UsableMarkets

John Authers of the FT writes in this week’s The Long View (emphasis mine):

… Even Wall Street researchers were alarmed three years ago at the extent of income disparities. Aggregate economic data for the US hid the fact that much of the population was effectively in recession.

The collapse of subprime finance, with the wealth destruction it has entailed for the wealthier in the US, showed the imbalances were unsustainable.

This recalled for me the phrase “socialism for the rich.” A quick Google search shows that it’s quite a prevalent phrase, and from Wikipedia we find that the phrase has a rather rich history.

… the phrase seems to have been first popularized by Michael Harrington’s 1962 book The Other America, but he is actually citing Charles Abrams, well-known authority on housing. Andrew Young has been cited for calling the U.S. system “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor”, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who was assassinated in 1968, frequently used this wording in his speeches. Since at least 1969, Gore Vidal has used the expression “free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich” to describe the U.S. economic policies. In winter 2006/2007, in response to criticism about oil imports from Venezuela, that country being under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, the founder and president of Citizens Energy Corporation Joseph P. Kennedy II countered with a critique of the U.S. system which he characterized as “a kind of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor that leaves the most vulnerable out in the cold”. Also John F. Kennedy, Jr. has become known for expressing to large audiences that America is now a land of “socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor”.

Based on President Obama’s inauguration speech, it seems clear that he intends to tackle the problem of inequality, and in particular “socialism for the rich.” To which we can only say: huzza huzza!!

They get it in Ohio

(thanks jmknapp)

~alex