Hail, Caesar! takes the ironist’s position on religion, economics, and Hollywood but not without first revealing the affinity between all three, that is, substantively, beyond the realization that each requires some degree of faith. While ironism may leave a bad taste with those who adhere to foundations, the film’s social critique is clear enough. At one reflexive point, a member of the communist screenwriters group, The Future, tells us that it was not uncommon to sneak progressive themes into the post-War films of the late forties and early fifties. The Christianity was never so understated. It didn’t have to be during the McCarthy Era. When we meet the great Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse (Bluthal), anachronistically looking older than he would have in 1951, his wisdom grounds what could easily be the Coens’ lampooning of all things Red in something that should be taken seriously: if film has contributed to capitalism’s one-dimensional man, then perhaps film can do something about it. Even after the kidnapped and enlightened screen idol Baird Whitlock (Clooney) is momentarily slapped out of it by production head Eddie Mannix (Brolin), he delivers his final lines at the crucifix with such conviction, with such passion, that all of “Hail, Caesar!” believes those lines, too, that is, until Whitlock flubs “faith.” And then, just like that, Whitlock, crew, and audience are pulled from the dream. The Coens’ ironism is the stuff of privilege, as most ironism is, yet we’ve heard the message: screenwriters are exploited, studio wealth is concentrated, and movies are partly to blame. That Mannix chooses to remain in the biz after being offered a more lucrative and easier position at Lockheed Corporation is telling not to mention ironic. There is still more good in the production of a bad film than in the artifice of political reality.

If we show you the numbers, if we present the history that proves beyond any doubt that what you call Obama’s killing of the middle class is in reality due to economic policy implemented long before Obama’s presidency and certainly before Obamacare, will you reconsider your political affiliation?

We’ve not met many Republicans and Libertarians who will change their voting habits when presented with facts. This inflexibility suggests that Republican and Libertarian politics are really rooted in racism, classism, and, yes, greed. Maybe even stupidity, the elephant in the room.

Case in point: 97% of the scientific community say climate change is real, and nearly as many argue that we must move away from fossil fuels immediately (if it’s not already too late). According to Chomsky, “The remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal.” Still the majority of Republicans won’t budge. They either refute it outright or prefer to play global politics (e.g., Rubio). Most are indebted to Big Oil and Coal.

Why not Libertarianism (Rand Paul et al.)?

There is no market without some political body to ensure its ostensible freedom. As the Invisible Committee recently put it, “We have never seen any money that was not attached to a political order capable of backing it” (To Our Friends). Even the roll-back neoliberalism of deregulation and, to quote Jamie Peck, the roll-out neoliberalism of “‘market conforming’ regulatory incursions (public-private partnerships)” represent the state’s necessary involvement, with legislative oversight, in the market. History has shown that profit-driven infrastructure and social programs are always exclusionary. Consider the 48-million in the U.S. without health insurance. And look at the most recent outcome of “small government,” the Great Recession, a “period in which more than eight million Americans lost their jobs, nearly four million homes were foreclosed each year, and 2.5 million businesses were shuttered” (Northwestern U. Institute for Policy Research).

More obvious is the problem with the very idea of freedom. Whose freedom? Your experience with free market capitalism may not be the same as the millions and millions worldwide who are dispossessed because of it. See Mumbai or Sacramento.

We don’t want to spend time defending Marx’s notion of communism, in part because Marx spends little time on it, but you should know that Stalin, Mao, and Castro did not preside over communist societies in the Marxian sense. There is no collectivization defined by Marx that would bring the 30-million mass starvation in Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Don’t look for Stalin’s Great Purge and countrywide executions in Marx’s Capital or Manifesto. You’ll find a closer example of Marx’s communism in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.

While you’re summoning Stalin and Mao to make the case against communism, you might also look into our colonial slave trade, Gilded Age and Robber Barons, Jim Crow, Great Depression, Vietnam War, Iraq invasion, NAFTA, sweatshops, casualized and informal economies, and subprime mortgage crisis, all of which are produced by and for capitalism.

Nor do we want to correct your understanding of socialism. Our Swedish friends will tell you how splendidly socialism works in their country. Zero homeless, as we understand it, and excellent healthcare and education. U.S. socialism is at least as old as Keynes, and without programs such as the New Deal, millions would have perished because of capitalism. One must admit that this kind of socialism ultimately protects capitalism–class relations–which then makes the programs necessary in the first place. Isn’t this how philanthropy works? (Zizek)

But why is capitalism and not government the cause? Why does government both permit capitalism and rescue it? That’s right, the exact opposite of the conservative, Republican, and Libertarian view.

Capitalism–the entire history of capitalism–is fraught with contradictions and crises. What the recent, happy Uber example misses, though it’s there in its very wording, is that the “freedom” to choose Uber is really the freedom of part-timer Uber to undersell its full-timer taxi competitor. The Uber strategy of cheap rates (inexpensive labor) while satisfying its new customer, displaces an entire labor body who depend on driving for their livelihood. (Isn’t this logic what conservatives rail against when it comes to illegal immigrant labor? “They’re stealing our jobs!” Oh, but Uber is legal, so it’s all good in this instance?) As one critic put it: “That’s the genius of crowd sourcing: everyone loses (except the billionaires), but not by enough for anyone to notice. As long as uber has enough part-time drivers who are just doing it for beer money, they can take everyone for a ride (in more than one sense) without anyone getting upset.”

Have you followed the contradiction?

This apparent freedom, the competition that drives capitalism, as in the case with Uber, has now reduced the amount of money to be returned to the market, e.g., taxi driver higher pay is lost to Uber driver lower pay. As David Harvey suggests, this disciplining of labor (a contradiction of capitalism) begins as early as the late 1960’s, with the relaxation of immigration policy worldwide (immigrants prove to be an easily exploitable body of labor for capitalists). Then in the 1970s and later in the 80’s with Reagan-Thatcher, one finds wage repression, union busting, automated technology, flexible or part-time hiring, and off-shoring (more cheap labor). Here, the contradiction was temporally resolved with credit–everyone got credit cards to make up for lost wages. This credit scheme, like the post-WII GI suburbanization of the U.S., makes individuals beholden to banks, another kind of slavery. In addition to the disciplining of labor, Republican-driven deregulation enabled monopoly capitalism and the concentration of wealth in the form of big banks, big retail, and big media–there are now only six media groups! What does that suggest about our news source? Oh yes, trickle-down economics proved to be a tremendous lie that benefits the very wealthiest. See link below.

All of this takes form well before Obama:

“Federal Reserve President Paul Volcker unscrupulously stanched the flow of inflation, Ronald Reagan broke the PATCO strike, and policymakers abandoned full employment as a central policy objective. Wages stagnated, fringe benefits eroded, and, with the looming threat of outsourcing or unemployment, workers were dragooned into submission.” (“The Failures of Neoliberalism”)

We’re not here to say Obama is perfect. Obama, after all, saved the big banks and was exactly what Wall Street wanted. He’s also pushing for his own kind of NAFTA in TPP. But Obama inherited a tremendous debt from Bush and, from his very first day in office, the whips and chains of GOP racism. Obamacare has been an ethical and pragmatic attempt at universal health care that is (1) based on Republican policy and (2) completely stripped down and revised in an effort to appease (work with) Republicans. Obamacare is not the reason for class disparity or the concentration of wealth. It’s not the reason for monopoly capitalism or our current finance regime. The crumbling of the middle class, instead, begins in the late 1960s and then in the ‘70s with the rise of neoliberalism as an economic and cultural dominant. Neoliberalism, in turn, gets its political force through lobbying and corporate influence in Congress.

Hence, this is why Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who represents positive change within capitalism–he recognizes where change must begin. There is no exaggeration when we say that Sanders is the greatest presidential candidate we’ve seen in our lifetime. He has consistently voted on the right side of things, and he cares about you. 

http://www.faireconomy.org/trickle_down_economics_four_reasons