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"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"- Shelley -
The U.S. Census Bureau just released this report on income, poverty, and access to health care. The report is a damning indictment of the Bush/Cheney years. Not just one Bush presidency, but the unholy trinity of the father, the son, and the ghost of Reagan … a veritable one-two-three-punch right in the economic gut of Middle America. On every major measurement, the report shows the country losing ground: Median household income declined, poverty increased, and the number of Americans without health insurance skyrocketing.
Compare the economic performance of the Bush years with those of Bill Clinton: The condition of the country improved on all indices during the Clinton years, often considerably. In fact, the Bush economic record wipes out 20 years of economic progress. Indeed, I look upon these mighty Bush works and find myself in deep, deep despair.
UPDATE: This article by Dylan Ratigan, Americans Have Been Taken Hostage, deserves a mention within the context of this post:
The American people have been taken hostage to a broken system. It is a system that remains in place to this day. A system where bank lobbyists have been spending in record numbers to make sure it stays that way.
A system that corrupts the most basic principles of competition and fair play, principles upon which this country was built.
It is a system that so far has forced the taxpayer to provide the banks with the use of $14 trillion from the Federal Reserve, much of the $7 trillion outstanding at the US Treasury and $2.3 trillion at the FDIC.
A system partially built by the very people who currently advise our President, run our Treasury Department and are charged with its reform.
And most stunningly -- it is a system that no one in our government has yet made any effort to fundamentally change.
Like health care, this is a referendum on our government's ability to function on behalf of the American people. Ask yourself how long you are willing to be held hostage? How long will you let our elected officials be the agents of those whose business it is to exploit our government and the American people at any cost?
SECOND UPDATE: James' Muse has a lively discussion on supply-side economics here.
Octopus,
ReplyDeleteDo not give up hope. Please remember where the person in that poem saw the phrase "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair."
Tyrants they may be, but the world does not always turn out so well for tyrants. Ask Adolf what he was thinking when he bit down on that cyanide capsule, or ask Benito how it felt to swing by his heels. They had their ride, and then they fell off the horse and were crushed under its feet.
And they were talented tyrants. Bush and Cheney and Gingrich and Palin and the whole bunch of them are pathetic losers, and lose they will in the end.
And the Republican prescription for the economy is MORE OF THE SAME! Which, as we know, is the very definition of insanity.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I saw that Census Report and was going to post on it today as well. I'll still do something on it and will cross-link to your report.
ReplyDeleteMatt: " ... the Republican prescription for the economy is MORE OF THE SAME!"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! The Republican prescription of cuts taxes for the wealthy is what drives economic inequality, and there can be no economic recovery without a viable middle class.
After all, the middle class accounts for 70% of consumer spending, and the middle class is the only group that keeps this country from turning into a banana republic. It is imperative to keep hammering on these ideas until supply-side heresies are finally dead and buried.
Green Eagle, there is an irony in the last line of the Shelley poem: Exactly whose works leave us awe-struck? That of the king, or that of the artist who labored? Get my drift?
ReplyDeleteOcto, I wrote on the whole Reaganonomics/trickle down theory last week. This report further goes with what I was thinking.
ReplyDeleteI am sure you are aware that many in the GOP claim that the problems in the Reagan years were caused by Carter, and that the success of the Clinton years was caused by Bush the Elder.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am sure they will argue that the problems of Bush the Younger were caused by Clinton.
We will wait and see where blame for the current economic mess gets put.
Any ideas???
The current economic mess is being blamed on:
ReplyDelete1. Subprime Mortgage - on
Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and
the people who had no income
and no credit who were given
loans on homes they could
not afford
2. The Automakers - the unions.
In both cases and the mirade other examples that could be cited the psychology of supply side economics after 29 years is engrained in us. We do not look at the big, the powerful, and the rich for our explanations, we look at the small, the poor, and the least powerful. We look at ACORN and go on and on about the tax advice they give, and the undue influence they have on elections because Mickey Mouse was registered to vote..but has anyone said a word about USB and the advice they gave 50,000 high worth clients to hide and or shelter funds from taxes? Do you here anyone make a claim about the power of lobbyists on elections and policy? Nope, but find a couple black chicks giving advice to two white folks (who obviously did not fit the situation ---and I can't help but believe the whole thing was staged) and all of the sudden 'THAT' proves everything.
It is engrained in our national psyche that rich people create jobs, CEOS deserve what they earn, and if you are rich you can bend the rules and stash cash in foreign countries...that poor people want handouts and do not want to work for anything!
We have created to parallel universes (the haves and the have nots) and see no problem with the fact that the rules are different for each...
For porposes of discussion, consider this definition of victimology:
ReplyDeleteVictimology is the scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system — that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials — and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements. Victimology is … not restricted to the study of victims of crime alone but may cater to other forms of human rights violations that are not necessarily crime.
Perhaps we should bring this definition to bear in our discussions on economics because, assuredly, there are victims and offenders. I see ourselves as victims on multiple levels: 1 – as consumers of financial service companies that have betrayed a public trust and caused our assets and investments to devalue; 2 – as citizens whose interests have been hijacked and left politically disenfranchised; and 3 – by a plutocracy that demands an unfair share of nation’s wealth.
Tea baggers see themselves as victims, and undoubtedly they are! The problem is, they are blaming the wrong offenders, they are defending their own persecutors, and it seems doubtful if anyone can set them straight.
All I can do right now is frame an argument as I see it.
some victims develop an emotional attachment with those who have committed a crime against them....
ReplyDeleteI've heard it said that at a very basic level, people will often identify with whatever forces they consider most powerful. Nobody wants to be considered a loser. If you can identify with what you fear, at least for a while you feel that you participate in their power. So you have dispossessed or marginalized individuals taking the side of gigantic profit-seeking entities and malignant forces within government working alongside those giants. If you can just ally yourself with "the untrammeled forces of the free market" or some other such balderdash, you're set. Unless, of course, you actually need help or recourse to justice at some point....
ReplyDeleteAs for the blame game, seems to me that the Republicans pretty much started blaming Obama on January 21st for every banana peel anybody had slipped on for the last hundred years, so they're way ahead of the game. I'd say decades of deregulation spanning both parties -- in the most generous view stemming from naive faith in the myth of the free market -- has done a great deal of damage. The situation isn't hopeless since America is resilient and productive, but we are in a perilous place just now economically and in terms of viable governance.
(O)CT(O)PUS said... [under bush] Median household income declined, poverty increased, ...Americans without health insurance [up].
ReplyDeleteThe price we paid for not going socialist?
(O)CT(O)PUS said... Victimology is … not restricted to the study of victims of crime alone but may cater to other forms of human rights violations that are not necessarily crime.
David O. Friedrichs of the Department of Sociology/Criminal Justice (University of Scranton PA) in a paper titled "Exorbitant CEO compensation: just reward or grand theft?"...
"The concept of crime is closely equated with the notion of social harm, but these two concepts are hardly synonymous. Some forms of crime in a legalistic sense involve trivial or at best minor social harm, whereas some immense forms of social harm are not formally classified as crime."
(I found this while doing some research for my most recent blog post.)
The penalties for white collar crime -- when it is even recgonized as crime -- are significantly less than for crimes comitted by those of lower classes.
I am not a lawyer, but I know it is a crime for an officer of a corporation to violate his fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders; i.e. he has a legal responsibility to make as much money as possible for them. Over the years, I have seen this cited as the justification for all sorts of vicious corporate behavior.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that when these executives pay themselves far more than would be needed to hire someone else to do a similar job, they are violating their fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders, just as if they made under-the-table deals with suppliers or distributors. This is a crime, and as the amount of money involved is typically well into the millions, it is a serious felony.
Now, consider the miserable performance that these companies have gotten out of their executives. Anybody could have run Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers, or GM, and have done less damage than these idiots have. It seems to me that they could literally be replaced by some minimum wage worker, without doing any more harm to their companies.
In my mind, this makes them nothing more than the most crass of thieves.