The economy will not improveThe situation of ordinary citizens will become even more parlous, and government will be forced to "DO SOMETHING!"
That something depends upon which party is in power. Liberals see the mess we're in and blame free market capitalism, ignoring the fact that we haven't seen that rare bird in a hundred years.
Yeah, we had some variants and hybrid strains, but it's not been a free market, but rather a very locked-down and expensive one. Just ask entrepreneurial outsiders trying to pole vault in over the regulatory walls governments have erected at the behest of the insiders. Progressive "solutions" will only make it worse.
Welcome to The Crisis
We are in a crisis, and the progressives see it has their last, best hope. Hence the desperate cry, "The revolution is here!" No, it's not, but progressives will keep asserting it, telling the big lie long enough until it becomes the truth. The Obama campaign, flush with Wall Street Cash and it's own fat cat bankers and plutocrats (Daley, Immelt, etc), will demagogue the Occupy Wall Street protests to its own political advantage
This sums up the Occupy Wall Street agenda pretty well:
But the dominant feature is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, "international finance and loan capital," the system of "interest slavery" in general; the abolition of these is described as the "basis of the programme, around which everything else turns."That was written by Friedrich Hayek in 1933, and he wrote it about Hitler's socialist party.
[...] it is not a proletarian but middle class socialism, and that it is, in consequence, inclined to favour the small artisan and shop keeper and to set the limit up to which it recognizes private property somewhat higher than does communism.
[...] In the case of the wealthier capitalists, state control and restriction of income will leave little more than the name of property, even while the intention of correcting the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals has not yet been carried out.
They aim for modern-day Germany, but their agenda is from National Socialist Germany
It's scary enough that they aim for present-day Germany as their model, where government takes over half of what you make and spreads it around, and puts a lot more rules on you like no gun ownership and mandatory recycling. Imagine paying $6 for a gallon of gas and living in half the space you live in now.
Only our government is not efficient like Germany's, so we will end up performing a sclerotic slide reminiscent of post WWII Great Britain, only without the sharp musical mockery of a Pink Floyd or the cultural parody of Monty Python...
... And we'll continue sliding all the way back to 1933...
Public-private partnerships, with governmental panels drawing up business plans and picking winners and losers will be the norm. Free-market capitalists, libertarians, Christians and other free thinkers will not be marched off to gas chambers; we will instead be either broken to the will of the state or branded enemies of the Brave New Society, unable to find work or participate in the government-controlled marketplace.
Laugh if you want to, but that is where collectivism always leads, without exception. Again, Hayek explains:
The inherent logic of collectivism makes it impossible to confine it to a limited sphere.
Beyond certain limits, collective action in the interest of all can only be made possible if all can be coerced into accepting as their common interest what those in power take it to be.
At that point, coercion must extend to the individuals' ultimate aims and ideas, and must attempt to bring everyone's Weltanschauung into line with the ideas of the rulers. (Hayek - Nazism is Socialism)* - Hat tip to Fuzzy Slippers for sparking this post. I am a Hayek fan but had forgotten his short essay on why Nazism is socialism. Please go read her blog post on this subject here: Fuzzy Slippers - Everything Old is New Again