Consequence of the New Deal? The New Deal belongs to almost a century ago, and it represented just a brief exception in the history of the US regime. The rest of the time, the USA regime has been practicing no holds barred ultra-capitalism with close to zero social policies to balance them out. Of all developed economies, the USA has consistently been the one to feature the least amount of social welfare measures.
After WW2, the US regime quickly reverted back to unfettered capitalism and did away with the heritage of the New Deal. Ever since the 1980's and the triumph of the Chicago and Austrian schools of neoclassical economics, this madness has reached new heights (despite a relative relaxing of the doxa of monetary rigor during the last two decades).
Current dysfunctions of the US economy have nothing to do with macroeconomic policies implemented some 90 years ago. They are a consequence of more recent policies which are anything but socially-oriented. On the contrary, these policies mark the epitome of free market thinking, enhanced by a steady increase in the relative weight of the financial sector over the real economy.
It's capitalism in its wild, dog-eat-dog form that has reached a dead end. This is the face of American-style capitalism in 2022:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html
If increasing numbers of US citizens can no longer afford proper medical treatment, if increasing amounts of middle-class Americans need to go to Mexico to be able to afford a dental prosthesis, it is not because of the US government's expenditures for public healthcare (which happen to be minimal in international comparison anyway) - it's because these expenditures are way below the levels the should be at.
There is zero justification for the wealthiest country on earth to treat its people in such a manner. And the misery is certainly not a consequence of social policies, because the USA happens to be one of the developed countries that spends the least on social welfare.
It has nothing to do with communism. Germanic "barbarians" who crushed the Roman legions in 9 AD were communist. Native Americans were communist.
Communism means: no state authority, no public institutions, no money, no paid work and no enslaving salary, no private property, no professions, no organized education (another superstructure tailored to serve the interests of the capital), no division of knowledge into separate scientific disciplines, no education system dispensing this sectorial knowledge, no organized institutional religion, and so on and so forth.
Literally worlds apart from any existing polity since the advent of so-called civilization several millennia ago. Even so-called communist states of the former Soviet bloc were nothing but state capitalist entities if viewed from a proper Marxian angle (the notion of "Marxism" is an absurdity, Marx himself in one of his famous correspondences with Engels explicitly stated he was no "Marxist" and suggested that anything he wrote was implicitly known to every worker, and deeply inscribed in their guts).
The Islamic Republic's economic policies do not even constitute socialism. Iran is an example of a
mixed economy. Basically still a free market economy, but where the most undesirable consequences of capitalism are moderated by social welfare measures.
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This is key. The Islamic Revolution was carried out under the banner of social justice and the rights of the disinherited, the mostazaf'in. What is more, unregulated capitalism is not compatible with Islamic ethics. A system like America's, where the top 1% own more than 32% of the nation's wealth, where social inequalities are constantly on the rise, where the contrast between rich and poor is mind-boggling and where the downtrodden are left to survive in the most abject conditions despite the over-abundance of wealth at the national level, is not conforming to the teachings of Islam.
The wealth of the top 1% increased by $6.5 trillion last year, mainly driven by soaring stock prices and financial markets, according to the Federal Reserve.
www.cnbc.com
No, the Islamic Republic is never going to regress to US-style, wild capitalism. Doing so would represent treason against the most basic principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
This does not mean that certain aspects of Iran's economy cannot be reformed or adapted to evolving circumstances. For instance, increasing direct handouts to the poor in exchange for cuts on subsidies to specific products which otherwise would be smuggled out en masse, or avoiding to pay subsidies to the rich who don't need them, these are sound and admissible policies. But never shall the IR settle for an uncontrolled type of market economy.
Liberals (reformists & moderates) in Iran are bent on introducing exactly that sort of an ultra-capitalist economic order and to minimize state intervention in the economy up to American levels. Needless to say, whatever pressures exist on the poor would be multiplied several fold if Iran began liberalizing her economy to a significant degree. The notions of wealth "trickling down" in a savage capitalist economy, of an "invisible hand" auto-regulating markets, or of masses being lifted out of poverty thanks to adequate education and training to adjust them to the requirements of the job market are mere myths. Nothing can replace well thought out, governmental social welfare programs.
On a sidenote, as long as the massive propaganda and psy-ops campaign of the zio-American empire is targeting the Iranian people, the latter are not going to be able to properly evaluate their objective social-economic situation in light of prevailing international standards, and will always complain more than they should considering the fact that they have it much better than citizens of comparable nations. Whether Iran liberalizes her economy or on the contrary spends more on social welfare, nothing will change in this regard, since the subjective perceptions of the Iranian public will continue getting skewed by the enemy's colossal brainwashing enterprise.
However, this does not mean that the IR should forego its duty to ensure decent living standards for the poor thanks to governmental regulation of markets.
en.m.wikipedia.org
www.bnnbloomberg.ca
www.bloomberg.com
www.e3g.org
-Travel vlog in Isfahan
