This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
And to make things even worse, Corporate America has made out like thieves from big tax cuts in various forms and their ability, especially under this administration, to exploit legal loopholes and take advantage of lax tax law enforcement. So although the official corporate tax rate is supposed to be 35%, most corporations never pay close to that amount. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations pay less than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are the lowest they've been in 60 years. In addition, many of the wealthiest companies often pay no tax at all and some of them actually get large rebates. They're added to the already large subsidies most large companies get, otherwise known as corporate welfare or socialism for big corporations and the rich and "free market capitalism" for the rest of us. That's also apparently called "the American way."The bottom line of Bush administration fiscal policy has been huge budget deficits caused by these unfair tax cuts plus big spending increases (off the books) to fund two ongoing illegal wars plus the new Office of Homeland Security that alone costs $40 billion a year that we know about. So far these policies have fueled overall economic growth and big corporate profits as it did in the 60s and early 70s. But at some point the bills come due and must be paid, although apparently there's no plan to do it. This is a recipe for economic trouble or worse down the road. The lesson is always the same that the price for good times (however gotten or for whose benefit) that were too good or for reckless (or fiscally irresponsible) behavior that was too reckless has always been the same: the day comes when you "gotta pay the piper." Herb Stein, Richard Nixon's chief economic advisor, said the same thing in his memorable dictum that "Things that can't go on forever won't." It's called a day of reckoning but those least able to cope when it comes (which it will) will be the same ones cheated by this administration's tax policies.
Because of the length of my review and eagerness to cover as much of the book as possible, I won't list David's solutions that he enumerates at the end of each chapter. I'll just say, he's on the mark and that a government working for the people and not the privileged few and corporate giants would carefully consider them all and implement most or all of them. Sadly, today and under this administration there's little chance of that happening unless we force them to.
The minimum wage in this country is $5.15 an hour, hasn't been raised since 1997, and is now at the lowest point it's been since 1949. The people earning it and no more might get along fine if they have no dependents,
don't mind not eating much, enjoy camping out year round, love old tattered clothes, never get sick and are able to educate themselves. For the rest of us, that income level is well below the officially stated poverty line that no one can live on but which is artificially kept low for political reasons. That situation is a metaphor for the average working person in the US who, adjusted for inflation, now earns less than 30 years ago even with modest annual increases.
David points out the widening gap between low wage earners and the affluent. In my article I had slightly different data than David and will share it with readers. In 2004, I wrote the average CEO earned 431 times the income of the average working person. That was up from 85 times in 1990 and 42 times in 1980 at the beginning of the Reagan years and the Republicans rise to dominance. David and I also used a different figure on what the average CEO now earns annually. He noted $9 million a year and my number was $14.4 million (mine likely included bonuses and/or stock option benefits not in David's figure) in 2001 and rising - plus huge supplemental benefits from SERPS (Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans) that effectively increased their income by half again and all the other special perks corporate executives get but the average working stiff never does. Some companies even pay the income tax for their top executives. I described all this in one section as the US being the unthinkable and unmentionable - a rigid class society and one becoming more extreme all the time.
But along with stagnating wages, essential social services are being cut, especially since Bush took office in 2001. That too is part of the plan to transfer wealth to the rich from the rest of us. It's created a crisis in some areas like vital health insurance needed at all times but crucial to have in the face of the rising cost of health care services and less of them being provided for the needy (and to those of us like myself on Medicare) by a government intent on fighting wars, helping the rich get even richer and destroying the social safety net including the pillars of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So-called "free trade agreements" like NAFTA and CAFTA have just made it worse. These and the alphabet soup of other trade agreements were sold to the public in the countries adopting them as a way to grow their economies and increase jobs. The result years after implementation has been hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and the realization that these plans were never intended for that purpose in the first place. They were and still are plans for the US and dominant Global North nations to be able to craft a set of binding trade rules overriding the sovereignty of all member states to benefit giant corporations at the expense of working people in those countries. It's worked like a charm, and the terrible carnage it's caused is proof positive. Instead of creating jobs in the US and other Global North countries as promised, jobs have been outsourced or exported to low wage countries including many thousands of higher-paying manufacturing and high tech ones. Even a low-wage country like Mexico has suffered as jobs once sent there have since been lost to even lower-wage paying countries like China, Bangladesh and Haiti. And Mexico's small farmers have been devastated by US heavily subsidized agribusiness that's driven many thousands of them out of business and has done the same thing in India and elsewhere.
The result in the US is services, like jobs at Walmart and McDonalds, now account for nearly 80% of all business while manufacturing has declined to about 14% and total manufacturing employment is half the percentage of total employment it was 40 years ago and falling. Our low unemployment rate the Labor Department reports monthly only disguises the damage done. In the view of some economists, if the rate today was calculated the same way it was during The Great Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% of the working population, the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the most recently reported 4.7%. The current calculation method includes part-time workers who work as little as one hour during the monthly reporting period. It also excludes discouraged workers who wish to work but who've stopped looking because they can't find jobs.
As he does in all his chapters, David goes on to note and explain the myths and lies the public is told to hide a bad and deteriorating situation concluding again with a set of sensible solutions unlikely to be adopted unless the public fights for them.
Chapter Three: Jobs - The Good Ones Are Vanishing and the Poor Ones Don't Pay Enough or Provide Needed Benefits
In this chapter David goes into more detail on what he discussed in the previous one under wages. He provides lots of ammunition to show how much trouble we're really in. One example was from University of California researchers who estimated in 2004 that "up to 14 million American jobs are at risk to outsourcing." An even more stark assessment came from Gartner Research that predicted as many as "30% of high-tech jobs could be shipped overseas by 2015." If they're right, does that mean that formerly high-paid software engineers will now be ringing up the few purchases most people will be able to afford at the Walmarts of the world. Not a pretty picture nor one most readers of David's book or this review would wish to look forward to - unless they love the idea of living in a nation heading for third-world status and run by a government aiding and abetting the downward trajectory.
David also goes on to explain that our government ignores the plight of good jobs being lost and, in fact, effectively endorses the loss through the large subsidies it makes available to the companies doing the exporting. In addition, the safety net of unemployment insurance has been gutted through budget cuts so fewer of the unemployed now receive benefits they need which are available for a shorter period of time. Besides that, the budget for job training to help the unemployed has been severely cut over the past 25 years. Currently 84% of what was available back then no longer is. David documents it all with powerful and graphic anecdotal examples of the terrible damage done and a government that allows it to happen showing it no longer cares about ordinary working people.
Chapter Four: Debt - It's High, Rising, and Becoming a Great Burden for Ordinary Working People
Many of us may know something about how the Bush administration turned a budget surplus into huge deficits with little if any relief in sight for years to come. They also should know a good bit more about mounting private debt, especially if they're one of the many millions burdened with their own debt obligations and have a hard time figuring out how to repay them while simultaneously adding more.
The problem stems from a society weaned on the notion that we should buy now and pay later regardless of whether our debts from borrowing must be serviced which means paying high interest carrying charges. That's especially true in the case of the main way consumers run up debt - on their credit cards where David explained that the predatory credit card industry makes out like mega-thieves pocketing $24 billion in 2004 from late usury-level penalty fees alone which made up the bulk of their $30 billion in profits. Like all other major industries, this one has friends in high places, and it freely "scratches their back" with lots of "scratch" to get legislation favorable to its interests - namely, letting them get away with grand theft. The result, as David reports, is the tragedy of US consumers being $2 trillion in debt with the average household carrying and servicing through monthly interest payments an unpaid credit card balance of about $7,500. That's debt hell for these afflicted consumers, but profit heaven for the credit card bandits. I personally know how these companies work and always have. As a result, I pay my monthly bills in full and have never paid the few credit card companies whose cards I carry one cent in interest since getting my first credit card about 40 years ago. I'm also sensible and restrained in my spending so my monthly balance is never onerous. My advice to others on how to beat these thieves who thrive on your excesses is do as I do, and they'll never know what hit them until it does.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
