. politics has for so long been dominated by the thinking of former President Ronald Reagan who once famously said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," while Biden has turned his back to that and moved to a fresh chapter.
As noted by CNN's Chris Cillizza, there was one critical sentence in Biden's address: "My fellow Americans, trickle-down, trickle-down economics has never worked."
With that, Biden uprooted the Reagan idea that the U.S. needs a small government to allow the private sector to continue unabated, undisturbed and ultimately unregulated.
But this isn't just interesting political posturing, it is also backed by data. A study by two British scholars in December 2020 revealed that, indeed, trickle-down economics doesn't work as billed. Though the logic goes that tax cuts for the wealthy and business deregulation will encourage economic growth that will lead to benefits for all, jobs, higher wages and so on, it's just not true.
Echoing what working people have been saying for so long based on first-hand experience, it actually increases inequality and doesn't have "any significant effect on economic growth and unemployment," according to David Hope, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics' International Inequalities Institute, and Julian Limberg, a lecturer in political economy at King's College London.
The U.S. is a monumentally unequal society and in deep political crisis. Both of these things clearly go hand in hand, as Biden and his team clearly understand.
There are also recent real-world examples that show exactly how important government is aside from just managing the economy, namely the COVID-19 pandemic. Former President Donald Trump's laissez-faireapproach to the disease caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans, meanwhile Biden's more heavy-handed federal government approach has overperformed considering how abysmal things were just months ago.
A screen shows President Joe Biden addressing a joint session of the 117th Congress on the eve of his 100th day in office, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., April 28, 2021. /Getty
Cleary, it's not a coincidence that virtually every government that took a hands-off approach to their outbreaks now leads the pack in deaths and cases.
Back to the economic point, we see that social welfare programs have simply worked. They've kept people "whole" in many parts of the world during the pandemic and have so far averted a worst-case-scenario economic crash. Things are by no means good, but they could have been far worse without government support.
In fact, as I've argued previously, the stimulus bills in the U.S. have shown a generation of Americans that their government can and should do more.
Commenting on the second major Trump spending bill in December, I said at the time, "Let's be clear: without this bill being signed, millions of workers would have lost enhanced unemployment benefits, millions of families would have been evicted from their homes and hundreds of thousands of federal government employees would have been furloughed."
Had the Reaganites in Congress had their way, those millions of people would have literally been left out in the cold. The government kept them together – and is still keeping them together.
Moving forward, the government simply must take the lead on our most pressing issues. The climate crisis serves as a good example since so many people have long believed that the private sector will be able to maneuver humanity out of this situation – but that is simply impossible.
Governments can and must lead the charge on cleaning up the planet because no other organization is equipped, legally or practically, to do so and we see where abdication leads. For example, major private sector projects hoping to colonize other planets to escape a deteriorating Earth speak to how delusional the deregulated private sector has become around the issue of climate and how to address it.
None of this is to say that the private sector doesn't have a place. It absolutely does. Private business can be an engine for economic growth that benefits people's material lives and can help reduce friction for goods and services. But since their fundamental drive is profit, they cannot address core issues in the public interest like public health, income inequality or climate change.
Biden said on Wednesday that we have to prove "that our government still works – and can deliver for the people," and there are myriad issues not mentioned in this column where government can and should find its place.
For decades, Americans have seen a disaster unfold in their society due to an abdication by the government. Now it's time to make government the solution.
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at [email protected].)
