Panicked neoliberal tools attempt to trigger a war of generations against AOC's progressive counterattack

globinfo freexchange

We were slightly surprised to see such an article title in one of the primary info tools of the global neoliberal regime and financial capital. But the subtitle immediately clarified everything.

When we read the title “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Revenge of the Millennials” of the article in Bloomberg, we thought that we might be in front of a small miracle. We thought that the time has come for some people inside the core of the establishment apparatus to admit that the younger generations have lost dramatically from this brutal system. And so, the time has come to overthrow it, take their 'revenge'.

But no, it was too good to be true.

The subtitle immediately revealed the trick: “The Democrats’ major economic initiatives tend to favor the young at the expense of the old.”

Then, inside the article we read: “Almost every major new economic initiative proposed by Democrats — the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, debt-free college — has a common feature: Unlike most current social programs, it would benefit younger Americans at the expense of older Americans.”

Very few can understand why these programs, and especially "Medicare FOR ALL", will benefit only the younger. And not only that. The younger will enjoy those benefits at the 'expense' of the older. Where are the super-rich in the equation? Why not take a small additional portion of their enormous wealth to finance those programs for the benefit of all generations?

The next paragraph gives a non-answer: “Since the New Deal, America’s social insurance programs have primarily transferred resources from the relatively young to the old. Social Security was designed as a program to support those unable to work, but over time its spending came to be dominated by payments to retirees. Medicaid was intended for the poor, but now mostly pays for medical care for lower-income older Americans. Medicare has always been focused on serving senior citizens.”

And apart from this deliberately oversimplified logic, this 'explanation' also contains serious inaccuracies. Because it is known that the New Deal was primarily funded by the extra taxation on the super-wealthy, the big corporations and the big capital who had actually declared war against FDR at that time.

Try to find a reasonable explanation for the assumption that the proposed social-economic programs will “benefit younger Americans at the expense of older Americans.” You won't find any.

Yet, it is worth to read the 'explanation' about the "Green New Deal": “Likewise, the young have the most to gain from a Green New Deal. First, and most obviously, they are likely to live long enough to reap the benefits of any impact it might have in mitigating the effects of climate change. Second, and more immediately, the Green New Deal is likely to create jobs in the development and installation of renewable energy technology. Both the technical skills and the physical labor required for this work are likely to come disproportionately from the young.”

We don't even know how to label this 'explanation'. First of all, the fact that the older are likely to live less than the younger, doesn't mean that they will not enjoy the benefits of a Green New Deal. A Green New Deal will overall benefit the planet no matter what your age is. And besides, even if we see it clearly from the perspective of cost-gain, as the dominant culture dictates, the older must pay their fair share to the younger for the additional pollution they produced.

The rest of the article is full of neoliberal 'emptiness'.

It is obvious that this is just another typical neoliberal tactic of 'distraction' and 'divide and conquer'.

First, the plutocracy is nowhere to be found in the equation, meaning those who will read the article must be distracted from the key problem of the enormous inequality. The super-rich must be left untouched, they must not pay their fair share to the society. Therefore, they should not be mentioned. As if they live in another planet, in their own separate world, away from the 'pleb'.

Second, conflicts inside the same class between different groups aim to divide the power of the class. In this case, it is clear that the article is part of the establishment's effort to trigger a war between generations.

Notice that the name of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appears only in the title. The symbolism here is powerful: she represents a generation that has been 'infected' by Socialism. The ‘evil’ that must not prevail in the United States, as the older have been 'trained' to believe for decades by the corporate media propaganda.