We can't go back to 1787

ANSWER: True, but the Constitution was written when the economy was based on small family farms and small supportive rural towns employing small production and service businesses, such as general stores and buggy and harness businesses, and the like.

AUTHOR: "(These) have been slowly supplanted by calls for security, class warfare, excessive regulation and the equality of outcome.”

ANSWER: In the past 150 years, since the Civil War, monster financial powers have arisen, controlling financial markets, followed by massive production organizations which were absorbing and replacing family factories and farms and dominating the economy, rivaling the "peoples government” in power. And President Theodore Roosevelt, at the turn of the last century, realizing this, installed regulatory agencies to hold the "Robber Barons” in check.

The economy was moving into larger production units, making smaller factories vulnerable, economically unsustainable and absorbed by the larger units. For example: Recently, for several years, our own Oracle has bought out or competed to death an average if one small dot-com business a month and the 90 percent of rural population in our land began moving into interdependent large urban communities.

At that point in history, how workers were being treated became an issue that caused organized labor units to form to protect themselves. It is the height of naiveté to believe that skilled workers, with scores of years of service to one company, can be fired or downsized and be able to just go out and create work for themselves, a la the Founding Fathers dreams other than, perhaps, to operate one of the corner apple stands of the Great Depression. Ergo, "class warfare” is inevitable in the modern economy.

Just try to open or save a "mom and pop” store or business in this era of supermarkets and Walmarts, or save those few family farms that have not been absorbed by large agribusinesses that are now collecting over 90 percent of the subsidies intended to save family farms during and after the Great Depression.

AUTHOR: "The passage of stimulus acts, bailouts, government takeovers of two U.S. automakers, and the health care overhaul prove that our movement away from 1776 has accelerated.”

ANSWER: The greater involvement of government has been to save, not destroy our economic system, despite what Rush Limbaugh preaches. It has been dragged in when, in this era of enormous productive units, it fails the common workers.

The truth has been, indisputably, that each time there has been a growth of government it has been where the public has voted for parties that have supported and established such and has been when the economy, the factories, the financial systems and the economic systems have gone through a bust cycle and bad things began happening to good people. The first was during the Great Depression. And, in this era of the Great Recession” where for lack of Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and other social programs, this country would have gone into another total depression.

The Republican "Party of No” has been disingenuous in fostering the impression that there were free bailouts and takeovers of two U.S. automakers. These have been "LOANS” to help them from collapsing and, in the case of autos, putting thousands of supporting supply companies and their workers out of business. Repayments have already commenced and the report is to the benefit of the U.S. Treasury of $5 billion of interest to date.

AUTHOR: "Passage of the health care bill has sparked a revival of small-government thinking, causing many to predict significant Republican gains in Congress this fall.”   

ANSWER: The health care reform was not promoted to answer larger government yearnings. Ten years ago, health care was 10 percent of GDP; a year ago, 16 percent and by the time the bill was passed it became 17.3 percent, devouring the GDP and leaving tens of millions unable to get the insurance coverage they needed to be able to meet the bills. Administration by insurance companies were running from 20 percent to 35 percent of premiums while Medicare was coasting along a 3.5 percent.

AUTHOR: "Despite some short-term success, this small-government revival is doomed to fail.”

ANSWER: Absolutely correct! Unless one able to assure that there will be no more economic collapses (due mostly to the greed of the financial institutions) there will continue to be more government interventions and regulations with the support of the voters. And, unfortunately, I do not see that ceasing during my lifetime. That is why financial regulations are being lubricated so easily through the Congress with the support of an angry general public.

AUTHOR: "The depressing truth is that the only way to regain the full measure of those freedoms proclaimed in our founding documents is for our current federal government to completely collapse under the weight of its own excesses.”

ANSWER: That will happen only if the Reagan "laissez-faire” policy remains in place promoting more economic busts in which the financial institutions are able to gamble recklessly with and lose "other peoples’ monies” and still be able to collect fees for doing that. Every time that happens, expect more government intervention and growth in size.

AUTHOR: "Often, one carefully articulated analogy can succinctly convey a very complex idea. In our case, that analogy is ‘addiction.’ Over the past hundred years, we have slowly allowed a monstrous system of dependence to develop until nearly every citizen relies upon government money, and thus is an addict.”

ANSWER: That is absolutely ridiculous. During the Great Depression, most citizens were humiliated if they needed to rely upon welfare. And, even today it is only about 4 percent of the GDP, while farm and corporate subsidies (welfare for the wealthy) march on unimpeded. There is no monstrous system of dependency. Citizens pay into Social Security and Medicare as insurance institutions. It is the national government, Republican, as well as Democratic that is delinquent.

AUTHOR: "This has come about because the hard logic of the Founders has been replaced by the seductive ease of emotional arguments. All too often, the debate is over not if government should do something, but what it should do.”

ANSWER: This has come about because the hard logic of the Founders was based on a small agricultural and shopkeepers’ economy, not massive financial entities.

When citizens lose jobs and security through no fault of their own and can’t find footing in a colonial type of economy, they are going to go to government to save them. So, whatever other analogies this writer used for the rest of his article, that is the direction this, or any other such land, is going to go, not because one would like or desire that, but because it is the reality with which we need to deal.

Yes, there is corruption in the political system, but no more than in the large institutional economic system. And, no country or state can go bankrupt and "hit bottom,” even Japan and Greece. We will work ourselves out of it, in some fashion.

Sad, but true. Relying on the felicitous intentions of the Founding Fathers is simply impossible, over 200 years of industrialization, mass farming and technology later.

It’s always more pleasant and inspirational to moralize and preach about the intentions of the Founding Fathers. But these are not the hard realities with which we need to deal in this era of political pie-in-sky appeals to the voters.

Keith Kreitman has been a Foster City resident for 24 years. He is retired with degrees in political science and journalism and advanced studies in law. He is the host of "Focus on the Arts” on Peninsula TV, Channel 26. His column appears in the weekend edition.