[Dialogue] The Politics of Greed

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 by TruthDig <http://www.truthdig.com>  

The Politics of Greed 

by Molly Ivins 

 

"Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting
richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers-this is
Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts."

AUSTIN, Texas-I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum
wage at $5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and
nasty Republican move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages
since last the minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its
own salary in the dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does
the same with the minimum wage, quietly killing it. 

Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer
and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers-this is Bush
country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts. 

According to the current issue of Mother Jones: 

-- One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income. 

-- Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any
one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent-37 million Americans-are
officially poor. 

-- Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000
and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are
saved $42,700. 

-- In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, compared those who point out such
statistics as the one above to Adolph Hitler (surely he meant Stalin?). 

-- Bush has diverted $750 million to "healthy marriages" by shifting funds
from social services, mostly childcare. 

-- Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with
disabilities by 50 percent. 

A series of related stats-starting with the news that two out of three new
jobs are in the suburbs-shows how the poor are further disadvantaged in the
job hunt by lack of public or private transportation. 

Meanwhile, for those who have been following the collapse of the pension
system, please note a series in The Wall Street Journal by Ellen Schultz
taking a hard look at executive pension obligations: 

-- "Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension
obligations in the United States, an average of 8 percent (of large
companies). Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's
pension approaches $100 million." 

-- "These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't
distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial
findings." 

-- "As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions of
regular retirees-which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years-can
mask a rising cost of benefits for executives." 

-- "Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid until years from now,
drag down the earnings today. And they do so in a way that's
disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated
assets." 

It seems to me that we've seen enough evidence over the years that the
capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like
communism-it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the
greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And
voices like The Wall Street Journal's editorial page encourage this
mentality by insisting that any form of regulation is bad. But for whom? 

It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less
fair-"justice for all" seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans
have rigged the "lottery of life" in this country in ways we don't even know
about yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules
are worse. The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an
inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won't
see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years,
but it starting to affect us already. 

Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is "Who Let
the Dogs In?
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400062853/commondreams-20/ref=nosim
> " 

C 2006 TruthDig LLC, Inc. 

###

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060712/e43cd21a/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 6731 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060712/e43cd21a/attachment.gif