The Republic continues to hang by a few tenuous threads. As the corporate-based economy continues its insulated 'recovery,' the rest of us muddle through with depressed wages, cratered home values, uncertain career paths, and general free-floating national nausea. In a telling sign of the gulf that exists between the controllers of business and their salaried minions, the most recent Deloitte CFO Survey indicated that corporate chieftains are optimistic about the future, but do not plan on adding significant employee headcounts until revenue gains of 20% are realized.

What does this mean? It means that the incredible upward concentration of wealth has afforded big business a lot of breathing room to weather hard times. Let's remember that the economy has trebled since 1980, but regular households are in the exact same spot as they were in that first year of the Reagan ascendancy. The loot has moved upwards, Gilded Age style, and for a while, the cloud lords allowed the unwashed to purchase a piece of the dream via extra household breadwinners, maxed-out plastic, and cartoon-valued McMansions.

But that overleveraged fantasy is now toast, and large companies have reeled in that portion of the red carpet that used to roll out of the luxury boxes into the slob-strewn mezzanine. Big Bid'ness doesn't need to prop up domestic employment or demand any further than is absolutely necessary to turn a healthy profit. And in today's world of globalized production, large labor surpluses, and tax-haven stashing of cash, the masters of the productive universe are plenty satisfied with the way things are now. And let's not forget that high-flying Wall Street finance, the prime mover of the recent collapse, has emerged virtually unscathed and pure of heart, occupying around 30% of the economic landscape while actually contrubuting less than 10% to overall national productive value.

Ironically, as I covered in my last post, the blame for the Great Recession has now been slight-of-handed off of free-wheeling, unregulated finance, and onto the very central government that prevented full-scale collapse. In this revisionist interpretation, the quick recovery of large corporations is ample evidence of the general health of the business world vis-a-vis Big Gub'Mint. In reality, of course, the horrid federal government pulled the 'business community's' nuts out of the thresher with bailouts, buyouts, trillions in discount-window money, and every other manner of subsidy and tax incentive. The toxic waste and future risk created by the reckless private sphere were sucked up into the federal maw, and then laid at the feet of the American taxpayer, rotting and diseased.

This is the background against which Paul Ryan and President Obama are now playing chicken with their alternate budget proposals. Each side engages in Kabuki finance, pretending that their 10 or 12 or 30-year plans are really something more that just annual placeholder shots in the dark. I've always had a hard time understanding why our national politicians are continually putting forth these long-range scenarios, when it is obvious that every Congress and Administration starts from scratch with a new vision anyway. So what's the point? It is as if every President and Congressional leader has to create the temporary illusion that they are more than just a rented lackey for the permanent Washington power structure. They need to delude themselves that they are more long-lasting than the armies of lobbyists and thinktankers who swarm the Hill decade after decade. So lofty prognostications are made about America in 2050, and about how awesome it will be in that future decade, if we can just enact the benificent budget under consideration. It's all bullshit.

So now we're in one of those narrative dead ends, where each party is squirming around in the same ideological cocoon, selling us the tired shtick that their opponents are so obviously wrong about everything. We've got Paul Ryan and other Republicans pounding the lectern with their 'seriousness,' promising everyone that this time, finally, they will be the ones to succeed in shrinking government, cutting spending, and returning Ayn Randian producers back to their lofty perch. Memo to these GOP true believers: the 'producers' already control everything, and they get plenty of juicy pulp out of the 'parasites' with the current status quo. 

On the 'other side,' Obama and the pseudoliberals promise that their seriousness is the real McCoy. See how 'the economy' is already getting better? That must mean that the adult policies of the current administration are working their magic, even if the bulk of us workers are mired in a perennial state of lagging indicator-ness. 

Nothing good will come out of the current budget battles. Sure, we'll probably get some 11th hour compromise, and each side will be able to posture as the mature ones who softened their hard stances to save Grannie Pureheart from losing her prescription for restless brain syndrome. The conflict will provide a built-in excuse for straying from ideological purity, as well as a rallying cry for raising lots of lucre for the next round of electoral horseraces.

What is also likely, however, is that we'll get a significant rightward movement in the makeup of the federal budget. It will probably not actually shrink very much, because that is not really anyone's goal. But the money will slosh away from social insurance (stupidly and Orwellianly mislabeled 'entitlements') and more toward straight-up pork for defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and Wall Street necromancers. After all, if the John Galts of the world are to be convinced to stay and save us puny, parasitical wage-slaves, we'll have to shovel as much cash as we can into their awesomely-righteous endeavors.