A Grand Unified Theory of Inequality: or, Herman Cain is just Awful

Addressing the various statements by Herman Cain is like evaluating a pigeon based on the Rorschach test of the patterns made by its poop.  What you have to say about his pronouncements regarding whether he is pro-choice or pro-life, or whether he would negotiate with terrorists, say more about you than about the candidate, because, let's be honest: he's making some of this shit up as he goes along, not unlike a pigeon. And you are trying to make sense of it all, rather like a person trying to make sense out of pigeon poop patterns. This says a great deal more about you than it ever could about him.  Because of some of his recent statements, his rapidly-rising stock may see a deflation in the next polls with the Christian Right, who would look at a seeming pro-choice position as anathema to their own views, and maybe if he had any foreign policy wonks at all supporting him, they might by now know better: He has no clue. 

The one thing Herman Cain does come with as a fully-fleshed out policy is his admittedly gimmicky 999 plan, of which he himself has said--he doesn't know how it works.  But it probably works well-enough for his short-term goal of being a GOP also-ran for the purpose of selling books and being a motivational speaker.  It was apparently crafted by his very good friends at Koch Bros.  How much better does it need to be? 

Well, it could be better at not providing a far greater benefit to people who already have oodles of money, while taxing the bejesus out of the poor. It exacerbates inequality, while doing nothing to stimulate business or hiring--if anything, it would kill it.  And when this is pointed out, he comes up with something even more awful--so-called economic "opportunity zones".  Oh, my.  In these areas annoying things like the minimum wage and union protection would be thrown out. In other words--it's an economic opportunity for even more inequality.  His economic advisors might call them "opportunity zones".  To me, they look like ghettos where poverty would be reinforced.  These areas are like little petri dishes to incubate every conservative bad idea since forever--



But there are very good reasons to expect that sort of thing from Herman Cain, by now.  Cain was introduced to the political realm by his lobbying work against the Clinton Administration's attempt at getting universal health care--but that isn't all the lobbying he's done.  He's also lobbied for a lot of other corporatist causes against the public good. 

Among his more absurdly wrong positions has been support for former president George W. Bush's Social Security privatization scheme.  He likened the payment into Social Security to "involuntary servitude" and repeated the canard that African Americans do not receive the same benefits from Social Security as whites do due to lower life expectancy. This is despicably inapt and racialist hyperbole. There is no comparison between applying for a job, getting it, and working for a living at a job one can quit, without being hunted down by dogs and even hanged for deserting, and simply paying a tax for the general welfare--and the involuntary servitude that he intended to invoke with his rhetoric. Workers in the factories, retail outlets and business complexes of the US are not whipped for their infractions against company policy, nor are they owned. They can seek other employment, or even go to work for themselves.  If they must pay into Social Security--it is so that they receive a benefit from the program in return.

But back to his nonsense canard about African Americans not receiving an equal benefit due to lower life expectancy--is that Social Security's fault? If there were some scheme afoot that kept African Americans from access to affordable health care, that insured that they continued to work long hours for shitty pay, and that disregarded their health care needs--my research has not discovered a single instance of Herman Cain ever trying to rectify it.  It's as if he assumes that African Americans simply don't live, statistically, as long as whites because they don't, without ever addressing the word--racism. Which would be a systematic flaw in our "market-driven" society based on purely irrational human biases--which many people have entirely experienced as too sadly real. And no, I am not prepared to accept the systematic flaws that affect African-Americans, for example, or people who aren't college-educated, and render them less-employable, as their own fault.

Is Social Security racist for trying to ameliorate poverty--which for whatever reason, is a side-effect of discrimination in this country?  I'm not seeing it, but then again, Social Security kept indigent poor people in my white family alive so maybe I'm just biased by the privilege of knowing that government programs can be beneficial to some people, sometimes.

I'm white, college-educated, and employed, and I appreciate the social safety net, my union protections, and I can easily understand why they are not just important to "others", but are necessary for me  to feel that I have not just security of a sort, but greater freedom (such as blogging right here and now). I don't think that a system that reinforces inequality does anything to reinforce my sense of being secure--on the contrary, it reinforces my insecurity because in his world, there is no safety net.  There is only more inequality.

But for what it's worth, he's doing rather well in current GOP primary polls, and Rick Perry is even following his lead in crafting a flat tax type plan.  His brand of  economy-killing policies are leading the GOP debate.

I do believe I may take up binge-drinking again.