Conservatives are all about big government

Conservative ideology calls for as little government as possible and celebrates the miracle of the efficiencies of competitive market capitalism. From the Libertarian Party platform: “We oppose all interference by governments in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.”¹

However, the actual political program of US conservatives over the past fifty years has been a significant application of big government powers by the wealthy and corporations. They have used the power of the state to change the laws and regulations governing how our capitalist system works.

Here are a few highlights from their application of government power for their own benefit:

• Weakened enforcement of antitrust (anti-monopolization), pro-competition regulations
• Financial deregulation (repeal of Glass-Steagall, deregulation of derivatives).
• Socialization of financial risks – bailouts of the finance sector
• Legalization of stock buybacks.²
• Tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
• Global trade and finance liberalization (NAFTA, WTO).
• Weakening of labor laws and union influence.

The Results

• An economy with highly concentrated (monopolized) markets in virtually every segment. This results in higher prices, lower wages, fewer choices, and less innovation. Competitive capitalism does not exist in the US.
• A finance sector that has doubled in size to 8% of the economy and now takes in over 25% of all profits. This is the sector that produced the worldwide recession beginning in 2008-9.
• Stock buybacks, which were previously legally defined as price manipulation, became legal following regulatory changes under President Reagan. This change has produced a powerful tool to return corporate profits to shareholders and effectively decrease corporate reinvestment in new plants and new products and services.
• The tax cut regime now has the billionaires paying less in taxes than those in the bottom 50% of the population.
• Globalization has shifted manufacturing and other service jobs out of the US to low-wage countries (e.g., China, India, Vietnam, etc.) Millions of well-paid, unionized jobs in the US disappeared.
• Anti-union policies combined with globalization have reduced the portion of workers in unions from roughly 32% in 1970 to less than 10% today. Most of these in that 10% are government workers. This means that union wages no longer play a baseline role for wages in the economy as a whole.
• A huge surge in income and wealth inequality. Since 1978 $79 trillion (79,000,000,000,000) of income has been transferred from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 10%, really most ending up in the hands of the top 1%.³

None of this would have occurred as the result of some natural forces in nature. No, these are the results of conservatives, funded by the rich and corporations, changing the rules of the game. They applied the power of government for their own benefit, all the while spouting platitudes about the wonders of capitalism for the individual.

BTW

Stock buybacks are not small potatoes. My favorite computing company, Apple, has engaged in this practice on a large scale. “Over the last ten years, it has repurchased $604 billion worth of its own stock. For context, that’s about how much the company was worth 10 years ago. Alternatively, it’s roughly the current value of Netflix and JPMorgan Chase combined.”⁴

NB: for context, US GDP in 2023 was $27.7 trillion.