LEGISLATING INEQUALITY OF INCOME AND WEALTH
HOW REAGANOMICS PRODUCES LONG-TERM ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL CHAOS
Welcome to my first contribution to Substack, inspired in part by the excellent “Letters from an American” on this platform by Heather Cox Richardson. Fasten your seatbelts. We’re going for an extended roller coaster ride from the post-World War II period to the present surveying the often-jarring interactions among economic, financial, and political forces. In this long, a bit wonkish, yet foundational piece, we will search for dominant themes, narratives, and root-causes, prominent among them, the gross inequality of income and wealth, and economic and social chaos ultimately produced by Reaganomics. You may have to overcome the Internet-induced shortening of attention spans but will ultimately be rewarded with a clearer understanding of our current predicament. Let’s begin.
Postwar to 1973 view from 30,000 feet:
In the Post-War period from the late 40’s through the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, early Nixon) the division of the growth of national income averaged about 35% going to the top 10% of income earners, leaving 65% to be divvied up among the remaining 90% of income earners. It was a period of shared prosperity, generally strong economic growth with a high industrial component, stable prices, low unemployment, mild recessions, balanced budgets. These post-war economic “best of times,” therefore, could not be said to have contributed to the social turmoil of the period embodied in McCarthy anti-communist hysteria and on the opposite side of the political spectrum, the struggle for civil rights and other burgeoning movements of the Left: Vietnam anti-war, anti-nuclear, women’s liberation, Native American, gay and lesbian, ecological and the farmworkers.
1973 to 1980 saved for later:
I’ll skip the analysis of the years between 1973 and 1980 in this narrative because they introduce a new, exogenous perturbation I’ll cover in a later post: two oil shocks. The first occurred in 1973 and the second in 1979-80, producing long gas lines, raging inflation, strong counter-inflationary monetary policy (i.e. real (inflation adjusted) money supply contraction, sky-high interest rates) and corresponding economic contractions and slow growth, crashing stock and bond markets, and high unemployment, introducing a new word — “stagflation” — into the economics vernacular. Jimmy Carter summarized conditions of the period with a single word: “malaise.”
1980- 1989. Reagan and Reaganomics:
Then in 1980, supported by a cadre of wealthy donors, and guided by the political wizardry of James A. Baker III, along comes Reagan, sunshine and blarney incarnate, proposing “Let’s Make America Great Again,” promising to revive the depressed economy, add millions of jobs and balance the budget with a new brand of economics dubbed Reaganomics consisting of the following three pillars:
· Tax cuts for the rich Reagan predicts will supercharge growth of the economy, by adding incentives to invest in capital equipment, boosting employment, national income, and federal revenues to the point where “tax cuts will pay for themselves,” making up in volume what they sacrifice in margin. Prosperity will “trickle down” to the rest, he said, when the top income tax bracket of 70% is slashed to 28%, coupled with cuts in the capital gains tax. Instead, wages stagnate, federal revenues plunge and federal budget deficits soar, roughly doubling the national debt. G.H.W. Bush, running against Reagan in the 1980 Republican primary, accurately dubs the Reagan tax plan “Voodoo Economics.” The journeyman CEO earning $10 million a year who, under Carter, had to struggle by on $3 million a year after tax, now takes home $7.2 million, vastly increasing the rate at which the fortunes of the rich grow — accomplished with the stroke of the presidential pen.
· Deregulation, Reagan vows, will “unleash” corporate productive potential, stimulating growth and creating jobs. The main effect, however, is to reduce corporate costs, plumping up corporate profits for the benefit of donors, C-Suite execs, and shareholders at the expense of the environment, worker safety and consumer protection. No cost savings are passed on to the workers in the form of higher real wages.
· Military spending nearly doubles, larding more billions on to the budget deficits while further swelling corporate profits, top-executive compensation, and shareholder dividends. Stocks soar, with a nasty hiccup in October 1987.
· Cutting government spending, to further conservative principles of “small government” and “fiscal responsibility,” promoted in 1980 as the fourth pillar of Reaganomics, never materializes. The idea of the tax cuts was to “starve the beast,” forcing spending reductions. Fat chance. Nearly every dollar of government spending has a constituency backed by lobbyists flush with campaign contributions, so do the math. Republicans blame the Reagan deficits on “spendthrift Democrats” who control the House throughout the Reagan presidency (conveniently overlooking the fact that Republicans controlled the Senate). Spending during the Reagan years continued to follow the same moderate upward trendline it had tracked for years.
Things go well for Reagan after 1982 when the “double-dip” recession ends — an economic contraction caused by the Fed’s counter-inflationary response to the second oil shock in 1979-80. The economy surges for the remainder of the Reagan administrations mainly because oil prices collapsed in late 1985. The Fed-induced recessions of 1973-75 and 1980-82, responding to the first and second oil shocks, flatten the demand for oil while high oil prices increase supply. The huge worldwide surplus of deliverable oil thus created causes oil prices to collapse (from $34/bbl. official and as high as $40/bbl. spot in late 1985, down to $10/bbl. in March 1986). The collapse reverses the “malaise” effect of earlier sharp oil-price hikes: inflation abates, and Paul Volker’s Fed eases its tight grip on the money supply. Mortgage rates plunge from a peak of 18.5% during the worst of the 1980-1982 recession to 9% in 1987 in the aftermath of the oil-price collapse. Declining interest rates stimulate economic growth, soaring stock prices and surging employment, second only in the past 5 decades to the corresponding numbers of the Clinton administration. However, despite an average real annual growth in GDP of 3.4% during the Reagan years, workers receive no real wage increases, due mainly to globalized job outsourcing and a new phenomenon, widespread automation, as Apple and IBM introduce the personal computer, launching the era of “distributed computing.”
While rich donors, top management and shareholders prosper, worker compensation stagnates. Therefore, the split of the growth in national income shifts up to 87% garnered by the top decile of income earners leaving only 13% to the rest. Thus begins the largest upward redistribution of income and wealth in history.
Largely forgotten about the second Reagan administration is the added burden on wage earners stemming from the significant increase in FICA tax rates in the mid-1980s, recommended by the Greenspan Commission, to provide surpluses now to fill in the anticipated deficits later when the large cohort of Baby Boomers begin retiring in 2010. Faced with the double whammy of flat wages and higher taxes, households fill the gap between their stagnant wages and rising aspirations for consumption by borrowing, with credit obligingly supplied by the rich who are gathering up all the marbles. Such borrowing sustains growth in aggregate demand and employment with accompanying expansion in capital spending during the “New Morning in America” of the second Reagan administration. Supply-side economists, ignoring the doubling of the national debt, proclaim the triumph of their dogma with nary a nod to the overriding influence of cheap oil, easy money and falling interest rates making it all possible. And so begins a long cycle of aggressive, yet ultimately unsustainable, household debt expansion, the consequences of which would not become evident for two decades.
1988 to 2000, the Bush 41 and Clinton years:
The Reagan-era positive economic and financial trends extend through the G.H.W. Bush years moderately, and Clinton years strongly especially as the Electronic Revolution, giving birth to the personal computer and Internet, kicks into high gear, supercharging the economy and employment. The magnitude of the economic and societal changes created by the Electronic Revolution rivals and arguably exceeds those of the first and second Industrial Revolutions. However, still no real growth in worker wages; and continued strong household borrowing raises debt levels alarmingly.
Both Bush 41 and Clinton increase taxes on the rich, eventually raising the top income tax bracket from Reagan’s 28% to just under 40% with no dampening of economic growth. Quite the contrary: employment and economic growth during the Clinton administrations averaging 3.89% exceed that of every president since Johnson, confounding gloomy predictions of a major recession by Chicken-Little supply-siders — in effect exposing the supply-side fallacy claiming tax rates and economic growth are inversely related.
By the end of the Clinton administration, swelling government revenues (flowing from a strong economy) and reduced government spending (thanks to the peace dividend following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the Gingrich-Republican-inspired Gramm-Rudman welfare reform) produce 4 consecutive years of budget surpluses for the first time in decades. The debate among economists shifts to how the surpluses should be divided. In 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore responsibly proposes splitting them between federal debt reduction and funding the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds, the earlier surpluses of which had been systematically looted to pay current government bills under the “unified budget” concept – another story for a later post. Economists begin wondering what the Fed would monetize to expand the money supply once the national debt is paid off.
2000-2009 George W. Bush:
Here comes Dubya in 2000, elevated to the presidency courtesy of Justice Scalia and a minority of voters, saying, “It’s your money.” In 2001 he cuts tax rates in a reprise of Reaganomics, a proven vote-getter, with corresponding deregulation and increased military spending to underwrite not one but two long, unproductive wars of choice in the wake of 9/11. The combination of reduced tax rates and anemic economic and employment growth coupled with expanded military spending creates skyrocketing budget deficits, dispelling the supply-siders’ myths that tax cuts pay for themselves by supercharging economic and employment growth.
Income inequality grows: For the first 7 years of the Bush 43 administration, before the wheels come off the wagon in 2008, the split in the distribution of the growth of national income shifts again, this time with 98% going to the top decile of income earners, leaving 2% for the remaining 9 deciles to scramble after — virtually a clean sweep for rich Republican donors redoubling their fortunes with huge under-taxed increases in executive compensation, expanding shareholder dividends and higher stock prices. However, still no growth in real wages, prompting continued sharp increases in household borrowing through mortgages, creating a housing bubble. Consumers use the rising equity in their homes as ATM machines. Total private debt reaches and exceed levels last seen immediately before the Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, sending up a huge flare duly reported in my erstwhile newsletter, Cyclical Investing (1984-2008) warning subscribers in late 2007 of an approaching recession or worse.
When mortgage rates rise to 7% in 2007 from their relatively low level around 5% reached in 2004, households cannot meet the higher payments, hand the keys over to the banks and the housing market collapses in 2008; the stock market crashes and the economy spirals into a tailspin we call the Great Recession. Unemployment soars, prompting the emergence of an angry extreme-right-wing Tea Party in 2009, creating a political uproar, legislative gridlock and social division persisting to this day.
Fittingly, the Crash of 2008 and Great Recession occurrs on G.W. Bush’s watch, leaving no doubt as to who is responsible for the calamity. An effective Republican messaging machine succeeds in deflecting extreme right-wing anger away from the true architects of the disaster, namely rich Republican donors and their handmaidens in Congress lusting after ever-greater wealth and power. Instead, Tea Party anger is misdirected to the nebulous, yet popular notion among Republicans of an “overreaching” bureaucratic government and “welfare freeloaders” among the “undeserving poor” vilified earlier by Reagan as “welfare queens.”
Unlike Hoover in 1929, who, for the 3 years remaining in his term of office, had to endure the grim consequences of a decade of Republican policies inflating private debt in the “Roaring Twenties,” Bush left office ignominiously 4 months after Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke rushed before Congress with their financial “Mayday” declaration in September 2008. While under Hoover the nation had to endure 3 years of growth-crushing austerity before FDR could unleash much-needed Keynesian stimulus, Bush’s prompt departure opened the way for “Hope and Change” in the form of the nation’s first Black president promising a stimulus package.
2008-2009 Barack Obama:
So Obama, the agent of change, comes into office in January 2009 as Bush 43 slouches back to Texas unlamented to begin a new life as a portrait painter. The economy begins a long, sustained, moderate recovery beginning the month after Obama takes the oath, spurred by confidence in the new administration’s promise of change, and stimulated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cutting middle-class taxes, extending unemployment benefits, and funding public works projects. In addition, Obama bails out the auto industry, saving jobs and winds down the war in Iraq, paring related defense spending. His signature accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, extends health insurance to 20 million previously uninsured Americans. As Jason Furman, Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers observes in the Washington Post, September 26, 2016: “Under Obama’s leadership, Congress expanded the earned-income tax credit, increased the child tax credit for working families, and created a new tax credit for students and families paying for college — steps that together benefit 24 million households annually. At the same time, Congress reinstated Clinton-era tax rates for high-income Americans, restored the estate tax and applied Medicare taxes to the investment income of high-income households, putting unearned income on greater parity with earned income. All of these changes have increased the tax code’s progressivity.” However, laudable as they may be, these measures could not overcome relentless trend increasing the upward redistribution of wealth and income launched by Reaganomics. During the portion of the Obama-led recovery from 2009 to 2012 the share of the growth of national income garnered by the top decile grew to 118% (i.e. all of it plus 18% more) while the remaining 9 deciles experienced a corresponding diminution of 18%!
A study of the distribution of wealth conducted in 2011 by Harvard’s Ariely and Norton asked a sampling of Americans what they believed to be the ideal and estimated distribution of wealth owned by the top 20% tier of the population. The answer: about 32% ideal and 59% estimated. The actual: an astounding 85%, almost 3 times the ideal and about 1.44 times the estimated! Click here for an excellent Infographic prepared by a Youtuber by the name of Politizane depicting the startling scale of wealth inequality in America. The massive upward redistribution of wealth legislated during and after the Reagan administration conferred upon the U.S. the dubious distinction as the most unequal society among the major advanced nations.
Burdened by the Bush legacy of the Great Recession and the trauma inflicted on credit markets by its cascading defaults, the economy under the Obama administrations manages only sluggish, 2.1% annual average real (inflation adjusted) growth and moderate 8.6% total employment growth. With Republicans in Congress adamantly refusing to permit more than a token increase in the top marginal tax bracket, swelling budget deficits exceed a total of $6 trillion during his administration, the highest in history up to that time.
Social aftermath of the Obama administration:
Newton’s third law of motion (for every action in nature there is equal and opposite reaction) applies to politics as well. Ominously, therefore, the reality of an administration led by a Black president and cabinet comprising a diversity of races, cultures, creeds and genders alarms, unites and energizes an extreme-right Republican base of mostly white male, non-college-educated, working class, largely rural, intensely evangelical descendants (in body and/or spirit) of the Confederacy, angered by and fearful of being replaced by and subordinated to the growing segment of the non-white population and their liberal white colleagues embodied in the leadership of the Obama administration.
Aroused by the racist, xenophobic, misanthropic, violence-inciting pronouncements by the 2016 Republican presidential candidate, amplified by the extreme-right Fox News propaganda machine and a mind-boggling alt-right online echo chamber spewing hate, bigotry, misinformation, mistrust and hostility toward Obama, “the libs,” and the federal government, Trump’s minions are emboldened to openly exhibit the worst attributes of human nature, aptly described as “deplorable” by Hillary Clinton, in her unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2016.
2016-2021 Trump:
Now comes Trump in 2016, the natural, malevolent outgrowth of Reaganomics, appropriating Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” and promising to “Drain the Swamp,” and root out the “Deep State,” riffing on the seed of distrust in the federal government first sown back in the earliest days of the republic, flowering in the South before, during and after the Civil War, and germinated again by Reagan in the 1980s when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Like Bush 43, Trump resurrects what Paul Krugman aptly calls, “Zombie Economics,” the etymological cousin of G.H.W. Bush’s “Voodoo Economics.” Trump successfully campaigns on the tried-and-true, vote-getting Reaganomics formula of tax cuts (ostensibly “across the board” but, in fact, mainly for the rich donor class, this time including corporations empowered to donate copiously by SCOTUS Citizens United decision in 2009), plus deregulation and bloated military spending (supposedly to refurbish, renew and refit a military on which nearly half the discretionary federal budget has been lavished for decades, nearly exceeding the combined military spending by the rest of the world, most of which are allies). To these donor-pleasing Reaganomics staples, Trump’s added promise of “conservative” (pro-corporation and anti-abortion) judges to the federal bench seals the support of the more traditional elements of the Republican Party, who then find themselves, like Ahab, bound to the whale of an uncontrollable force of nature, about which more in subsequent posts.
As was the case with Bush 43, Reaganomics fails to stimulate the economic vigor and strong employment growth promised by undaunted supply-siders: In the first 3 years of the Trump administration, 6.5 million jobs are added, 1.5 million fewer than the 8 million added during the Obama administration’s final 3 years. Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, shows a loss of 16.8 million jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, the massive drop largely attributable to epidemiological mismanagement by an administration resolved, for political reasons, to dismiss the seriousness of the disease and to hamper mitigating policies (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, avoidance of crowded events, vaccinations). The moderate 2.5% real annual GDP growth recorded in Trump’s first 3 years in office before the pandemic roughly equals the 2.43% rate recorded in Obama’s final 3 years, revealing no acceleration attributable to Trump tax cuts. The Covid-related recession in 2020 virtually erases the gains previously made during the Trump administration. Not surprisingly, given his tax cuts and expanded military budget, Trump’s cumulative deficits total about the same as Obama’s $6+ trillion incurred when digging out of the Bush 43 Great Recession. Trump’s economic record, like that of Bush 43 before him, once again supports the conclusion that tax cuts have little or no effect on growth, serving only to enhance the fortunes of rich donors, C-Suite executives, and corporate shareholders.
More important than Trump’s economic record is his chaotic socio-political legacy, exhibiting contempt for the Constitution, laws, norms, customs, Congress, courts, the independence of the Department of Justice, political opponents, insufficiently loyal supporters and virtually anyone or any institution standing in the way of his insatiable desire for greater acclaim, wealth, and power. To all appearances his legacy remains a work in progress in the service of a desire to return to power in 2024, embodied in the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol and kept alive by “The Big Lie,” endlessly repeated and believed by a majority of his supporters, alleging that the 2020 election was “stolen” and that Trump “won the election by a landslide.” Trump’s tactics veer into illiberal territory heretofore uncharted in U.S. presidential politics, but familiar to dictatorships throughout history — another theme ripe for exploration in future posts.
I defer to Robert Kagan, a conservative, foreign-intervention-minded neocon, former Republican whose clear-sighted summation of Trump’s threat to the Constitution and republic appeared in the Washington Post four days ago, titled “Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here.” Essential reading that begins: “The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.” More to follow on this topic.
Biden, January 2021 to the present:
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Biden wins the presidency in 2020 with a majority of 81,284,666 votes and 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 74,224,319 and 232, respectively. Now 8 months into his presidency, it is obviously way too early to evaluate Biden’s economic, social and legislative accomplishments. Some encouragement can be drawn from the strong 6.5% growth of GDP in the second quarter of 2021 accompanying his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. However, widespread expectations of a return to pre-pandemic normalcy this summer are derailed by a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths attributable to the new Delta variant of the virus.
Unlike Trump, who passed on responsibility for organizing the distribution of vaccines and PPI supplies to the states (leaving them to bid against each other) Biden takes the lead. To date, 55% of the population (182.5 million) are fully vaccinated and 64% (212 million) have received at least one shot. The adult vaccination rate is 66.2% and for those 65 and older, the rate is 83%. However, there remains a significant number of Trump supporters unwilling to be vaccinated or wear masks for political and/or religious reasons, along with others hesitant to receive the vaccine, fearful of side effects, and a variety of other reasons, many of whom, falling ill, overcrowd hospitals and strain the nation’s health-care resources. They also create a pool of people where variants of the disease can thrive, some potentially vaccine resistant, all of which portends a prolongation of the pandemic for months, and perhaps years to come. Undeservedly, Biden takes the hit in the polls for his management of the crisis.
A revival of inflation associated with Covid-related supply-chain disruptions; problems at the southern border; and, despite the largest airlift in history totaling more than 123,000 evacuees, an unfinished evacuation of U.S. citizens and collaborators from Afghanistan have bedeviled the administration. Predictably, Republicans pounce on these problems with undisguised schadenfreude.
The Biden legislative agenda, presently consisting of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package and $3.5 trillion package to expand the nation’s safety net (both packages spread over 10 years) remain stalemated in political wrangling between wings of the Democratic party and unyielding resistance from Republicans. Meanwhile, the issue of raising the debt ceiling is again before us, with Republicans threatening to filibuster, posing the risk of a government shutdown and default. More to follow.
TO SUMMARIZE:
In Reaganomics, we have a textbook illustration of how legislated inequality of income and wealth produces menacing economic, financial, and social chaos. With 40 years of hindsight since the Reagan Revolution began, the overriding economic outcome of Reaganomics is indisputable: The rich grow stupendously richer, the poor remain mired in poverty and the middle-class marks time. The social outcome is one of rising discontent within the majority of the population precluded last 4 decades from enjoying the economic fruits of progress in a world undergoing a technological transformation creating wealth on a scale even greater than the 19th and 20th century Industrial Revolutions.
For wealthy donors and corporations, the calculation is a no-brainer: donate millions in campaign contributions to hijack the political process to receive billions in tax relief and profits swollen by government contracts and corporate costs reduced by deregulation. Examine every indicator of economic inequality and you will find the point of inflection favoring the wealthy coincides with the implementation of Reaganomics, the basics elements of which survive to this day: tax cuts for the rich donor class, bloated military spending and deregulation.
Working class households, on the other hand, shut out from enjoying the fruits of economic growth in the form of higher real wages, sustain their American Dream and the U.S. economy for a time with cheap credit obligingly supplied by the rich. I say, “for a time,” because eventually middle-class borrowers, crushed by the weight of debt, default massively, crashing the economy and financial markets, as in 2008, with corresponding job losses.
Accordingly, the beleaguered United States electorate finds itself divided on racial issues between two segments of society with competing, incompatible views of democracy and the balance between the private and public sectors:
The “liberal” Left, ranging from moderates to social activists, embrace a diverse population served by blend of a regulated private economy and an active state dedicated to “social and economic justice” and the wellbeing of the general population, whose leaders are elected through the democratic process in free and fair elections.
The “conservative” Right, is now largely co-opted by a minority of angry white supremacists, many of whom are Christian evangelicals (with the grudging yet passive acquiescence of the Republican political establishment in Congress afraid of alienating Trump’s violence-prone base). This minority base fears an expanding, diverse population, implying what they call “demographic replacement,” loss of the power and privilege whites have enjoyed since colonial times. To reclaim power, they are willing to jettison democracy through state-ordered gerrymandering, voter suppression, state legislature overrides of the popular vote, and intimidation and replacement of election officials with Trump loyalists. This minority Republican base supports Reaganomics, against their best interests, swayed largely by culture-war issues (abortion, gay/lesbian rights, immigration, etc.) and the mischaracterization of Democrats as “Marxist communists/socialists” by a relentless and effective Republican messaging machine.
What are the future economic consequences of inequality? With the basic elements of Reaganomics still in place, we can expect more economic calamities like the Great Depression of the 1930s and Great Recession of 2008, to be duly anticipated and reported in this space. The surge in housing prices and accompanying rise in mortgage debt should be a reliable leading indicator of the proximity of another significant economic contraction.
What are the future social consequences of inequality? Domination by an oligarchic ruling white elite dedicated to the preservation of its power and privilege at the expense of the general wellbeing, implying a lack of political responsiveness to change during major economic transformations. History tells us such rigidity leads to economic calamity, social discontent, chaos, and political upheaval resolved by revolutions — peaceful, if we are lucky, as we were in 1932 with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or violent as occurred in colonial America between 1776 and 1781, France between 1789 and 1815 and mid-19th century America between 1861 and 1865.
These potential outcomes will hopefully prompt thoughtful readers to ask: “What’s to be done to avoid violence and promote peace, constitutional order, and shared prosperity?” This question opens an essential theme — one of many — requiring further exploration and analysis in future posts, namely, the reforms needed to reduce the present extremes of inequality, ranging from absurd concentration of wealth to grinding poverty, while preserving market mechanisms; competition; private property; the sanctity of contracts; the rule of law; and incentives to work, save, invest, and innovate. Stay tuned.
P.S. If you are interested in the complete, unexpurgated version of this narrative, complete with graphs, up through the first Obama administration, read my book, The Predicament – How did it happen? How bad is it? The case for radical change now! Available in Amazon Kindle (https://amzn.to/3tTMrpz) I also encourage you to browse my blog posts dating back to 2009, transferred from another platform to Substack. Finally, if you think well of the idea, leave a comment, share, and subscribe by clicking the corresponding buttons.