Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
The more things change, the more things remain the same. It's almost
comforting to see the leisure class (rec.boats) condescending to the working class about Bush's economy. Corporations squeezed all of the productivity out of American workers there is to get. There's nowhere else to scrape obscene profits for the shareholder (shareholder = somebody who does no labor, but profits off of the labor of others). Corporations now must go to third world economies, give Americans' jobs to those who will do it for pennies on the dollar. As soon as those workers organize and demand more, corporations move the business to a new third world country. Under NAFTA, products that used to be made in America went to Mexico. Those same products are now being made in China - Mexicans priced themselves out of Americans' jobs. Outsourcing is a trend that's going to increase unless Congress stops rewarding companies that move offshore, with tax breaks and incentives. Yes, corporations are RECEIVING Americans' tax dollars to give Americans' job to people in other countries. Jobs are also being automated. There will be fewer jobs available and more people wanting work. More competition for fewer available jobs. Even education isn't the solution anymore. Having a higher education will only get a worker so far - China and India value education and support their citizens' education. Even with 90% of their population being peasants, that still leaves 300 million at least as well educated (if not better educated) as Americans, competing for the same jobs. And they work cheaper. September 13, 2004 by the Philadelphia Inquirer 'Ownership Society' is Flawed by Matthew Miller George Bush's "ownership society" - a vision most recently expounded in his Sept. 2 acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention - sounds so fabulous that it's almost a shame to expose it as a hoax. But here are some facts: Forty-eight percent of households today have no stock market holdings whatsoever, either directly themselves or indirectly via pensions or 401(k) plans. Only 40 percent of Americans hold stock (in any of these forms) worth more than $5,000. And of households that do own stock, the least well-to-do 40 percent have portfolios worth $1,800 on average. OK, that was three facts - admittedly taxing the factual capacity of public debate nowadays. But these data, drawn from the Economic Policy Institute's indispensable annual volume The State of Working America, show that easy talk of how "everyone is in the stock market now" couldn't be more misleading. Eighteen hundred bucks in a 401(k) does not a democracy of wealth make. But it does make Bush's phony ownership agenda a close cousin of the Marie Antoinette Diet. Why? Because Bush's proposals mainly involve tax breaks to boost ownership for people who already own everything. For the rest, compassionate conservatism's new subtitle reads: "Let Them Own Cake!" People buy stock with savings. Most lower- and middle-income families today barely earn enough to make ends meet. They're already maxing out on their credit cards to pay soaring health and tuition bills. They're not saving a dime, let alone socking money away in the market. Offering such folks a theoretical tax break to put cash into a 401(k) is a sham. The folks who'll devour most of the extra break are people already well off enough not to need new incentives to save. Draining the Treasury to fund these new breaks thus becomes a double whammy, since it makes it harder to bolster programs such as Pell grants that genuinely ease the burden on ordinary Americans. This reality should be obvious even to the national press, which nonetheless stenographically touts Bush's faux ownership agenda as if it were relevant to most Americans. An honest (as opposed to a cynical) call to create an ownership society would indeed be exciting. But the only way to make such a vision progressive, and give average folks a bigger stake, is to have government top off the savings of people who can't afford to save. Don't take some liberal's word for it; take it from Newt Gingrich! In a conversation the other day, I asked Gingrich about making these ideas work for everyone. For low-income people to share in the benefits of compound interest and accumulate assets, I said, don't you need some kind of redistribution on their behalf to help fund accounts for them? "Yes," Gingrich said simply. "And doesn't that make the way that Bush is talking about this a real charade?" I asked. "No," he said. "It means the next stage is to see whether or not he has the nerve to propose real redistribution." (Now there's an interesting new litmus test for this President, I thought: Real conservatives have the nerve to redistribute wealth!) Gingrich points to Britain, which is experimenting with accounts that assure every child has some assets from day one. Inspired partly by Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott's book The Stakeholder Society (which boldly called for every American to receive an $80,000 stake from the government when he or she reaches adulthood), Tony Blair has introduced "baby bonds." Blair's team is now weighing whether to increase the estate tax to fund these modest stakes more adequately as part of his reelection platform. It's a start. Similar ideas have been floating around the United States at least since Bob Kerrey pushed "Kidsave" accounts in the mid-1990s. Today, Sens. Jon Corzine (D., N.J.) and Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) have a bipartisan proposal along these lines. The ideologically androgynous New America Foundation has been beating the drums in Washington for such innovations. For his part, Gingrich told me he sees such ideas as "the Information Age equivalent to the Homestead Act." He's right. But just as with Lincoln's Homestead Act, a 21st-century ownership society means government has to help those who have little to build something real. As it stands, Bush's version puts a new, pretty-sounding gloss on his enduring economic policy: plunder from above. Surely a President whose personal asset accumulation came from various endowments provided by Bush family friends, plus public financing of the Texas Rangers' stadium, could wrap his mind around government's proper role here if he chose. Matthew Miller is author of "The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love." http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0913-05.htm While corporations have historically been responsible for over 20 percent of the tax burden, today they are paying just over 7 percent. Combined with tax breaks for the wealthy, we are left with an economy in which the middle class is shouldering a staggering load of the burden. Ironically, rather than funding the services most of us rely on, taxes paid by the middle class are going directly into the pockets of the wealthy in the form of tax breaks. And most working families have much more to contend with than taxes. Many employers can no longer provide health insurance; our parents can no longer depend on nutritious meals delivered to their homes; Head Start cannot accommodate enough deserving children; and students know that the president's much-touted $100 increase per year in Pell Grants will not put college within their reach. The president has made his choices, and no matter how drastic the change in circumstance - be it war or recession or his proclaimed "crisis" in Social Security - he refuses to revisit those decisions. Yet - as need permeates the middle class and not just the destitute - it is hard to believe that the American people favor more corporate handouts and endless tax cuts. And whether they live in red states or blue states, whether they worship in churches or temples or not at all, Americans do not want to see their neighbors bankrupted by emergency medical care or watch military families barely scrape by on meager salaries augmented by food stamps. Fairness, after all, is a cornerstone American value. http://yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_17821.shtml |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Access ports in s/s water tanks - best way? | Boat Building | |||
Access ports in s/s water tanks - best way? | Cruising | |||
Access Cardiff Bay | UK Paddle | |||
Dee Access negotiations | UK Paddle | |||
Paddler's Access Network (PAN) | General |