ACLF comment

The question is: Can a result in the US elections change the economic model of this country? What significant aspects of the economical and political situation in the globe can it change?

There are two main aspects to be discussed in my opinion: imperialistic wars and welfare state. And I’m not sure any of the two candidates can change a lot in any of this two aspects. Some superficial things can change, but America is still an empire built on its industrial-military complex, so it needs these wars to feed it, and several wars have been started by the USA with a democrat as the president, so in my opinion this won’t change. Maybe US foreign policy can be superficially less agresive, but presidents don’t have the power to go against the economical interests that propel these wars and foreign policy in general. Bush is not the most powerful man on earth, he’s just the manager, the public face, of the people that own the country. (I am not talking about conspiracy theories here, just saying that money talks) The second aspect is welfare. Here, you can think: well, democrats are usually more keen on spending a little bit more to help the poor, etc. But, again, I don’t think any of this is significant. Hillary Clinton promised she would re-structure the US health system, help to reconstruct it after what Reagan did. And what happened? Corporations lobbied, lots of money were thrown to “convince”, “sponsor”, “support” the representatives of the democratic party in the congress (including Hillary, who got a ton of money from pharmaceutical corporations), and none of these promises came true.

Is there a difference between democrats and republicans, then? Well, yes, but it’s not very big. You may have more political correctness, affirmative action (which doesn’t change social inequieties in my opinion), or maybe a bit of better separation of church from state (which is a good thing) but not much else.


How can things change? Well, in my opinion this depends on the relative strength of the working class in comparison to the owners of the world. In the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc., the USSR (with all it’s miseries) was still very strong, socialims was a menace to the rich in the western countries, and so we had the welfare state as an answer to this: you just couldn’t give people less than this, or they would revolt. This explains the rise of labour in the UK that muppet was talking about, in my opinion, as well as similar parties and movements all around the globe.

With the capital counter-offensive of the 70s, 80s and 90s, this was destroyed. THAT is the reason why the labour party now looks like another conservative party, the democrats are just like the republicans, the socialists in france are like Sarkozy but with good manners, etc. There is no need to offer a better alternative 'cause the poor people of the world have lost the (relative) power they had, so anything can be imposed on them. If this changes again, we can expect a better standard of living for the people around the world again. If not, then in my opinion the future looks quite somber.