‘Symbolism or substance? A look at Biden’s action plan’

My father was a deeply conservative man and he was no fool. As a businessman, he knew that a company needed to turn a profit to survive and grow. And while he understood the old saying “you’ve got to spend money to make money”, he recognised that what it meant was that you had to attract clients into the business and you had to keep them there. He understood the value of advertising and the need to present a welcoming and rewarding environment to those attracted by the advertising.

But my father would have had withering contempt for any hot-air argument that reducing his company’s or his own personal taxes would lead to a surge in investment leading to the expansion of business and the creation of more jobs. Only customers walking in the door with money to spend can do that, his down-to-earth common-sense would have told him. Therefore, he would have seen the mania for tax-cutting for what it was: a bare-faced smokescreen, behind which those who were already well fed gained an even larger slice of the pie at the expense of those who need more than a few crumbs to survive.

If he had lived and absorbed some of my interest in American history, he would have seen and been appalled by what the Americans (and ourselves as Thatcher-lite clones) have done to once-healthy societies. Just before this neo-liberal nightmare began in the 1980s, the ratio of the annual income of a top corporate executive to that of a highly skilled tradesman in the US was 46:1 – a pretty fair margin, you would think, for those obsessed with providing “incentives” towards (financial) improvement. But now it’s about 512:1, which is obscene by anyone’s standards, and also decidedly unhealthy for the stability and sustainability of any society. Throw in all the cost-cutting and tax breaks for those who don’t need them and you have a first-rate existential crisis on your hands.

And that’s why I looked with such interest at US President Joe Biden’s priorities for immediate remedial action, once he got to work in the White House. Vision statements and inspirational verses in Inauguration Addresses are the grist of messianic American politics. But it’s what comes after that defines whether the incoming president has the clear-sightedness to see what actually needs to be done and the determination to do it. Take Franklin Roosevelt, who served as the 32nd US president. His Inaugural Address – “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” – could have been as empty a platitude as any we have heard since, except that he knew the only salvation for an America on its knees was not to give more handouts to the already comfortable, but to take action where it was really needed.

So he rolled up his sleeves. The Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Securities and Exchange Commission pricked the greed-puffed bubble that had brought on the Great Depression. The Tennessee Valley Authority brought light, power and jobs to one of the most deprived areas in the US. The National Labor Relations Act gave working men and women the self-respect they were entitled to by allowing them some control over their working lives. The list goes on, putting to shame so much of what came to pass under subsequent administrations.

So I looked at Biden’s first decisions, my interest pricked by the humanity that suffused his own Inaugural Address. And I saw, as I expected, a First-Hundred-Days-style action plan to come to grips with the Covid-19 pandemic, which had been allowed to wallow on the fringes because of Donald Trump’s political expediency. And I saw Biden’s decision for the US to re-join the world climate-change community in a serious effort to deal with a serious problem, by global co-operation.

If he threw in restoring support to the World Health Organisation, to encourage it to play a constructive – not carping – role towards reining in the pandemic, I didn’t see it. But it would not have surprised me if he had, because what I was watching was the illusion of “America First” stripped bare of its empty rhetoric and ugly undertones, and America re-joining the community of nations to play an essential part. But what I was really looking for was a recognition that the whole ugly manifestation of Trump-ism had found its roots in the ever-widening gulf between the American haves and have-nots, which had been papered over for two generations.

At first, I saw the president-elect handing out food parcels to queues of those whose lives had been decimated by Covid-19 and unemployed (which, surprise, surprise, Tony Abbott would have done in Australia, but his successors?). But such a hands-on gesture could be interpreted as a 19th-century Dickensian response, reflecting the obligation of the well-to-do to the “less fortunate”. In other words, the difference between a privilege and a right.

But then I saw one small glimmer of hope in the frenetic catching up with reality of Biden’s first full day in the Oval Office: to increase the US federal minimum wage to US $15 an hour (having been stuck at US $7.25 since 2009). Not much, many would say, and not enough to live on even modestly, others might add. But, symbolically, it was shouting a truth that has been gagged for the past 30-plus years, that is, the second of the two great commandments of the Christian liturgy: thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Because the two important things to remember about increasing the minimum wage is that it says, first, that all people deserve respect as a basic entitlement and, second, all people should have the right to decide what they spend their own money on. (After all, how can you rid society of the “handout” mentality if you take away people’s ability to make practical, self-reliant decisions for themselves.)

So, in my opinion, Biden’s decisions are a start. It may be only symbolic, but it’s going in the right direction. And it can’t be worse than the lie that has been peddled for decades, that if you absolve the wealthier of their social responsibility then somehow society will be stronger for it.

And, who knows, Biden’s priorities might even rub off on Prime Minister Scott Morrison. So that concern for, and action on behalf of, the have-nots and have-littles might even catch on again in Australia. We should never forget that our small country once stood very large on the world stage as the home of the secret ballot, the living wage and full employment as explicitly stated goals of public policy. What a blast from the past that would be!