Barack Obama is not Jesus Christ

Certainly his election has challenged the superficial trappings of racism. What he can’t do is undermine the systemic racism of US society. The poverty of race is not recent. It was built on hundreds of years of slavery and in more recent times racist inequality. These divisions in the working class suit the ruling class and may explain, partly, the fact that in the six or seven years of economic recovery since the last US recession in 2001 the median annual family income has stagnated or fallen slightly. In all the other booms in the past 50 years, the increase in this figure has been at least 6 per cent, and in the 60s hit nearly 40 per cent.

But I think the blame for stagnating incomes lies with George W Bush as the Commander in Chief of Capitalism. His war on workers saw attacks on wages, the minimum wage, social security benefits and public expenditure. Couple that with tax cuts for the rich and there has been a massive increase in wealth disparity in America under Bush. The rich are much richer; the poor and working class less well off.

Many workers have their main wealth in their home and superannuation. House prices have fallen 20 per cent in the last year. The collapse of the share market has destroyed much superannuation savings value. Obama has no strategy for reversing this wealth destruction.

It is not clear to me that Obama rejects the trickle down theory of wealth creation. In fact I think he believes what’s good for the boss is good for workers. Certainly he is trapped in the logic of the profit system.

Obama will in fact have a more nuanced approach to the trickle down approach. Certainly his rhetoric is about equality of opportunity (yes, I heard his inauguration speech here in Australia at 4am). Such a change would involve massive restructuring of education to ensure poor schools and neighbourhoods received a much greater part of the education budget. It would mean a huge increase in that Budget.

Perhaps Obama will increase taxes on the rich to pay for this. Certainly he has promised increased taxes for those who earn over $250,000. However Obama also sees the rich as the wealth creators.

And opportunity is not reality. How do you rise above grinding poverty and a lifetime of dealing with society’s low expectations of you to make it to Harvard?

Here in Australia for example, free university education did not change the social composition of those on campus. In the main, university has remained the preserve of the rich and the well to do middle class, or their children. Some bright working class kids do make it through. I was one of them. However the preservation of privilege in universities merely reinforces the social and income divide. Recent statistics in Australia for example show that a university education increases income by about 31 per cent.

Health reform is a major Obama promise. Make no mistake. providing for the 50 million Americans presently uninsured is a major step forward. But is that what Obama will do? He must fight powerful, entrenched interests to win this goal. Already he is talking about the reform taking some time. This could be code for backpedalling, or developing some rotten compromise that does not address the real needs of those 50 million uninsured.

How does Obama propose to address the tsunami of unemployment sweeping across America. This tidal wave is beginning to buffet Australia, with predictions unemployment here will rise from 4.5 per cent to 7 per cent by the end of the year. This may be conservative.

Unemployment is already more than 7 per cent in the US and it looks likely it will reach double figures by the end of the year. (This too may be a conservative estimate.)

Obama has developed a stimulus package worth almost $1 trillion. Even bourgeois economists like Paul Krugman argue it is not enough. Krugman estimates lost production caused by the recession is already $2.1 trillion and will worsen.