Yes, It's Still the Economy, Stupid

It's ALWAYS the economy, Stupid.

The media is busy telling us that the parameters of the campaign have shifted. It's now about the economy. What are the candidates saying about the economy? Who has the best plan for the economy? Who can reassure people about the economy?

Well, it's never not been about the economy. But whenever politicians and the media talk about the economy, they use the term in both the most parochial and obfuscating manner possible.

It was, of course, the defining moment and image of Bill Clinton's campaign. James Carvill's slogan served as a reminder to his candidate that whatever Bush Sr.'s superior resume on foreign policy, the country was in a recession and all the Gulf War victories in the world didn't really matter to Joe Sixpack if he didn't have a job.

True enough, as far as it goes.

But this rhetoric conceals the fact that the wars (both Bush Sr.'s and Jr.'s) are about the economy. They are about enriching corporations at the expense of human rights, human life, the environment, and longterm planning about what kind of country we want this to be.

To divorce issues like war and social justice and the environment from "the economy" serves politicians and the media well. Because it ultimately really serves the status quo, and mainstream politics of whatever stripe is really about status quo-ism. So they pretend that "the economy" means that the subprime mortgage market doesn't tank or that people can afford their prescriptions.

It does mean those things. And those things are vitally important. But until we start seeing these economic issues as related to the economic structures that are poisoning the atmosphere, putting workers in unsafe conditions, starting wars, and shifting the tax burden down the social ladder, we're not going to make much progress.

The economy doesn't start and stop with one's own bank account. Pretending that it does only enables the tacit alliance between government and corporations.