Would you ask your employer for a 30% cut in pay? You have a theory: If you request a 30% cut in pay then maybe your employer would more than make up for your lost income at year’s end with a large bonus, since he’d make more money than he used to. So your employer says: “Sure, that can certainly be arranged. Thanks for asking - that's a brilliant idea! You’re a good loyal employee looking out for the best interests of the company. I'll do you right - count on it!”
Now you know you won't have enough money to pay your bills, so you will have to borrow extensively to pay them and maintain your standard of living. But that’s OK, you will be able to pay all your bills, pay back your creditors with interest, and have a good chunk of cash left over when you get your big bonus at the end of the year. You'll actually come out ahead in the long run.
But alas, your employer doesn’t pay you the bonus you were hoping for. Not this year, not next year, not any year. You are now hopelessly in debt and your future is becoming increasingly uncertain. You consider going back to the boss and asking for your original salary to be reinstated because it’s just not working out for you. After all, your employer has gotten filthy rich as a consequence of your pay cut. He was already rich before, but now he’s mega-rich. He’s become a billionaire as a result of your pay cut. You want to ask him, but you have a sinking feeling he’ll say no and throw you in his doghouse. So you hint around at it without directly asking him, thinking he might come to understand your plight and make it right for you on his own volition. You send up a trial balloon. You lament your sorry situation and comment out loud about how your life is going down the toilet and hope he'll be sympathetic. Well, he picks up on the hint but is haughty and unsympathetic. He confronts you with this: “Hell No! I’m not giving you a raise! Are you nuts? Further, I will not allow you to quit. I want to keep exploiting your hard work and keep rolling in the cash like there’s no tomorrow. I’m not gonna stop until I become a multi-billionaire, and then I'll keep right on going until I become a trillionaire!”
So your employer gets richer and richer while you go down the toilet. According to your employer: “Tough Bananas, chump! It’s a cruel world, ain't it? There are winners and losers in life – I’m a winner and you’re a loser! So go eat cake!”
But you say: "I'm not asking for a raise. It would just be nice if you could pay me what you were paying me before I asked for the pay cut. I'm just asking for my original wage to be restored so I can live".
But here's the problem. Your boss arbitrarily chooses to consider your request a raise, not a restoration of your original pay. He's guilty of twisted, self-serving, pathological thinking. You know it, even if some of your more ignorant, simple-minded co-workers can't see the obvious. They think the bonuses will still come someday, and they'll be better off. They're hopeless idiots - they're not going to lend you any support, so you're on your own. You're powerless to fix your situation. The boss has you and your co-workers bending over a barrel for him. And you know that's a terrible thing, for you and everybody else. Everybody, that is, but the Evil Boss.
There’s a clear analogy here. The lost income is equivalent to dramatic tax cuts over the last three decades which decreased revenue. These tax cuts were the result of an experiment in trickle-down theory. Trickle-down theory held that by slashing taxes for the people, especially for the already rich – it would allow them to hire more workers, thus increasing the tax base. The prosperity achieved by the already prosperous could then be shared by the less prosperous and allow them to become prosperous too. But trickle-down theory backfired badly. Trickle-down economics turned out to be "tinkle-down" economics - with the less prosperous ending up getting peed on by the already prosperous. Those at the bottom didn't end up sharing in the prosperity - instead, as we now clearly see, this policy produced a trickle-up phenomenon. The rich got richer while everybody else, in real terms, got poorer. Real wages and salaries for the bottom three quintiles of the income distribution spectrum have declined and contine to decline. In fact, the decline in the average people’s standard of living seems to be accelerating. The annual median income in the U.S. fell from $52,059 in 2008 to $49,777 in 2009 – a 4.6% decline in just a year. Meanwhile there is an ongoing inflation problem that further decreases the people’s spending power. Incidently, the low inflation numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) do not reflect the real world since they don't reflect the rising prices of food and gasoline and diesel fuel. They do include falling housing values, which dramatically skews the numbers downward. Those who do not own their homes but still have to buy food to survive and gasoline to get to work are adversely affected. And even with those who can afford to buy a home, doing so is not something anyone outside of the housing investor/speculator community is likely go out and do on a regular basis, so housing has no effect on the bottom line of most people’s monthly household budgets. The upshot is this: decreasing housing values are arbitrarily counted in the inflation data while rising everyday living expenses such as energy and food are omitted. Hence, the artificially low inflation figures we see being published by the government.
Consider this: In 1978 there were a lot of rich people – industrialists, CEOs, and Wall Street types, but there were few, if any, billionaires. Now we have over 400 billionaires in this country alone – some worth tens of billions – with most of them beneficiarries of the government’s tax policies. There are hundreds more worldwide – almost all of them beneficiaries of business dealings with America that are often predicated on the importing of labor from America. These government taxation policies are driven by billionaire plutocrats and corporate oligarchs who are operating behind the scenes while surreptitiously using the government as a front. The business community that was supposed to hire more workers because of tax policies they promoted has shipped millions of jobs overseas instead. The corporate oligarchs are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash largely because of their job-slashing policies. This looks good on Wall Street - we see the stock market soaring while ordinary people keep losing jobs to other countries. There’s a profound disconnect there.
So the government (analogous to the employee) took a voluntary 30% pay cut by slashing taxes and creating loopholes that actually reward businesses for outsourcing jobs. There turned out to be no bonus for our hypothetical employee, (increased revenue and prosperity for everyone generated by trickle-down policies), we are drowning in debt (the deficit and National Debt), we can’t pay our bills, and the powers that be, the plutocrats and corporate oligarchs (the boss) that control the government (the company) won’t allow revenues to be increased (analogous to asking for original pay rate from the boss) because they want to become even richer and more powerful (like the boss). In fact, they want to reduce pay (cut taxes) even more for the employees (the government) so the boss can become obscenely rich.
As for our country, we the people must demand that the power be restored to us. This may sound like confused Tea-Publican/Palin rhetoric, but they've been duped into wanting the plutocrats to take it back, thinking the plutocrats will create jobs. This is the exact opposite of what will happen and needs to happen. The rich are already rich enough - it’s time to slow down their juggernaut and pay a little more attention to the plight of the poor and middle class who’ve been badly hurt by recent policies. They've seen their money drained away from them by means of this insideous trickle-up economic system practiced by the government at the behest of the plutocrats and corporate oligarchs who are really running the show.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
THE PARASITES WITHIN US
…If a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. Mark 3:24
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25
These two-thousand year old bromides are as relevant today as they have ever been throughout history.
Currently we have a polarized populace. We have polarized politicians who can’t or won’t work together to address this nation’s almost intractable problems. We have vicious, malevolent hatred being propagated by Americans, against other Americans, with conservative politicians fanning the flames with a torrent of malicious and misleading attack ads paid for by big money interests on behalf of candidates for political office who have nothing of their own merit to run on. It’s a sad commentary on American society when one side tries to herald its accomplishments while the other side bitterly tries to cut them to pieces. We have a president who was elected by a wide margin of the electorate just two years ago but with at who large segments of the right-wing political class and the demographics they represent direct a scathing, visceral hatred. Frankly, I don’t see any way out of this darkness.
For twenty-one of the twenty-eight years between 1980 and 2008 we've had conservative Republican presidents who between them have appointed five conservative Justices to the Supreme Court. These five Justices are Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John G. Roberts. Justices Scalia and Thomas, in fact, are not only arch-conservative but have openly political agendas. Scalia and Thomas attended a recent soiree thrown by billionaire Tea Party financiers David and Charles Koch, a gathering where Glenn Beck was a featured speaker and where “strategies” to commandeer the election with torrents of money to fund attack ads with the end goal to take down the president’s agenda and the President himself were discussed and planned out. Meanwhile, Thomas’ wife Virginia is a Tea Party activist and virulent arch-conservative, which raises the specter of Conflict Of Interest on the part of Justice Thomas!
Interestingly, the Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling in January 2010 that reversed major elements of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law and opened the floodgates for anonymous, unlimited attack ad funding by Big Business, Big Finance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and assorted billionaires such as the Koch Brothers through shadow "non-profit" front organizations was affirmed by the five Republican appointees: Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Alito, and Roberts (no surprise there). The three Democratic appointees serving at the time of the decision, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor, along with Justice John Paul Stevens, a Gerald Ford appointee (now retired), all disented on this decision (no surprize there, either). The Citizens United ruling allows secret funding sources pour unlimited sums of money into the campaigns of their candidates for public office with an eye toward playing a determinative role in American electoral politics. The ramifications of this unfortunate ruling are visible to everyone of every stripe, and the consequences of this ruling appear to have opened the door to the take-over of the government by the radical-right fringe. This is an ominous development, to be sure. We have a plethora of phony “grassroots” organizations with innocuous sounding names such as “American Crossroads”, “Americans for Prosperity” (the Koch Brothers), "Club for Growth",“Citizens United”, “American Action Network”, and (this is a hoot!) “Americans for Job Security”, a Big Business funded organization favoring the outsourcing of American jobs. Another Big Business-funded organization is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wants to see as many American Jobs outsourced as possible. These groups are flooding the airwaves with thousands of attack ads against incumbents of both parties in an attempt to install radical-right zealots into Congress. In fact, over a twenty-four hour interval over the weekend there were twelve-hundred 30 second attack ads against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the three major network TV stations in Las Vegas. That’s one thirty second attack ad for every three and a half minutes on each of the three stations! The scary thing is, these attack ads are in support of Sharron Angle, the far-right, not-too-bright Tea Party ideologue. And the sheeple of Nevada are apparently being overly influenced by this excessive onslaught of negativity, as are the Tea Party sheeple across the country who are apparently planning to vote the Republicans back into power so they can further facilitate the Big Business Agenda of farming their jobs out to China and elsewhere. Moreover, the conservatives aim to crank open even wider the valves of the Big Money Pipeline carrying money from the poor and middle class to the rich and mega-rich. And as this pipeline continues to suck money away from ordinary people and flood the billionaires with ever more billions, and flood even more billions into the multi-national corporations so they can build even more factories in China and fire even more American workers, the specter of class warfare looms large. It makes you wonder, do American voters even have a clue? Are enough voters really that stupid as to think cutting taxes for multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires will coax them into hiring more people and putting them to work at good-paying jobs? They say he who doesn’t remember the past is condemned to repeat it. The last twenty-eight years should have been a lesson. But, alas, the American voters have developed a case of amnesia, they've been duped right straight up out of their underwear, or have been beaten into submission by the ongoing and relentless fusillades of right-wing attack ads dominating this election cycle.
So, we are faced with a virulently polarized society, a society where reason and common sense has no place. And by “common sense”, I don’t have Sarah Palin’s version of “common sense” in mind. Sarah Palin’s inflammatory rhetoric has millions of simple-minded women and men all hopped up and ready to do a “revolution”. If they could only see Palin for what she is, a flamboyant narcissist with a self-serving agenda that reminds one of the political enviornment of 1930s Germany that saw the rise of Hitler. She’s leading the charge against the “elites” (analogous to Hitler's Jews), along with her simple-minded “Mama Grizzly” followers who don’t understand that they’re being manipulated into a self-defeating agenda by the real elites, the billionaires and business tycoons hiding behind the scenes pulling the strings. You have retirees railing against the deficit and backing candidates who will deprive them of their Social Security or unemployment insurance which the working people will need when their job is the next to go. Why can’t they see this? Why can’t they see how America is being destroyed from within by parasitic interests striving only to further enrich themselves at the people's expense? There is no sense of patriotism by these huge businesses, insurance conglomerates, and financial titans. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re being driven by greed, pure and simple. “Greed is Good!” is their mantra. To them, power and control is everything there is. It's the only thing there is. Screw the little people. These interests and their Republican (and sometimes Democratic) stooges in Congress have it all planned out. And thanks to the Republican Supreme Court they’ve taken us down the slippery slope past the point of no return. They keep the people off balance by promising copious job production by cutting taxes for rich “job creators”, knowing all the while that mass job creation just isn’t gonna happen. It’s like a boulder rolling down a mountain, it may be impossible to stop.
So that’s where we are. The sane versus the insane. The thinking people versus the stupid sheeple. The rich versus the poor (and what’s left of the middle class). And, most ominously, the common people versus the Big Business-China co-op. Polarized People and their favorite Polarized Politicians all spewing hate and ill-will. Senator Jim DeMint, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin versus you and me. A house divided, a kingdom divided. What the hell is this world coming to? Armageddon?
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Mark 3:25
These two-thousand year old bromides are as relevant today as they have ever been throughout history.
Currently we have a polarized populace. We have polarized politicians who can’t or won’t work together to address this nation’s almost intractable problems. We have vicious, malevolent hatred being propagated by Americans, against other Americans, with conservative politicians fanning the flames with a torrent of malicious and misleading attack ads paid for by big money interests on behalf of candidates for political office who have nothing of their own merit to run on. It’s a sad commentary on American society when one side tries to herald its accomplishments while the other side bitterly tries to cut them to pieces. We have a president who was elected by a wide margin of the electorate just two years ago but with at who large segments of the right-wing political class and the demographics they represent direct a scathing, visceral hatred. Frankly, I don’t see any way out of this darkness.
For twenty-one of the twenty-eight years between 1980 and 2008 we've had conservative Republican presidents who between them have appointed five conservative Justices to the Supreme Court. These five Justices are Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John G. Roberts. Justices Scalia and Thomas, in fact, are not only arch-conservative but have openly political agendas. Scalia and Thomas attended a recent soiree thrown by billionaire Tea Party financiers David and Charles Koch, a gathering where Glenn Beck was a featured speaker and where “strategies” to commandeer the election with torrents of money to fund attack ads with the end goal to take down the president’s agenda and the President himself were discussed and planned out. Meanwhile, Thomas’ wife Virginia is a Tea Party activist and virulent arch-conservative, which raises the specter of Conflict Of Interest on the part of Justice Thomas!
Interestingly, the Citizens United Supreme Court Ruling in January 2010 that reversed major elements of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law and opened the floodgates for anonymous, unlimited attack ad funding by Big Business, Big Finance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and assorted billionaires such as the Koch Brothers through shadow "non-profit" front organizations was affirmed by the five Republican appointees: Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Alito, and Roberts (no surprise there). The three Democratic appointees serving at the time of the decision, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor, along with Justice John Paul Stevens, a Gerald Ford appointee (now retired), all disented on this decision (no surprize there, either). The Citizens United ruling allows secret funding sources pour unlimited sums of money into the campaigns of their candidates for public office with an eye toward playing a determinative role in American electoral politics. The ramifications of this unfortunate ruling are visible to everyone of every stripe, and the consequences of this ruling appear to have opened the door to the take-over of the government by the radical-right fringe. This is an ominous development, to be sure. We have a plethora of phony “grassroots” organizations with innocuous sounding names such as “American Crossroads”, “Americans for Prosperity” (the Koch Brothers), "Club for Growth",“Citizens United”, “American Action Network”, and (this is a hoot!) “Americans for Job Security”, a Big Business funded organization favoring the outsourcing of American jobs. Another Big Business-funded organization is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which wants to see as many American Jobs outsourced as possible. These groups are flooding the airwaves with thousands of attack ads against incumbents of both parties in an attempt to install radical-right zealots into Congress. In fact, over a twenty-four hour interval over the weekend there were twelve-hundred 30 second attack ads against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the three major network TV stations in Las Vegas. That’s one thirty second attack ad for every three and a half minutes on each of the three stations! The scary thing is, these attack ads are in support of Sharron Angle, the far-right, not-too-bright Tea Party ideologue. And the sheeple of Nevada are apparently being overly influenced by this excessive onslaught of negativity, as are the Tea Party sheeple across the country who are apparently planning to vote the Republicans back into power so they can further facilitate the Big Business Agenda of farming their jobs out to China and elsewhere. Moreover, the conservatives aim to crank open even wider the valves of the Big Money Pipeline carrying money from the poor and middle class to the rich and mega-rich. And as this pipeline continues to suck money away from ordinary people and flood the billionaires with ever more billions, and flood even more billions into the multi-national corporations so they can build even more factories in China and fire even more American workers, the specter of class warfare looms large. It makes you wonder, do American voters even have a clue? Are enough voters really that stupid as to think cutting taxes for multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires will coax them into hiring more people and putting them to work at good-paying jobs? They say he who doesn’t remember the past is condemned to repeat it. The last twenty-eight years should have been a lesson. But, alas, the American voters have developed a case of amnesia, they've been duped right straight up out of their underwear, or have been beaten into submission by the ongoing and relentless fusillades of right-wing attack ads dominating this election cycle.
So, we are faced with a virulently polarized society, a society where reason and common sense has no place. And by “common sense”, I don’t have Sarah Palin’s version of “common sense” in mind. Sarah Palin’s inflammatory rhetoric has millions of simple-minded women and men all hopped up and ready to do a “revolution”. If they could only see Palin for what she is, a flamboyant narcissist with a self-serving agenda that reminds one of the political enviornment of 1930s Germany that saw the rise of Hitler. She’s leading the charge against the “elites” (analogous to Hitler's Jews), along with her simple-minded “Mama Grizzly” followers who don’t understand that they’re being manipulated into a self-defeating agenda by the real elites, the billionaires and business tycoons hiding behind the scenes pulling the strings. You have retirees railing against the deficit and backing candidates who will deprive them of their Social Security or unemployment insurance which the working people will need when their job is the next to go. Why can’t they see this? Why can’t they see how America is being destroyed from within by parasitic interests striving only to further enrich themselves at the people's expense? There is no sense of patriotism by these huge businesses, insurance conglomerates, and financial titans. They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re being driven by greed, pure and simple. “Greed is Good!” is their mantra. To them, power and control is everything there is. It's the only thing there is. Screw the little people. These interests and their Republican (and sometimes Democratic) stooges in Congress have it all planned out. And thanks to the Republican Supreme Court they’ve taken us down the slippery slope past the point of no return. They keep the people off balance by promising copious job production by cutting taxes for rich “job creators”, knowing all the while that mass job creation just isn’t gonna happen. It’s like a boulder rolling down a mountain, it may be impossible to stop.
So that’s where we are. The sane versus the insane. The thinking people versus the stupid sheeple. The rich versus the poor (and what’s left of the middle class). And, most ominously, the common people versus the Big Business-China co-op. Polarized People and their favorite Polarized Politicians all spewing hate and ill-will. Senator Jim DeMint, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin versus you and me. A house divided, a kingdom divided. What the hell is this world coming to? Armageddon?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
THE GREAT AMERICAN BLEEDOUT
On February 10th, 2004, Lou Dobbs’ guest on his CNN show Lou Dobbs Tonight was Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Here’s what he said: “THERE IS A LEGITIMATE VALUE IN OUTSOURCING – NOT ONLY JOBS, BUT WORK”. In his capacity as chief of Big Business’ umbrella organization Donohue’s agenda was to actively encourage American companies to fire their workers and farm the work out to other countries with cheap labor and make even greater profits than they already are.
Donohue went on to say “….PEOPLE AFFECTED BY OUTSOURCING SHOULD STOP WHINING. THE BENEFITS OF OFFSHORING JOBS OUTWEIGHS THE COST”. In other words, get over it. You’re expendable. Stop your complaining. Offshoring your job benefits the company, and that’s more important than the likely fact your life will be ruined.
Donohue recently went to India to meet with business leaders there who were importing American jobs by the millions, and said this: “WE ARE VERY CONFIDENT THAT OUTSOURCING IS HERE TO STAY. IT WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY FOOLISH TO TRY TO STOP THE PHENOMENON”.
Donohue discussed the impact of outsourcing jobs on American workers with this statement: “THE OUTSOURCING DEAL OVER THREE OR FOUR OR FIVE YEARS AND THE TWO OR THREE SETS OF NUMBERS ARE ONLY GOING TO BE, YOU KNOW, MAYBE TWO, MAYBE THREE MILLION JOBS, MAYBE FOUR”.
Are you listening? He’s saying that three or four million hardworking but nameless, faceless working chattel should be thrown off their jobs without a second thought about their fates because it’ll make the shareholders more money and generate bigger bonuses for the CEO and other execs.
There’s a word for this type of behavior: Sociopathy.
A sociopath is someone who acts in complete disregard for the rights and welfare of someone else. A sociopath is someone completely lacking in the human quality of empathy.
In a letter to the Senate earlier this year designed to influence the debate on the small business jobs bill Donohue wrote: “THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME. REPLACING A JOB THAT IS BASED IN ANOTHER COUNTRY WITH A DOMESTIC JOB DOES NOT STIMULATE ECONOMIC GROWTH OR ENHANCE THE COMPETIVENESS OF AMERICAN WORLDWIDE COMPANIES”. Senate Republicans did his bidding and killed the bill with another one of their filibusters.
Now, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been openly promoting the firing of U.S. workers so the work can be done in other countries, it has been spending $75 million on attack ads intended to influence the election. These ads are overwhelmingly against Democratic candidates and on behalf of Big-Business-friendly Republican candidates. The overarching theme is that the Democrats are to blame for the persistently high unemployment levels. There’s a word for this: Hypocrisy. Moreover, these ads are paid for out of the same bank account that accepts donations from foreign companies that benefit from outsourced jobs from America. Some of these companies are state owned, which means that foreign governments are directly influencing the midterm elections in favor of candidates who will implement policies that further facilitate the continued flow of American jobs to other countries, particularly to India and China.
So how can we voters in America turn this around?
We can’t. Why can’t we?
Our political leaders are selected by various Special Interests operating behind the scenes, like, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Other Special Interests such as Big Industry, Big Finance (Wall Street), Big Labor, and other powerful interests such as certain billionaires collectively have a death grip on our political system. We get to choose between two candidates presented by competing interests, and sometimes by the same interests. Either way, whoever gets elected will be wholly owned by those who put up the money to get them elected. Once elected, they go to Washington as stooge fronts for the Power Elite hiding behind the curtain pulling all the levers and knobs.
This business tactic of eroding away our manufacturing capacity and killing millions of jobs for the benefit of the various business tycoons and the investor class is like a termite nest centered on Wall Street with tentacles extending throughout the land. These tentacles are choking the life out of this country and eating away at us from within, all for the sake of runaway corporate greed. Millions of people are out of work and millions more who used to make a decent living are now working at or near minimum wage. In 2008 the median household income was $52,059. In 2009 it had fallen to $49,777. That’s a 4.6% drop in one year. It’s now only a little more than double the poverty line for a typical household of four. At this rate over half the country will be living in poverty in ten years or so. And if the Tea Party gets their way, there’ll be no safety net for the displaced. There may even be rioting and bloodshed if it gets bad enough.
In this upcoming election a critical mass of voters appear to favor replacing incumbents, especially Democratic incumbents, with Big Business-friendly far-right Republicans and messianic Tea Party zealots with an agenda of making things immeasurably worse. Voters are blaming the Democrats for not doing enough about joblessness, when it’s Senate Republicans who have been blocking any initiatives by the Democrats and the President. They're being manipulated by monied interests who are flooding the airwaves with attack ads blaming President Obama for the economic malaise that they've caused! To anybody who’s paying attention, it’s obvious the Senate Republicans and their handlers are trying to destroy the Obama presidency, but the sad fact is that not enough people ARE paying attention. They just don’t know what’s happening. All they know is that they don’t like what they see. They're told that supporting tax breaks for rich "job creators" will be a good thing, and it's Obama who wants to raise taxes and kill more jobs. It’s a brutal mess and somebody has to pay. It’s a mob mentality. This type of environment is reminiscent of the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. They’ve got what they think is the culprit in their gun sights and they’re about to pull the trigger. By the time they figure out it’s a case of mistaken identity, it’ll be too late.
Donohue went on to say “….PEOPLE AFFECTED BY OUTSOURCING SHOULD STOP WHINING. THE BENEFITS OF OFFSHORING JOBS OUTWEIGHS THE COST”. In other words, get over it. You’re expendable. Stop your complaining. Offshoring your job benefits the company, and that’s more important than the likely fact your life will be ruined.
Donohue recently went to India to meet with business leaders there who were importing American jobs by the millions, and said this: “WE ARE VERY CONFIDENT THAT OUTSOURCING IS HERE TO STAY. IT WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY FOOLISH TO TRY TO STOP THE PHENOMENON”.
Donohue discussed the impact of outsourcing jobs on American workers with this statement: “THE OUTSOURCING DEAL OVER THREE OR FOUR OR FIVE YEARS AND THE TWO OR THREE SETS OF NUMBERS ARE ONLY GOING TO BE, YOU KNOW, MAYBE TWO, MAYBE THREE MILLION JOBS, MAYBE FOUR”.
Are you listening? He’s saying that three or four million hardworking but nameless, faceless working chattel should be thrown off their jobs without a second thought about their fates because it’ll make the shareholders more money and generate bigger bonuses for the CEO and other execs.
There’s a word for this type of behavior: Sociopathy.
A sociopath is someone who acts in complete disregard for the rights and welfare of someone else. A sociopath is someone completely lacking in the human quality of empathy.
In a letter to the Senate earlier this year designed to influence the debate on the small business jobs bill Donohue wrote: “THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME. REPLACING A JOB THAT IS BASED IN ANOTHER COUNTRY WITH A DOMESTIC JOB DOES NOT STIMULATE ECONOMIC GROWTH OR ENHANCE THE COMPETIVENESS OF AMERICAN WORLDWIDE COMPANIES”. Senate Republicans did his bidding and killed the bill with another one of their filibusters.
Now, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been openly promoting the firing of U.S. workers so the work can be done in other countries, it has been spending $75 million on attack ads intended to influence the election. These ads are overwhelmingly against Democratic candidates and on behalf of Big-Business-friendly Republican candidates. The overarching theme is that the Democrats are to blame for the persistently high unemployment levels. There’s a word for this: Hypocrisy. Moreover, these ads are paid for out of the same bank account that accepts donations from foreign companies that benefit from outsourced jobs from America. Some of these companies are state owned, which means that foreign governments are directly influencing the midterm elections in favor of candidates who will implement policies that further facilitate the continued flow of American jobs to other countries, particularly to India and China.
So how can we voters in America turn this around?
We can’t. Why can’t we?
Our political leaders are selected by various Special Interests operating behind the scenes, like, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Other Special Interests such as Big Industry, Big Finance (Wall Street), Big Labor, and other powerful interests such as certain billionaires collectively have a death grip on our political system. We get to choose between two candidates presented by competing interests, and sometimes by the same interests. Either way, whoever gets elected will be wholly owned by those who put up the money to get them elected. Once elected, they go to Washington as stooge fronts for the Power Elite hiding behind the curtain pulling all the levers and knobs.
This business tactic of eroding away our manufacturing capacity and killing millions of jobs for the benefit of the various business tycoons and the investor class is like a termite nest centered on Wall Street with tentacles extending throughout the land. These tentacles are choking the life out of this country and eating away at us from within, all for the sake of runaway corporate greed. Millions of people are out of work and millions more who used to make a decent living are now working at or near minimum wage. In 2008 the median household income was $52,059. In 2009 it had fallen to $49,777. That’s a 4.6% drop in one year. It’s now only a little more than double the poverty line for a typical household of four. At this rate over half the country will be living in poverty in ten years or so. And if the Tea Party gets their way, there’ll be no safety net for the displaced. There may even be rioting and bloodshed if it gets bad enough.
In this upcoming election a critical mass of voters appear to favor replacing incumbents, especially Democratic incumbents, with Big Business-friendly far-right Republicans and messianic Tea Party zealots with an agenda of making things immeasurably worse. Voters are blaming the Democrats for not doing enough about joblessness, when it’s Senate Republicans who have been blocking any initiatives by the Democrats and the President. They're being manipulated by monied interests who are flooding the airwaves with attack ads blaming President Obama for the economic malaise that they've caused! To anybody who’s paying attention, it’s obvious the Senate Republicans and their handlers are trying to destroy the Obama presidency, but the sad fact is that not enough people ARE paying attention. They just don’t know what’s happening. All they know is that they don’t like what they see. They're told that supporting tax breaks for rich "job creators" will be a good thing, and it's Obama who wants to raise taxes and kill more jobs. It’s a brutal mess and somebody has to pay. It’s a mob mentality. This type of environment is reminiscent of the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. They’ve got what they think is the culprit in their gun sights and they’re about to pull the trigger. By the time they figure out it’s a case of mistaken identity, it’ll be too late.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
THE STUPID AMERICAN VOTER
RECENT POLLS SUGGEST one third of Americans support or sympathize with the Tea Party movement. That’s scary. That’s downright frightening! What’s even scarier is that more than a third of the voters will vote for Tea Party candidates. They want to “send a message”.
But are they getting the message? More importantly, where are they getting the message from? Sound bites from Sarah Palin’s speeches? Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Fox News? A flood of right-wing Tea Party-affiliated attack ads blaming President Obama and the Democrats for the economic malaise? And if these voters are getting news from other sources, from actual news sources, are they arbitrarily choosing not to believe it? After all, if it isn’t Fox, it’s “lamestream drivel,” according to the Palin Doctrine. And one third of Americans are of this mind! Gadzooks!! We’re all in the toilet, and come election day, unless something changes dramatically, voters will pull the flusher handle and we’ll all go swirling down, down, down, into Toiletland. And once we’re in Toiletland, the first thing we’ll see is a sign that says “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.
Let’s look at the Tea Party movement for a moment. The Tea Party is a vast collection of angry, mostly white, mostly middle aged and middle class or working class citizens who believe the time has come to kick some ass. They blame President Obama and congressional incumbents of both parties for the high unemployment rate, letting companies get away with outsourcing jobs, and for running a socialist welfare state. This movement is largely financed by billionaires, to wit: the Koch brothers, Charles and David, among others. Oceans of money financed campaign ads during the primaries and helped catapult scores of right-wing Tea Party outliers into the general election. They’re influenced by the shrill, pep-assembly rhetoric from Sarah Palin, which is ubiquitous on the cable news networks (can you say “Fox News?”). You can’t get away from it. Far-right minimalists such as Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota are rallying the troops using Fox News (or Faux Nooz, as it's sometimes referred to) as a soapbox. They keep up an incessant drumbeat – “Tax and spend liberals, it’s all Obama’s fault there are no jobs, Washington’s broken and we Tea Partiers can fix it, etc. etc.” And those who have limited access to the full spectrum of information, either by choice or because of ignorance, are gorging themselves on this type of propaganda.
Consider, for a moment, the Tea Party agenda, and the consequences of actually implementing the Tea Party agenda if these people are elected in sufficient numbers to take control of the government. After all, they want to “take America back”. Back to what, the Stone Age? Consider:
Eliminate or privatize Social Security
Eliminate it, and you create enormous hardship, or worse, for seniors and the disabled. For millions of Americans Social Security is the only income they have. Take that away from them and they’ll be on the street. Take it away and you have an enormous hit on spending power. There goes what’s left of the economy! These are people who paid into Social Security their whole working lives! It’s not welfare (well, SSI is, in a sense, but SSI comes out of a different fund). It’s an entitlement. They’re entitled to it! It’s their money! To Tea Party conservatives, entitlement is a dirty word. They think people collecting Social Security are leaching off the American people. But the Social Security Trust Fund, on paper, has a balance of $3.2 trillion – in the black! The problem is that over the years politicians have “borrowed” money out of the Trust Fund to pay for pork, unnecessary wars, nation building, Third World charity, and tax cuts, especially for the wealthy. The Trust Fund now has $3.2 trillion worth of I.O.U.s. in its coffers. Getting rid of it would be unfair to not only seniors, but to everybody who has paid into Social Security. The $3.2 trillion needs to be guaranteed, even if it means adding it to the national debt. In fact, the national debt in effect includes the money in the Trust Fund. But voters aren’t thinking along those lines. They’re stupid.
What about privatizing Social Security? That would simply further enrich Wall Street at the expense of the people. Benefits would be cut and diverted to shareholders and high-level executives through the pipeline that carries money from the common people to the ultra-rich.
Privatize Education
K-12 education is free in this country. Everybody has a chance to have their children educated at no cost if they so choose. Actually, it’s not entirely free – property taxes support public education, but the expense is modest in comparison to private school tuition .Those who have the means may send their children to private or parochial schools and pay the required tuition which is often steep. If free education were replaced by private, profit-making institutions, the spending power of lower-income families will be impacted disproportionately. That’s bad for what’s left of the economy.
Slash taxes, even for the rich
Free-market conservatives tell us that it makes no sense to tax “job creators”, i.e. rich people. “No poor person ever gave me a job” they say, as if that had anything to do with anything. Cut taxes for the job creators and they’ll open up the factory gates and hire millions of workers. That’s what conservative politicians from both parties are telling us. They must take us for the stupid dimwits many of us actually are. The trouble with the Cut Taxes For The Rich theory is that it’s already been tried – by George W. Bush. It didn’t work. Approximately one to three million new jobs materialized during the first seven years of the Bush Administration (as compared to 22 million jobs created during the Clinton Administration). Meanwhile, millions more were shipped to foreign countries with cheap labor and were replaced by lesser-paying service-sector jobs. A lot of spending power was lost, and was only partially made up for with cheaper (and poorer quality) Chinese goods. With less spending power there will be less demand. Job creators will not create jobs just to put people to work. They will create jobs to meet increased demand for their products, if or when that demand materializes. But with so many out of work and with so many who are working making less than they used to, the demand won’t be there. No demand, no jobs.
One thing the Bush tax cuts did accomplish - we’ve gained hundreds of new billionaires during his administration. Income inequality grew substantially, and the money pipeline from the many to the few is experiencing a substantially greater and ever accelerating flow rate.
Slash the size of government
They want to fire teachers, police, firefighters, and other government workers to shrink the size of government. The necessary services they provide would be impacted, and there are no jobs for these displaced government employees to go to. Many who do find jobs will be in a lower income bracket and will have diminished spending power. Result: Less spending power, less demand, and fewer new jobs.
Eliminate Unemployment benefits
Jobs are going overseas at an accelerating pace, and there are a lot of displaced and soon to be displaced workers. Unemployment insurance keeps them in their homes and allows them to spend what little they do make in unemployment benefits, at least for a while. Those lucky enough to eventually find new jobs will be lucky to find jobs that pay as much as their former jobs. The end result: More reductions of spending power, less demand, no job creation.
Balanced Budget Amendment
In a perfect world, we would think the Federal Government, like state governments and ordinary citizens, could live within its means.
Consider this: Imagine you’ve been forced to take a substantial cut in pay – say, 20%. Many workers have had their pay reduced, though not usually by 20%, and it’s caused them hardship nevertheless. To make ends meet people have had to borrow, they’ve maxed out their credit cards and home equity credit, and many have gone under.
So you’ve had to take a 20% pay cut but you can’t borrow a dime. Assume you have no savings. What do you do now? Well, you’ll have to sell your house, if you can, and if you do sell it you’ll most likely sell at a loss. More likely, though, you’ll be in foreclosure because there are no buyers. You’ll lose your house you’ve worked all your life to obtain and furnish. You’ll have to pack the family into some apartment that’ll likely be a dive. Your quality of life and that of your family will be in the sewer.
Here’s the analogy. The government has been slashing taxes for thirty years now, and has been depriving itself of its revenue, or income. It has taken a cut in pay and is not willing to ask for a raise because it’s afraid the boss (the people, especially the Power Elite) might get mad. It has been functioning on borrowed money, including the $3.2 trillion it borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. Meanwhile, the government insists on conducting arbitrary wars and engaging in nation building endeavors – in other countries. This is all more expensive than our government can afford. We can’t even afford to keep on top of our own infrastructure needs, even without a balanced budget amendment. Now, imagine the chaos and extreme hardship when essential services are cut because “we can’t afford them”, but we can still afford arbitrary wars and nation-building. The guaranteed outcome: the economy will collapse catastrophically. There might even be a rebellion. What do you suppose Tea Party maven Sharron Angle will do if she gets elected and gets her way and helps pass a balanced budget amendment and sees her proposed “Second Amendment remedies” exercised against her?
Now obviously, there is really no alternative other than to ask the "boss" (i.e., the people) for a raise. In other words, raise taxes. But that's a problem - raising taxes is political suicide. It's like putting toothpaste back into the tube. Our taxes have been cut to the bone in recent decades in an experiment with trickle-down theory. It clearly doesn't work - in fact, it has turned out to be a case of runaway trickle-up economics. Wealth is being redistributed upwards from the middle class to the wealthy, and even more so, to the super wealthy. The rich and super-rich wield overwhelming power and influence in our political system, so no congressman or senator could or would want to increase revenue by means of higher income taxes. A so-called "fair tax" or "Value Added Tax", in effect a national sales tax, is appealing to the mega-rich because it wouldn't significantly impact them. They have so much money they couldn't spend it all anyway. For them, it would turn out to be much less than income tax. To the poor and middle class, it would be devastating. This type of tax scheme would have a devastating impact on aggregate demand and would thus further decimate the economy, which depends on consumer spending. A fair tax of 23% is being propagated by some Tea Party candidates, by Rand Paul in particular. This is part of the Tea Party agenda, and this is what voters currently appear to support. These voters are being played by the billionaire backers of the Tea Party movement and are, in effect, being talked over the cliff like lemmings by these master manipulators. They're dis-allowing themselves to be informed on these issues. They're just sloganeering and earping up nonsense. To put it bluntly, they're stupid.
Now, I don’t purport to be an economist, but I flatly deny being an idiot. I watch the news, read the paper, and try to be as informed as I can be. Common sense tells me that the Tea Party will wreck the country - or die trying - if voters put their candidates in charge of our government. The system is broken, maybe beyond repair, but with the Tea Party agenda the system stands to be not just broken, but blown to smithereens. Voting outsiders and outliers into office just to spite the corrupt politicians who are currently running the country might make voters feel good for a few minutes. But like a heroin overdose, the euphoria doesn’t last for long, and the final outcome will not be good.
But are they getting the message? More importantly, where are they getting the message from? Sound bites from Sarah Palin’s speeches? Glenn Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Fox News? A flood of right-wing Tea Party-affiliated attack ads blaming President Obama and the Democrats for the economic malaise? And if these voters are getting news from other sources, from actual news sources, are they arbitrarily choosing not to believe it? After all, if it isn’t Fox, it’s “lamestream drivel,” according to the Palin Doctrine. And one third of Americans are of this mind! Gadzooks!! We’re all in the toilet, and come election day, unless something changes dramatically, voters will pull the flusher handle and we’ll all go swirling down, down, down, into Toiletland. And once we’re in Toiletland, the first thing we’ll see is a sign that says “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.
Let’s look at the Tea Party movement for a moment. The Tea Party is a vast collection of angry, mostly white, mostly middle aged and middle class or working class citizens who believe the time has come to kick some ass. They blame President Obama and congressional incumbents of both parties for the high unemployment rate, letting companies get away with outsourcing jobs, and for running a socialist welfare state. This movement is largely financed by billionaires, to wit: the Koch brothers, Charles and David, among others. Oceans of money financed campaign ads during the primaries and helped catapult scores of right-wing Tea Party outliers into the general election. They’re influenced by the shrill, pep-assembly rhetoric from Sarah Palin, which is ubiquitous on the cable news networks (can you say “Fox News?”). You can’t get away from it. Far-right minimalists such as Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota are rallying the troops using Fox News (or Faux Nooz, as it's sometimes referred to) as a soapbox. They keep up an incessant drumbeat – “Tax and spend liberals, it’s all Obama’s fault there are no jobs, Washington’s broken and we Tea Partiers can fix it, etc. etc.” And those who have limited access to the full spectrum of information, either by choice or because of ignorance, are gorging themselves on this type of propaganda.
Consider, for a moment, the Tea Party agenda, and the consequences of actually implementing the Tea Party agenda if these people are elected in sufficient numbers to take control of the government. After all, they want to “take America back”. Back to what, the Stone Age? Consider:
Eliminate or privatize Social Security
Eliminate it, and you create enormous hardship, or worse, for seniors and the disabled. For millions of Americans Social Security is the only income they have. Take that away from them and they’ll be on the street. Take it away and you have an enormous hit on spending power. There goes what’s left of the economy! These are people who paid into Social Security their whole working lives! It’s not welfare (well, SSI is, in a sense, but SSI comes out of a different fund). It’s an entitlement. They’re entitled to it! It’s their money! To Tea Party conservatives, entitlement is a dirty word. They think people collecting Social Security are leaching off the American people. But the Social Security Trust Fund, on paper, has a balance of $3.2 trillion – in the black! The problem is that over the years politicians have “borrowed” money out of the Trust Fund to pay for pork, unnecessary wars, nation building, Third World charity, and tax cuts, especially for the wealthy. The Trust Fund now has $3.2 trillion worth of I.O.U.s. in its coffers. Getting rid of it would be unfair to not only seniors, but to everybody who has paid into Social Security. The $3.2 trillion needs to be guaranteed, even if it means adding it to the national debt. In fact, the national debt in effect includes the money in the Trust Fund. But voters aren’t thinking along those lines. They’re stupid.
What about privatizing Social Security? That would simply further enrich Wall Street at the expense of the people. Benefits would be cut and diverted to shareholders and high-level executives through the pipeline that carries money from the common people to the ultra-rich.
Privatize Education
K-12 education is free in this country. Everybody has a chance to have their children educated at no cost if they so choose. Actually, it’s not entirely free – property taxes support public education, but the expense is modest in comparison to private school tuition .Those who have the means may send their children to private or parochial schools and pay the required tuition which is often steep. If free education were replaced by private, profit-making institutions, the spending power of lower-income families will be impacted disproportionately. That’s bad for what’s left of the economy.
Slash taxes, even for the rich
Free-market conservatives tell us that it makes no sense to tax “job creators”, i.e. rich people. “No poor person ever gave me a job” they say, as if that had anything to do with anything. Cut taxes for the job creators and they’ll open up the factory gates and hire millions of workers. That’s what conservative politicians from both parties are telling us. They must take us for the stupid dimwits many of us actually are. The trouble with the Cut Taxes For The Rich theory is that it’s already been tried – by George W. Bush. It didn’t work. Approximately one to three million new jobs materialized during the first seven years of the Bush Administration (as compared to 22 million jobs created during the Clinton Administration). Meanwhile, millions more were shipped to foreign countries with cheap labor and were replaced by lesser-paying service-sector jobs. A lot of spending power was lost, and was only partially made up for with cheaper (and poorer quality) Chinese goods. With less spending power there will be less demand. Job creators will not create jobs just to put people to work. They will create jobs to meet increased demand for their products, if or when that demand materializes. But with so many out of work and with so many who are working making less than they used to, the demand won’t be there. No demand, no jobs.
One thing the Bush tax cuts did accomplish - we’ve gained hundreds of new billionaires during his administration. Income inequality grew substantially, and the money pipeline from the many to the few is experiencing a substantially greater and ever accelerating flow rate.
Slash the size of government
They want to fire teachers, police, firefighters, and other government workers to shrink the size of government. The necessary services they provide would be impacted, and there are no jobs for these displaced government employees to go to. Many who do find jobs will be in a lower income bracket and will have diminished spending power. Result: Less spending power, less demand, and fewer new jobs.
Eliminate Unemployment benefits
Jobs are going overseas at an accelerating pace, and there are a lot of displaced and soon to be displaced workers. Unemployment insurance keeps them in their homes and allows them to spend what little they do make in unemployment benefits, at least for a while. Those lucky enough to eventually find new jobs will be lucky to find jobs that pay as much as their former jobs. The end result: More reductions of spending power, less demand, no job creation.
Balanced Budget Amendment
In a perfect world, we would think the Federal Government, like state governments and ordinary citizens, could live within its means.
Consider this: Imagine you’ve been forced to take a substantial cut in pay – say, 20%. Many workers have had their pay reduced, though not usually by 20%, and it’s caused them hardship nevertheless. To make ends meet people have had to borrow, they’ve maxed out their credit cards and home equity credit, and many have gone under.
So you’ve had to take a 20% pay cut but you can’t borrow a dime. Assume you have no savings. What do you do now? Well, you’ll have to sell your house, if you can, and if you do sell it you’ll most likely sell at a loss. More likely, though, you’ll be in foreclosure because there are no buyers. You’ll lose your house you’ve worked all your life to obtain and furnish. You’ll have to pack the family into some apartment that’ll likely be a dive. Your quality of life and that of your family will be in the sewer.
Here’s the analogy. The government has been slashing taxes for thirty years now, and has been depriving itself of its revenue, or income. It has taken a cut in pay and is not willing to ask for a raise because it’s afraid the boss (the people, especially the Power Elite) might get mad. It has been functioning on borrowed money, including the $3.2 trillion it borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund. Meanwhile, the government insists on conducting arbitrary wars and engaging in nation building endeavors – in other countries. This is all more expensive than our government can afford. We can’t even afford to keep on top of our own infrastructure needs, even without a balanced budget amendment. Now, imagine the chaos and extreme hardship when essential services are cut because “we can’t afford them”, but we can still afford arbitrary wars and nation-building. The guaranteed outcome: the economy will collapse catastrophically. There might even be a rebellion. What do you suppose Tea Party maven Sharron Angle will do if she gets elected and gets her way and helps pass a balanced budget amendment and sees her proposed “Second Amendment remedies” exercised against her?
Now obviously, there is really no alternative other than to ask the "boss" (i.e., the people) for a raise. In other words, raise taxes. But that's a problem - raising taxes is political suicide. It's like putting toothpaste back into the tube. Our taxes have been cut to the bone in recent decades in an experiment with trickle-down theory. It clearly doesn't work - in fact, it has turned out to be a case of runaway trickle-up economics. Wealth is being redistributed upwards from the middle class to the wealthy, and even more so, to the super wealthy. The rich and super-rich wield overwhelming power and influence in our political system, so no congressman or senator could or would want to increase revenue by means of higher income taxes. A so-called "fair tax" or "Value Added Tax", in effect a national sales tax, is appealing to the mega-rich because it wouldn't significantly impact them. They have so much money they couldn't spend it all anyway. For them, it would turn out to be much less than income tax. To the poor and middle class, it would be devastating. This type of tax scheme would have a devastating impact on aggregate demand and would thus further decimate the economy, which depends on consumer spending. A fair tax of 23% is being propagated by some Tea Party candidates, by Rand Paul in particular. This is part of the Tea Party agenda, and this is what voters currently appear to support. These voters are being played by the billionaire backers of the Tea Party movement and are, in effect, being talked over the cliff like lemmings by these master manipulators. They're dis-allowing themselves to be informed on these issues. They're just sloganeering and earping up nonsense. To put it bluntly, they're stupid.
Now, I don’t purport to be an economist, but I flatly deny being an idiot. I watch the news, read the paper, and try to be as informed as I can be. Common sense tells me that the Tea Party will wreck the country - or die trying - if voters put their candidates in charge of our government. The system is broken, maybe beyond repair, but with the Tea Party agenda the system stands to be not just broken, but blown to smithereens. Voting outsiders and outliers into office just to spite the corrupt politicians who are currently running the country might make voters feel good for a few minutes. But like a heroin overdose, the euphoria doesn’t last for long, and the final outcome will not be good.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
FLUSHING AMERICA DOWN THE TOILET
We hear it every day. Tax and spend liberals are wrecking America. We need to cut taxes even more (never mind that they've already been slashed to the bone). And we must slash or eliminate entitlements (never mind that, by definition, entitlements are something we have coming to us, that we're entitled to, that we've earned by paying into the Trust Fund over the course of our working lives). There's very little mention by the most vocal of the right-wing talking heads, pundits, politicians, and Big Business tycoons on cable TV (Fox News, anyone?) that we just spent nearly a trillion dollars on an unnecessary war and are still flooding hundreds of billions on the building up of other countries while our own country is falling apart. There's virtually NO mention that the Social Security Trust Fund, on paper, has positive balance of $3.2 trillion, but which was stolen over the years - actually replaced by I.O.Us - by politicians to fund pet projects and give massive tax cuts to their rich cronies. Not many people know that - they think the Trust Fund has been used up by beneficiaries.
So that's where we are today, as we approach the 2010 Mid-term Elections amidst a cacophony of accusations and counter-accusations by candidates for Congress, many of which are obvious nutflakes by any sane standard. So how did we get into this mess, this cesspool of hate, rancor, racial and class hatred. Where did it all go wrong?
Back in our heyday, the 1950s, there was massive government spending on things like the Interstate System, the moon program. These programs resulted in enormous benefits to us as a people and country. There was a thriving middle class, much of which worked in the manufacturing sector or in construction, and the top marginal tax rate was 91%. The middle class had plenty of money to spend on things made in the U.S.A and drive nice cars and drive the economy to boot. While taxes were higher, people had more spending power. And despite the high tax rate for the rich, there were still plenty of rich people, although there were few if any billionaires then. Now there are more than four hundred in the U.S. alone, and hundreds more in other countries according to the Forbes Riches List.
So what's changed?
Reagan tax cuts. Bush tax cuts. And then there was NAFTA in 1993 during the Clinton Administration. NAFTA was followed by an assortment of other free-trade agreements with Europe, South America, and Asia which were certain to transfer jobs out of the country. Alan Greenspan’s and Larry Summers’ deregulation agenda during the Clinton years laid the groundwork for the collapse of 2008. Wall Street tycoons such as Summers-dictated government financial policies intended to enrich their cronies on Wall Street and elsewhere. We were told that de-regulated free-market principles would increase competition and lower prices. What we got was collusion by Big Business to keep prices high, not competition. Big business is getting rid of people by the tens of millions. Farming out jobs overseas is great for the bottom line, CEO bonuses, and the investors holding stocks, but not so great for the workers whose jobs have been outsourced. Further, conservative government financial policymakers are deliberately driving the value of the dollar down. That's great for the multinationals and exporters - not so great for the price of gas. When the dollar loses value, oil and other imported goods cost more. More money spent on gas and everything else translates into less money to drive the economy.
The good wages in the manufacturing sector are no longer here, largely because the manufacturing sector is disappearing. Those who have been displaced are now working at lower-tier jobs as convenience store sales clerks, bartenders, etc., that is, if they're lucky enough to even have a job. Since the unwashed masses are not making as much money anymore, they have less to spend. Less money = less demand = fewer jobs.
I believe we have already passed the point of no return on the slippery slope to oblivion. We are already a full-blown plutocracy like that of the banana republics of Central America - we are no longer a true democracy. The rich and powerful determine who we can vote for, they finance the politicians' campaigns, and there is an implicit quid-pro-quo when financing political candidates. They’ll say: “Look, I’ll finance your campaign and get you elected, but then you owe me your allegiance and you will sponsor legislation favorable to my business or industry”. In short, Congress is nothing more than a policy-making front for the titans of industry behind the scenes.
A lot of people can see this, but I'm afraid the knee-jerk idiots will vote into office a bunch of Tea Partiers and ultra-conservatives backed by the mega-rich who have brainwashed large numbers of voters, and these politicians will proceed to further the destruction of our once-great country.
So that's where we are today, as we approach the 2010 Mid-term Elections amidst a cacophony of accusations and counter-accusations by candidates for Congress, many of which are obvious nutflakes by any sane standard. So how did we get into this mess, this cesspool of hate, rancor, racial and class hatred. Where did it all go wrong?
Back in our heyday, the 1950s, there was massive government spending on things like the Interstate System, the moon program. These programs resulted in enormous benefits to us as a people and country. There was a thriving middle class, much of which worked in the manufacturing sector or in construction, and the top marginal tax rate was 91%. The middle class had plenty of money to spend on things made in the U.S.A and drive nice cars and drive the economy to boot. While taxes were higher, people had more spending power. And despite the high tax rate for the rich, there were still plenty of rich people, although there were few if any billionaires then. Now there are more than four hundred in the U.S. alone, and hundreds more in other countries according to the Forbes Riches List.
So what's changed?
Reagan tax cuts. Bush tax cuts. And then there was NAFTA in 1993 during the Clinton Administration. NAFTA was followed by an assortment of other free-trade agreements with Europe, South America, and Asia which were certain to transfer jobs out of the country. Alan Greenspan’s and Larry Summers’ deregulation agenda during the Clinton years laid the groundwork for the collapse of 2008. Wall Street tycoons such as Summers-dictated government financial policies intended to enrich their cronies on Wall Street and elsewhere. We were told that de-regulated free-market principles would increase competition and lower prices. What we got was collusion by Big Business to keep prices high, not competition. Big business is getting rid of people by the tens of millions. Farming out jobs overseas is great for the bottom line, CEO bonuses, and the investors holding stocks, but not so great for the workers whose jobs have been outsourced. Further, conservative government financial policymakers are deliberately driving the value of the dollar down. That's great for the multinationals and exporters - not so great for the price of gas. When the dollar loses value, oil and other imported goods cost more. More money spent on gas and everything else translates into less money to drive the economy.
The good wages in the manufacturing sector are no longer here, largely because the manufacturing sector is disappearing. Those who have been displaced are now working at lower-tier jobs as convenience store sales clerks, bartenders, etc., that is, if they're lucky enough to even have a job. Since the unwashed masses are not making as much money anymore, they have less to spend. Less money = less demand = fewer jobs.
I believe we have already passed the point of no return on the slippery slope to oblivion. We are already a full-blown plutocracy like that of the banana republics of Central America - we are no longer a true democracy. The rich and powerful determine who we can vote for, they finance the politicians' campaigns, and there is an implicit quid-pro-quo when financing political candidates. They’ll say: “Look, I’ll finance your campaign and get you elected, but then you owe me your allegiance and you will sponsor legislation favorable to my business or industry”. In short, Congress is nothing more than a policy-making front for the titans of industry behind the scenes.
A lot of people can see this, but I'm afraid the knee-jerk idiots will vote into office a bunch of Tea Partiers and ultra-conservatives backed by the mega-rich who have brainwashed large numbers of voters, and these politicians will proceed to further the destruction of our once-great country.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
