The 'Vicious But Brilliant Exploitation' That Drives Right Wing Economics | Portside

The 'Vicious But Brilliant Exploitation' That Drives Right Wing Economics | Portside

Splinter: Do you think the rise in economic inequality is at the heart of our current political insanity?

Lee: I think it is. What’s happened is there has been a really vicious but brilliant exploitation of that inequality to create racial and other divisions within the working class. And that’s been remarkably successful, unfortunately. It’s an age-old thing, and we’ve seen historically that when the working class is divided amongst itself and set to squabbling between immigrants and native-born, and black and white, and Latino and Asian, that’s something that never benefits workers in the long run. And that’s something that we’re seeing now in a really grotesque version.

Splinter: Who’s driving that exploitation? Is it just the investor class trying to enrich itself, or is there more to it? 

Lee: At the end of the day, if you look at who the big beneficiaries are of the recent tax reform bill, it does feel like the investor class not just tolerated Donald Trump, but was complicit in that trend because they saw that there was a personal and class benefit. They couldn’t win fair and square—an establishment Republican like Mitt Romney wasn’t able to win an election, but the toxic sludge of racist, xenophobic, fake populist rhetoric succeeded where the Republican establishment, Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable had failed. 

Splinter: Were you surprised that the tax bill passed, given the fact that it seems to be the exact opposite of the policies that would benefit most Americans? 

Lee: Not really. The basic hypocrisy at the core of the Republican Party is that they give a hoot about the deficit—that there’s any kind of fiscal responsibility. When you have that kind of Republican control of the House, the Senate, and Presidency, and they failed to do everything else they were trying to do, the stakes were so high for the Republican Party that they would have passed almost anything. This particular bill is so egregious, so bad for the economy, so bad for the middle class, so bad for workers, that the key question now is whether that can be made relevant in the next election. 

Splinter: How much of the rise of inequality in America is a result of a political agenda, and how much of it is us being at the mercy of broader global trends like technological change and globalization?