Today’s Oregonian carried an interesting commentary piece by E.J. Dionne in its opinion pages. Dionne asserts that the conservative movement and its ideas on the economy are worn-out just as liberal ideas were in the 70s:

…it took until this moment in 2005 for Republicans themselves to realize (even if many won’t acknowledge it yet) that the help-the-wealthy, damn-the-deficits approach doesn’t hold together, either as policy or politics. They are learning that the public doesn’t buy the idea that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains should take priority over providing health coverage and child care for struggling Americans. The tax cuts, it turns out, don’t pay for themselves. The poor have not fared well since the big supply-side tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

As I noted in my previous post, apolitical Americans (Oregonians in the case of my post) are beginning to take notice and they don’t like what they’re seeing. The woman, whom I referred to in my previous post, asked me this: “Isn’t what’s going on called Reagan economics or something like that?” I said, “Yeah, it’s called Reaganomics. Aslo known as supply-side economics.”

What’s of paramount importance here is that this is an incredible opportunity for a birth of new ideas, as Dionne notes:

I’d like to hope that today’s graying of conservatism will invite liberals to a new era of innovation.

States, including Oregon, need to ask themselves, if companies like Intel are getting massive tax breaks at the federal level, which cuts money coming back to the states, should states be granting further supply-side breaks and corporate kickers?

Moreover, if the executives at companies like Nike and Intel understand the fact that in order to attract high quality employees we need a strong infrastructure of excellent schools, health care, transportation, etc., a.k.a the livibility factor, then why do they continue to lobby state politicians, who willingly cooperate, for corporate tax breaks?

Some argue that companies will leave the state if they can get a better deal elsewhere, so we need to stand on our heads naked in order to keep them here. But let’s face it, if Intel picks up and moves to another state, they’ll face the same livibility factor issues due to a weakening infrastructure that they’re facing here in Oregon. They know it and we need to know it.

Progressives in Oregon need to point out that state Republicans like Karen Minnis and Wayne Scott along with triangulating Democrats, among others, are part of the old and tired supply-side movement. But more importantly progressives, liberals and the Democratic Party of Oregon, which is supposed to represent the p’s and l’s, need to communicate a new vision of economics for people like the warehouse workers with whom I spoke the other day. There’s nothing wrong with birthing economic ideas at the state level, which acts as a petri dish. In fact, this is where new ideas should be coming from.

We don’t watch Dallas or Dynasty anymore. We don’t play with Rubik’s Cubes or Pac Man. Duran Duran records are collecting dust in people’s basements. It’s time for supply-siders to come to terms with the fact that like all these other things, they’re so 80s. And it’s time for Democrats to grow up and get over their fear of the JR Ewings of the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2005 at 3:45 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.