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Ignoring Our Economic Achilles Heel
Whatever concoction President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress now cook up to minister to the ailing economy is likely to have a chicken-soup effect. Many people will feel better, and things might perk up.
Still, the temporary boost will not cure an underlying disease that has been spreading for decades and which should be treated as a full-blown emergency. Depending on when-and if-a recession officially is declared, economic history seems as though it is about to be rewritten: The official start of a contraction will likely mark the end of an economic "recovery" during which the incomes of Americans in the middle never recovered from the last recession.
In the typical ups and downs of the American business cycle, median household income falls during recessions, then in recovery climbs back up at least to where it was before the downturn. This has been the pattern since the government began publishing data on median household income in 1967, according to John Irons, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute. But since the current recovery began after the 2001 recession, wages and salaries have been largely stagnant, and so have overall household incomes. "With this recovery, we're not going to make it back to where we were before the last recession," Irons says.
EPI analyst Jared Bernstein has noted that a typical family's income in 2006, the last full year for which data are available, remained 1.7 percent below its 2000 peak. Wages and salaries, adjusted for inflation, fell in 2007, though the broader measure of household income won't be available until August. Still, it hardly seems realistic to believe that incomes will suddenly spurt up now that unemployment is rising and businesses are retrenching.
The current downturn may have been touched off by the mortgage crisis or the energy-price crisis or the resulting crisis in consumer confidence. So the political system will do what it typically does-respond to these most visible crises with treatments that are most visible to voters.
Beneath the surface is the larger problem of stagnant incomes, more difficult to explain but with deeper and broader implications. What does it mean that the economy now performs so badly, for so many, that we cannot even climb back to where we were at the beginning of the decade?
For one thing, we have to give up the prevailing political aversion to stating the obvious: Unfettered trade in its current form hasn't just hurt factory workers. It seems to be depressing incomes more broadly. Among economists, at least, "there's a growing realization that trade hurts people who are not laid off," Irons says. "That textile worker is going to look for work as a nurse's aide, and then nursing wages are going to be depressed." The old solution of retraining workers in import-battered industries, still crucial in hard-hit manufacturing towns, won't work as a bigger economic strategy.
The mantra that education or technology skills somehow would shield white-collar Americans from the fate of blue-collar manufacturing workers is equally shopworn. Just ask one of the thousands of telecommunications and information technology workers who've been laid off since 2000-or, for that matter, any of the thousands soon to be given their pink slips at Sprint.
It's too glib to argue that for all the jobs destroyed during a slump or a longer period of economic change, new ones eventually emerge. This may be true in the abstract. But what if the new jobs don't pay as much as the old?
In the 1980s, the political class kept assuring the working class that we were not going to become a nation of "hamburger-flippers." We haven't. But something else has flipped. It's the bargain under which most workers could once rely on skills, education, experience and diligence to get ahead financially.
Six or more years of stagnating incomes can't be called an aberration. It's a trend, all the more abhorrent because the political system has for so long refused to even acknowledge it. We look again and again at the same discrete parts of the problem-staggering health care costs imposed on business and workers alike, for example-and overlook the fullness of the crisis.
A short-term economic stimulus package is necessary to fill some empty pockets. But it can't fill the void created by so many years of ignoring reality.
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
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26 Comments so far
Show AllIt's called class warfare.
The war has been waged by conservatives since the 1980s.
Conservatives have wrapped themselves with the American flag, the free market and Christian values, but they have been traitors to all three. American have been duped.
The Failure of the American Narrative.
I keep pasting this quote in these discussions, as I see the debauching of currency and the crises it gives rise to as the key mechanism in transfering wealth to the very very rich - If you've ever been the banker while playing Monopoly, you know the temptation - if you've yielded to the temptation, you know the result - and I hope that progressives will stop dismissing it just because it doesn't come from the left at all...
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose."
John Maynard Keynes,
The Economic Consequences of the Peace,
1920, page 235ff
America doesn't need tax cuts. It needs jobs that pay a living wage.
Hmm.. Living wage... I'd like to expand on my Monopoly comment, as the people here are quite nice and may not know what happens when the Banker is corrupt...
So, as the banker, it occurs to me that I can slip bills out of the kitty and bring them into play. Of course I don't want the other players to know I'm doing this, so I start slow. I buy a railroad or two for double the original price - make a couple of players happy with their "gains". Then they start spending all that money I gave them, bidding up prices on other properties up. But I can always slip out a $500 bill, pick up some more properties, at an appearant gain for the other players.
But the day comes, that I own everything. The other players may have big wads of cash, and with rents the way they are with me having all the monopolies, the wads of cash start coming my way.
The crux is the $200 the players get at payday - it's no longer enough to get them around the board without a loss. It's not a living wage anymore.
Next thing you know, I've got to give each player $800 so we can go around the board a few more times. Should I care, knowing that I'll get the $800 back? I would only care if I didn't want the game to end soon.
Indeed, what you say is true, fpal, but you missed one layer of the onion - these crooks have wrapped themselves with the label "conservative". They are not conservative in any way. They may be neo-conservative, they may be neo-liberal, they're happy if you can't tell for sure, or don't know the difference. They're the spawn of Reagan/Thatcher and the filthy money that swept them to power.
Naomi Klein was 100% right. We are in the beginning stages of a shock campaign, and it is only going to get worse. It was tried out a bit after 9/11, and they got a good domestic dry run after Katrina.
We are going to see some serious shit happening here, maybe even as soon as this year as it already seems to be escalating, and well, the Regressives need to find some way of holding onto the Whitehouse.
Big_Money is right, they are not conservatives.We should start calling them what they really are: Regressives
I don't know of anyone who is smart enough, or who works hard enough, to be worth 100 million dollars per year, and yet many CEO's and fund managers are rewarded with enormously excessive compensation without regard to performance - Even when their bad decisions run the companies into the ground. Countrywide's CEO would be one recent example of this, and history is littered with many more.
Many Republicans vote Republican because they believe that the Democrats are Socialists, and there may be some degree of truth to that. Not really in the current Democratic leaders, as many of them are DINO's, but in the policies advocated by the more progressive Democrats, an argument could be made for that. They don't want to end all private corporations, they just want to rewrite the rules to make them more accountable and better world citizens, a little less psychopathic in their behavior.
But, on the other hand, unrestrained capitalism and corporate greed may be even more devastating in the long run to our country, our government, and the 230+ year experiment with this democratic republic called America. Under the current rules of the game, corporations will never do the right thing for their employees on their own, because it is simply not as profitable, and a corporation is a machine built to compete and produce as much profit as possible.
So, what we need to do is find a way to let corporations do what they do best, make profits, and relieve them of the responsibility of caring for employees, a job that they really aren't suited for and don't want anyway. The only way to do that is to set up a strong safety net of government social programs to help workers, used and discarded by the corporate machines. A Living Wage and payroll deductions for Social Security Retirement and Disability, Universal Health Care, Totally Free Higher Education and Wage Compensation for periods of underemployment, are the things that will unleash the power of the corporation, and the power of the individual, without the unwanted negative effects on people.
If this is ever to happen, and I don't think that we have much time left to accomplish it, the current crop of corporate-owned politicians must be replaced or marginalized, because they have been placed, and are maintained in power, to protect the machine that is currently out of control and headed into the abyss, pulling us along with it.
Right now, those politicians equate to most of the Republicans and many of the Democrats holding office today. Some semblance of balance must be achieved, and in my humble opinion, it better happen pretty damned soon, if we are to avoid the catastrophic effects of a brewing social/economic "Perfect Storm"!
MisoPretty - Regressives. I love it. We could define a 3-dimensional space, with Right/Left as one axis, Liberal/Conservative as the second, and Progressive/Regressive as the third. We once had a political party in Canada called the Progressive Conservatives. I don't think they were what they claimed to be, but it needn't be a contradiction. (That party vanished in a fit of voter regret, and a hostile takeover by the Christian Reform Alliance Party (CRAP) - but Canadians, like so many others, are saddled by "brand allegiance")
There is a taxation sweet spot between 0% and 100% that generates maximum receipts, and it is a progressive scale that starts near 0% for the poor and approaches 100% for the very, very wealthy.
This model was in effect after WWII and built this country. It has been chipped away, until it has been nearly reversed now. We have now reached a point where we are no longer building this country, but selling it to the highest foreign bidder -
Visit www.economyincrisis.org
The investor class lounging by the pool waiting for the check to be direct deposited into their account, now pays tax at the rate of 15%, while many of those working for a paycheck, struggling to make ends meet, with over 4% inflation last year and wages rising less than 1%, are paying twice that percentage in taxes.
Warren Buffet, one of the richest people in the world, demonstrates this by comparing his tax rate to that of his secretary. I know that there is risk involved in investing, well shown by the last few days in the market, but there is also risk involved, as we all well know, in selling your services to a corporation or other entity for a pay check.
It's unlikely that those investor class individuls who make their money in the stock market will actually lose all their money in the market, though some idiots have, but, those who work for a living risk losing their job and all their income on a daily basis.
There are some who are advocating the "Fair Tax", Orwellian NewSpeak for a regressive consumption tax, which if implemented, would ensure that the very wealthy would never pay taxes again. And the sad part is, many in the middle and lower income scale are buying into it. Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, is a supporter of it.
The top few per cent pay the most taxes because they control the lion's share of the wealth in this country, and with the rigged market and corporate structure that we have today, they can limit their tax rate to 15%. OK, lounging by the pool was a dramatization, but think Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, CEOs, professional athletes, movie stars and so on.
When I say tax rates approaching 100%, I mean into the 90% range for those who make hundreds of millions or billions of dollars per year. At 90% you would still keep 100 million out of a billion, I know I would still work pretty hard for that, and it would incentivize new business start-up, as you could give the money to the government or a charity at tax time, or you could put it into new business expenses, R&D, or education.
The extra revenue collected by the government could be returned to state and local government, used to start paying down the debt, strengthen Social Security, provide universal health care, develop and implement an effective climate change/energy strategy and a host of other job producing activities for both the private and public sectors.
If we had a government that wasn't controlled by the corporations and the very wealthy, who only seem to be interested only in maintaining their stranglehold on our democracy, "We, the People" could decide where the extra revenue would be best spent. We could actually develop a system that helps people up, instead of the one we have now, fixated on holding people down.
MikeBinSC, I agree with you, but the power structure is so unbalanced, the electorate so uninformed and apathetic, it seems like too little, too late. The majority of voters act like puppies being led around by the nose. A pollster up in Portland Oregon told me money always wins, always. I guess he's been around long enough to know. I followed the links on the Sibel Edmonds article, and am watching "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" and have been reading about the Bush dynasty connections, and can see a vast web of money interests that have taken control of this country. It seems insurmountable. It's like trying to push a waterbed back into it's frame. And they are preparing for the "Perfect Storm". Halliburton detention camps, Blackwater security, urban warfare tactics, crowd and riot control weapons. Doesn't sound good.
kathyodat
I think that a "recession" is a huge trivialization of the situation that we find ourselves in today. I believe the ship of "America" has just begun to slice open her hull on the iceburg of economic disaster as the fools at the helm continue ahead at full speed. And the band plays on while Bush sings the economy is in great shape.
We currently have a net negative savings rate for the first time since the Great Depression.
The housing bubble and mortgage debacle is leading to the first national drop in property value since the Great Depression, not to mention failure of financial institutions.
The trade deficit is approaching a trillion dollars a year.
We have ceased to be the "Bread Basket of the World", and have now become a net food importer.
The value of the dollar has dropped drastically compared to other currencies like the Euro and the Canadian dollar.
When Bush took office the American dollar was worth about 1.6 Canadian dollars. We now have relative parity with the Canadian dollar, and a similar drop against the Euro.
The Bush government has borrowed and spent more during his presidency than all the others in history added together.
Our top export is weapons of destruction, and we spend more on our empire military than all the other countries combined!
This bunch of fiscally irresponsible conservatives have raised the debt ceiling nearly every year, and we are fast approaching ten trillion dollars in debt.
We are facing a global energy emergency in Peak Oil, Global Warming, Water Shortages, Looming Global Food Shortages and a litany of other problems.
And the above list doesn't even consider Afghanistan and the illegal war and subsequent illegal occupation of Iraq for the last five years, nor the bumper-sticker GWOT - Global War On Terror, used to control the American people through fear and subvert their constitution.
No stimulus package will solve the underlying problems that are causing our economic problems today. We need radical, fundamental change, and we need it yesterday!
NAFTA was sold to Americans knowing that jobs would be lost and replaced with lower paying jobs. Economists told people that the lower incomes would be offset by lower prices for imported goods. What happened? The costs of goods remained high and the profits of Corporations escalated significantly.
It is a predictable broken bargain. It is a continuation of open disrespect for working people. When that disrespect leads to dehumanization, and dehumanization leads to increasing deaths due to starvation and disease, then you will understand the real bargain.
Miso Pretty, I am in the midst of _Shock Doctrine_. It's a hard book to read because you DO start to notice what is happening in America and how it resembles so much of what was done in South America and the other case histories she cites.
The book is like acquiring a new set of lenses with which to see events. It is probably not a perfect set of lenses and there may be some distortion. But there is an undeniable feeling of authenticity and truth.
MikeBinSC-yes, all these things you list are true. But the plan is unfolding as it was hoped for by the elites. This was the whole point of globalization. To bring us down to "world standards", not raise everyone up to ours. They have what they wanted, no regulation and starving masses of slave workers fighting over any tidbits they care to throw out.
Once again, the rich will be bailed out by us working folks, their interest rates are cut, but ours (e.g. interest on mortgages, consumer loans, etc.) will go up. We're screwed, blued and tattoo-ed.
That 1.7% decline in wages is actually a 63% decline if you use the methodology for inflation used in 1980 (see shadowstats.com). Splitting the difference gives you 30% which seems about right, and is close to the pre-Clinton methodology of 1990.
Anyways, the plan is to make 90% of everyone a debt slave. The mission is almost accomplished. Who said government is incompetent.
Why they did it is so you can be comfortably merged with countries like Mexico, China, Russia, and to do that your living standard has to be reduced. They have been telling us (Brzezinski, Volcker, etc) for over 35 years that our living standards have to be reduced, people did not listen. Multinational Corporations are not Patriots loyal to America, they are Globalists loyal to Global Profits, and they run your country.
Despite being given the same rights as citizens, they pay very little in taxes (individuals pay 3 times more), and hide most of the profits in the tax free havens set up for this purpose.
"Ignoring Our Economic Achilles Heel" by ignoring our Ecology. That's why I'm voting Green Party.
Let me add that misspent money on the Iraqi and Afghan wars has also contributed to the economic decline. Just imagine if the hundreds of billions squandered in a jobs program for profiteering defense contractors had instead been redirected to promoting alternative renewable energy sources, cleaning up our environment, fixing up our bridges and other crumbling infrastructure, rebuilding New Orleans and everywhere else ravaged by natural disasters, enacting single-payer, government run health care and publicly financing political campaigns (just for starters).
We could have been a very different and better country by now had it not been for the nonsense of the past 8 years (and the twenty years that preceded them!)
MisoPretty January 22nd, 2008 2:32 pm
"Naomi Klein was 100% right. We are in the beginning stages of a shock campaign, and it is only going to get worse.
Big_Money is right, they are not conservatives.We should start calling them what they really are: Regressives"
They are "crooks" who have not progressed beyond "greed".
Conservatives and Liberals are hiding in the closet and becoming endangered species.
Regressives, authoritarians, neo-liberals, neo-cons, anal retentives, superstitious, chickenhawks, pigs, polluters, bigoted, racists, elitists, rednecks, plutocrats, warmongers, blood profiteers, thieves, dysfunctional, antisocial, serial killers, rapists, sexually inadequate, exploiters, hate-filled, greedheads, liars, murderers, conservatives all, not to be confused with "conservationists".
Please don't fall into their trap of glorifying things conservative and demonizing our liberal selves by implication.
Right on, ezeflyer, and lets add on hypocrites, ignoramouses, traitors, spendthrifts , fools, fascists, fakes, bigots, short sightedness, cronyism, etc. No wonder the last eight years have run us off the cliff. It is questionable our country could survive even another four years of this madness.
You progressives are as ignorant as the mainstream American public when it comes to our monetary policy. Revising taxes to be more progressive does not liberate the poor. The issue is so much bigger.
The Federal Reserve is a private bank that controls the money supply and the interest rates. It also profits off of OUR money. How do you think the government gets the Fed to print more money? It issues a bond worth X dollars that is refundable at some point for X dollars plus interest. The Fed also lends money to banks which then lends money to us plus interest.
Therefore, every time money is created in our system, more debt is created. That's why we will never eliminate debt. Most of your income tax goes directly into the hands of the stockholders of the Federal Reserve (which I must point out is a clever orwellian name in that it is as federal as federal express).
This issue is so huge and no one is talking about. The article mentions that American households need means to weather business cycles. Do you think business cycles just magically happen? They are engineered by the fed because they controll the money supply.
Google "The Money Masters" and realize that as a progressive, I'm voting for Paul because I feel this issue is the most important issue affecting this country. I wish more of you felt the same way.
The reason I don't see it your way, cpotts18, is because they're ultimately even more trapped in the game they rigged than we are. Every oligarchy I've ever read on eventually becomes so insulated by the system that they profit from that they eventually lose perspective.
Rome's Imperators and senators had a nice continent-wide racket going until they pushed Alaric a little too far. He and his band of barbarians were brought in to do the legion's jobs (shades of Blackwater and related "security" firms today). When Rome went back on her promises, Alaric made sure they paid with blood, treasure, and women. The remaining legions didn't stand a chance and the message "Vae Victus" (translation: Suffering to the conquered) spelled the death knell of the western Roman Empire.
The Russian nobility pulled a similar hat trick in stupidity by first getting Russia into WWI and then, faced with the prospect of losing power, forced out Czar Nicholas II for a quick PR fix. Most of the Russian peasantry weren't fooled, thanks to the inconvinient fact that the White faction (read: Russian nobles) STILL WANTED TO KEEP THE WAR GOING (advance memo to winner of 2008 Presidential election: don't make this move). The Red faction swept to power on the high tide that was the Oktober Revolution, finishing what the Whites had started (sidenote: just to show you that futile foreign intervention is not a recent American development, American troopers were sent to Arkangel to help out the Whites in a classic case of too-little-too-late).
In both cases, the oligarchs were the ultimate insiders, all-powerful within the system they controlled, less than useless outside of it. Don't think that global technologies will save them from their myopia. If the recent losses on Wall Street are any indication, events are about to spin outside of their grasp...and they won't know what to do.
I see all kinds of explanations for America's troubles but not the one I think matters. At the end of the second World War the US was the only industrialized country left standing. The US took over. The entire world drove American cars run with American gasoline. Radios, TVs, refrigerators, and stoves were American. Technological products were American. Airplanes and armaments were American. Even clothes came from America. Imports were cheap due to the strength of the currency and American installed dictators who lined their pockets while letting Americans exploit the people. Well, other people advanced and made cars, and stoves, and tvs,and what the hell did you expect, that they would sit on their hands? We went from number one creditor nation to number one debtor nation. Americans have been living for 50 years convinced that we were so special when all we were was 2 bit opportunists preying on the poor. Of course it has to end, Americans, no matter how much we pretend otherwise, are not alone on earth.
We won't be alone either, unless we kill everyone off. And, like I said, we're really not that good.
Lizard, yes, after WWII America was left standing. But so was Latin America, so was India, so was Africa. America made things for the world BUT it primarily made things by and for America and Americans. It should do so again. And China should stop exporting,and start making for China. I think they have a few people who could use goods. Same with the rest of the world, with help from those who can.
But of course, the Flat-Worlders, the Thomas/Milton Friedmanites, the Neo-Cons, and the trans-national (no nation) corporations are not the Masters of the Universe they are now if such a model were still in place. The fiefdoms of the Masters would not be so grand, as the profit 'spreads' between the making and the selling are not so wide in such a world.
The Masters are instead after a Neo-Feudal Age in which they exert immense control across nations and peoples... violent control if need be, as referenced in Naomi Klen's book, SHOCK DOCTRINE. And this is a concept the 'Chairman'(of the Board)-led Chinese government understands well, which is why it is doing so well with it.
Just one of the Masters' most nefarious tools, NAFTA, has been a TOTAL failure in its public, stated goal of making Mexico better so its people could live and not migrate to the US... and how did that work out? But it is a TOTAL success in its secret corporate goal of breaking the American worker, taking profits out of exploitation of nature and people, the overthrow of national laws 'not business-friendly' and starting the slide to the Neo-Con Happy Place of all-privatized Globalized Neo-Feudalism.
These Neo-Fuedalists will hijack nations and bend them to their will (America is an example that comes to mind). They will use secret agreements and private money power to achieve their fiefdoms of global dominance. And to hell with the people, the Masters must have the Overlordship of the whole planet. Don't you think that is what Bush and Cheney and their ilk are really all about?
And we are fooled constantly by their minions, the propaganders, who at the Masters' bidding deceive and distract the people. For example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are praised for their 'charity' of putting $30 Billion into a charitable trust. But actually, this is a tax dodge and a tool to support their own corporations' stock prices. The bankrupt US government and the work it does is actually deprived of income. And both these people are still actually richer than was the Tsar of All the Russias.
And these two have set the competitive bar even higher for the ambitious, competitive and greedy executives we are now ruled by. So letting these people become so rich has been extremely bad for America. In Gates' case, without the government and US copyright law, his company would be worth about the cost of one loose copy of his software. In Buffet's case, he rails at executive salaries, but his own wealth set the new standard. And in his comparison of his income tax with his secretary's tax, he misses the point that the richest man in the world still pays his secretary a miserly wage.
Yes, these people care not for nations or peoples. And we keep on lauding them. So the descent of man into the new Dark Ages goes on unimpeded by any mere government Of, By and For the people. And these Flat-Worlders think money will fix anything and everything. Money is now not seen as the root of evil but instead has become the new god of the new religion of this every-man-for-himself, dog-eat-dog, no-nation Neo-Feudal Age.
cpotts, what you said.
Progressives risk falling into, or have repeatedly fallen into, the same "brand allegiance" trap as everyone else. Well, most of them, anyway.
"Ooo, he's a conservative! He must be evil, therefore everything he says must be a lie! Everything he does must be theft!"
I started wasting time reading, and now posting, here on CD, because on most websites, there is one pre-approved set of beliefs, and anyone who questions them just gets flamed. But in this ragtag mob, I see some hope in people like you. The editors of this site are trying hard to show us this stuff, which helps.
Every society needs a right and a left, like feet, in order to move forward. And what happens when right and left take off together in the wrong direction? Well, cutting off one of the feet ain't going to solve the problem. With this "RAH RAH I'm correct and the other side is evil" attitude, the choice is to either cut off one foot and remain where you are (which ain't a pretty place), or stop rejecting half of everything sight-unseen and try to get both feet moving forwards, not backwards. Thanks, cpotts.
Gungneir big time European bankers have been pulling the strings since the middle of the 17th century and they're winning. I think the system will collapse on itself but those that orcastrated (spelling know) will not be hurt, they will be taken care of. It's you and me who will be fucked harder than we are now.
Also, where do you think the Bolsheviks got their money? They built up a pretty powerful government with an inefficient governmental system and pissed off populus. I'll give you a hint, the Tsar the was the only European superpower who wouldn't submit his economy to the central banks. The banks kept the eastern bloc in line by denying it funds when it pissed them off. It was the perfect excuse to massively grow one of the most profitable industries in the world, the "defense" industry. Governments who take out trillions of dollars worth of loans to fight each other while they were both being indebted too the same people.
You can draw parallels to historical events but history doesn't repeat himself. This collapse will be much worse and we will have to bear it unless we think outside of the box mass media (including progressives, out of ignorace, not malice) and reform the way we exchange goods and services.
And thank you Big_Money, I appreciate it. All the best to you and good luck my friend.