Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWith all the talk about how to stimulate it, you'd think that the economy is a giant clitoris. Ben Bernanke may not employ this imagery, but the immediate challenge--and the issue bound to replace Iraq and immigration in the presidential race--is how best to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.
It would be irresponsible to say much about Bush's stimulus plan, the mere mention of which could be enough to send the Nikkei, the DAX and the curiously named FTSE and Sensex tumbling into the crash zone again. In a typically regressive gesture, Bush proposed to hand out cash tax rebates--except to families earning less than $40,000 a year. This may qualify as an example of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism," in which any misfortune can be re-jiggered to the advantage of the affluent.
But even the liberal stimulus proposals have me worried--not so much for their content as their rationale. Most liberals want a stimulus package that includes an increase in food stamp allotments and an extension of unemployment benefits, which are both screamingly obvious measures. Currently, the food stamp allotment amounts to about $1 per meal, and when four Democratic Congresspersons tried living on that for a week last May they ended up even crankier than if they'd had to sit through a week-long filibuster by Tom DeLay.
As for unemployment benefits: they last just twenty-five weeks in most states and end up covering only a third of people who are laid off. If ever there was a time to create a real working system of unemployment compensation, it is now. Citigroup has announced plans to eliminate 21,000 jobs; investment banks in general will shed 40,000. The mortgage industry is in a state of meltdown; and Sprint--how did they get into this?--will lay off 4,000 full-time employees as well as 1,600 part-time and contract workers.
The economic rationale for more a progressive stimulus package, which we hear now several times a day, is that the poor and the freshly unemployed will spend whatever money they get. Give them more money in the form of food stamps or unemployment benefits and they'll drop more at the mall. Money, it has been observed, sticks to the rich but just slides off the poor, which makes them the lynchpin of stimulus. After decades of hearing the poor stereotyped as lazy, stupid, addicted and crime-prone, they have been discovered to have this singular virtue: they are veritable spending machines.
All this is true, but it is also a form of economy fetishism--or should I say worship? If we have learned anything in the last few years, it is that the economy is no longer an effective measure of human well-being. We've seen the economy grow without wage gains; we've seen productivity grow without wage gains. We've even seen unemployment fall without wage gains. In fact, when economists want to talk about life "on the ground," where jobs and wages and the price of Special K are paramount, they've taken to talking about "the real economy." If there's a "real economy," then what in the hell is "the economy"?
Once it was real-er, this economy that we have. But that was before we got polarized into the rich, the poor and the sinking middle class. Gross social inequality is what has "de-coupled" growth and productivity from wage gains for the average household. As far as I can tell, "the economy," as opposed to the "real economy," is the realm of investment, and is occupied by people who live on interest and dividends instead of salaries and wages, a k a the rich.
So I'm proposing a radical shift in rhetoric: any stimulus package should focus on the poor and the unemployed, not because they spend more but because they are in most in need of help. Yes, when a parent can afford to buy Enfamil, it helps the Enfamil company and no doubt "the economy" too. But let's not throw out the baby with the sensual bubble bath of "stimulus." In any ordinary moral calculus, the baby comes first.
Far be it from me to make the revolutionary suggestion that babies are more important than profits. My point is just that our economy--with its dizzying bubbles, wild lending sprees, reckless downsizings and planet-wide hyper-sensitivity--has gotten too far disconnected from ordinary human needs. We could take the current crisis as an opportunity to fix that, at least in part, by shoring up government support for the needy and the dislocated. Or we can wait around and watch while the appropriate imagery gets nasty, as this ghostly creature, "the economy," starts acting like a nymphomaniac junkie in withdrawal.
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed (Owl), is the winner of the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize.
© 2008 The Nation
66 Comments so far
Show AllLet see...should we borrow more money from China to stimulate more economic growth to the detriment of future generations? Whoops... maybe with an infinite growth model for a finite planet there will be no future generations so lets just keep the model alive for another year of two and suck up some more of our diminishing resources.
it's yihee high time to buy a saddle …
"btw, the foundation of my "personal situation" is not based on good luck."
Then my good wishes to you are hereby withdrawn.
jakenewton,
call it "personal" if you like. frankly, i don't put a lot of merit into any "statistics". please re-read my previous posts here. why is it so commonly easy in this country for people to mislead, misdirect and misinform? stay focused.
and although three dollar/gallon gasoline may be my "own personal economy", as you suggest, i'll go a bit further and say it IS the national economy. if you don't believe that to be a fact, perhaps you hang out with the punch-the-clock crowd, eagerly awaiting their paid vacations, their sick leave, their accumulated sick leave, their dental/health/medical benefits, their generous per diams, their gas allowance, their company vehicles (crying when the company makes them pay for the annual inspection sticker).
if you are self-employed, then you are like many, many other self-employed people. living in the real world, dealing with our own "personal economy". and we really wouldn't be having this discussion. get real. perhaps common dreams might consider their main page consisting of newsworthy columns and then the editorials.
you have every right in the world to base your faith on and in "statistics". if you believe that said "statistics" are not skewed and stretched and bent and shaped to support an agenda, you have that right. i do not ask why you believe that, nor do i ask you to defend that belief.
btw, the foundation of my "personal situation" is not based on good luck.
"the "basis" for my "beliefs" does not involve guesswork and/or government statistics. it is based on current economic conditions. when i go to the pumps, i pay about three dollars a gallon for gas. should i choose to drink milk - "organic" so they claim - i pay almost four dollars for a half gallon. my home consumes energy (total) at the rate of 3.9 cents per square foot, monthly, on a yearly average."
lino, the "economy" you are commenting on above, with the given examples, is your own *personal* economy. That's an interesting anecdote, but is a far cry from a discussion of the national economy.
"anyone with just a little interest in "statistics" knows they are presented from a certain point of view(s), the agenda/personal interest being promoted."
Often true, but if the raw data and methodology are transparent the potential for skewing is greatly decreased.
"these numbers are skewed, stretched, bent and shaped at best, and are not accurate."
I would ask yourself why you believe so and if your reasons are "reasonable". Good luck on your personal situation.
"the debt, currently about $30,000.00 for each American citizen. "
Which must be compared, to be fair, against aroun $45,000 in income *per year* for GDP, or around 65%. Many househoulds with a mortgage have considerably greater, many times even, that figure as debt as a percentage of income. The question is what the debt if for. Will the rebate stimulate the economy to a point where income would be increased at a ateady and reliable future rate? I doubt it, but I don't think that is the reason for the rebate.
jakenewton,
the "basis" for my "beliefs" does not involve guesswork and/or government statistics. it is based on current economic conditions. when i go to the pumps, i pay about three dollars a gallon for gas. should i choose to drink milk - "organic" so they claim - i pay almost four dollars for a half gallon. my home consumes energy (total) at the rate of 3.9 cents per square foot, monthly, on a yearly average.
anyone with just a little interest in "statistics" knows they are presented from a certain point of view(s), the agenda/personal interest being promoted. these numbers are skewed, stretched, bent and shaped at best, and are not accurate. they are designed to influence people and promote a cause. it is risky at best to make decisions based on anyone's statistics, especially our government statistics. guesswork comes into play only when i contemplate this year's fuel bill, or which horses will win/place/show, or when the current idiot in chief will be thrown out of office.
Paul B, part of the regulation on corporations should be paying employees a living wage. Here is part of a comment I had about this on another thread -
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 people, 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"!
MikeBinSC,
I'm not so sure. The safety net in the American Experiment has been socialization to allow corporations to poorly pay their employees, deny them benefits, etc.
I remember reading Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and how 'wonderful' the government camps were. People not hassled by the cops, able to form committees, etc. But there's a sequel to Steinbeck. And it goes like this: so the people lived in the government camps and the growers didn't have to worry about paying anyone a middle-class wage because the government picked up the slack. In a nutshell, it always risks degenerating into an enabling mechanism.
I happen to agree Mike; at best, it may create a very short-lived economic 'surge,' (but then again, maybe not). It's all smoke and mirrors, and will probably cost us more in the long run by increasing the debt (as you indicate) and devaluing the dollar. Unfortunately, It's practically a done deal and, while the poor will feel the effects of rising prices, they won't even have the 'rebate' to show for it--at least if it passes in its present form. Personally, I'd do just fine without the extra bucks, and prefer they end the Iraq war instead and invest the money in infrastructure which, in and of itself, would do much more for the economy than this silly stimulus package.
chessgame56 and gin, the term "rebate" is Orwellian NewSpeak for an extension of credit to past, present, and future tax payers. It will add to the national debt for which all taxpayers are responsible. Whether or not you paid taxes last year or this year is irrelevent, as you will still be responsible for the repayment and interest on the debt, currently about $30,000.00 for each American citizen. The proposed package would add another $500.00 to that for each person.
Paul B. and Jake, there is no such thing as pure capitalism or pure socialism, even Friedman admitted this. What we need is a good blend of both to solve our problems. We need a social safety net for people used and discarded by corporations, and serious regulation and enforcement to keep corporate greed under control.
Not surprising considering the source, gin. The poor have long been regarded with contempt because of their poverty. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the fact they are the easiest to ignore. I believe Noam Chomsky has made reference to this as well. Don't let it get to you, though, most realize by now that the Heritage Foundation is just a shill for elitist interests.
Flipping through my broadcast channels last night (Wed.) I stopped at PBS's Newshour. They were discussing the stimulus package. A guy from Heritage Foundation was making his case for not giving $$ to poorer people who would go out and spend it. You see, they'd go out and spend it at Wal-Mart or Target where they'd be buying IMPORTED goods and how would that help? I screamed something obscene and changed channels but I swear that was the gist of it. I wish I'd controlled myself better. Can anyone confirm this mind-blowing spin?
It's after helping these hard-working people that I get so upset when conservative acquaintences complain about the same folks who are accepting hand-outs and are worthless dregs of society. Most likely the same folks who think they don't deserve the rebate b/c they didn't work for it.
I feel the same way, Recycle1. Perhaps if more learned to feel again with their hearts, rather than just proffer cold analyses that would go a long way toward transforming things. With hard-core, mean 'conservatives,' though, it may be better not to waste your breath.
lizard-but I am not unemployed and they don't provide my job and I have rarely in my whole 50yrs used any of the benefits I mentioned. (I am self employed, left the corporate rat race decades ago, morally couldn't work for these people, grow a lot of my own food, etc, etc, etc.). Not everyone was as fortunate as I was to WORK at a living wage job for an education, have adequate health care, to have birth control readily available and to have people who supported me in not contributing, the best I can, to this fucked up system we have. But plenty of people are willing to collect their pieces of eight to live a cushy life and it is becoming increasingly difficult for people NOT to participate in the system that is crushing them.
My point was/is, we have to have a social safety net, we aren't going to change this economy on a dime. We must move away from the consumer economy THEY have developed, people need to stop having so many children, etc., etc., etc. We all know what we need to do, but as long as the elites control EVERYTHING, we will feel marginalized and powerless. In the meantime, they keep killing and stealing. I don't think most people in the US ever believe that things will get as bad here as, say, the Congo, but it will, these are the same people doing this shit. These people are no longer afraid to do to their own people what they have been doing to everyone else all along. This was why the sorrow I felt when Bush was "re-elected" was so great. We won't even help ourselves, let alone anyone else in the world.
The thing that really gets me is that people, who earn their income by actually working, are penalized by paying more in taxes, proportionately, than people who do not work to earn their income!
There are plenty of decent people. They are the ones struggling along on the fringes. The overriding culture places no value on life. You can work all your life and still have very little, still be struggling. And, for that, those people are disparaged because they have little money!
Even many of my progressive friends are wasteful and gluttonous - less so than most - but that is the only reason they appear not to be.
Many who are willing to help those less fortunate are not willing to give up anything in their own way of life.
I was raised (by my mother) to believe that a good education should help make me a better person. Well, I went to a top university and saw that most of my classmates merely learned to be more aggressive in general, and to consume at a higher level.
jakenewton:
Now we're talking. The same can be said of capitalism. They've both scaled to the same endpoint: monopolization, subversion of democractic process, etc. Indeed, many of the top Fortune-100's now enjoy their own "command economies" with gross profits far higher than the Soviet Union back in Lenin's early days.
But deeper than this, there is no such thing as modern socialism or capitalism. Today's "capitalists" are deeply dependent on cheap communist labor (China). Today's "communists" are deeply dependent on "capitalist" consumer and debt habits. I should add, though, that socialism is at least theoretically compatible with democracy, whereas capitalism is not. In fact, one reading of "dictatorship of the proletariat" is thoroughly synonymous with democracy. No such theoretical compatibility exists with capitalism since although "free markets" are a wonderful concept, none of us are born with free access to wealth, natural resources, etc. Capitalism reduces, automatically, to an inherited/caste system, backed by violence, protected wealth and cornered markets.
As I've said many times, objectively there is only rich vs. poor, powerful vs. powerless. The rest reduces to smoke, academic arguments and sophistry.
"socialism is the best solution"
How do you address the common criticism of socialism that it kills incentive for people to create, innovate, produce, etc?
It seems to me that socialism is the best solution to all of the concerns expressed here. Even a successful stimulation of the economy just leads to an acceleration of the over-consumption ruining life on this planet. There is plenty of real wealth on the planet, it just need sane stewardship and a more-or-less equal redistribution. Then we wouldn't have to micromanage myriad progams of relief and tax structure readjustment.
"if you base your beliefs and logic on these reports,"
lino, are you admitting then that regarding the basis for your beliefs that you are relying merely on your own guesswork?
jakenewton, "there are various government agencies..." please, say no more. if you base your beliefs and logic on these reports, more power to you. there are those of us, many who have been laid off from their jobs, unable to find work, trying to cope with insane fuel prices (note conoco/phillips just released 4th qtr.profits: UP 37% from a year ago. that's 37% INCREASE IN PROFITS, take that "regular" report and try to swallow it while you/we gleefully await exxon/mobile's "report" due out within a week), who wake up each day trying to figure out how to live in this country, while we watch the joke that is the stock market (unless you happen to be in on the scheme), and read words of wisdom and guidance from posts such as yours.
i believe i suggested, in my previous post, that ms.ehrenreich might want to supply us with a more accurate presentation of where her facts are derived from. if you have inside information as to where she is obtaining her information, spring it loose.
try keeping up with the news. or at the very least, try living in the real world.
St. John is right. With the last so-called rebate, the poorest of the poor were completely left out. And how many times now has the prez vetoed an expansion of children's health care? If you wanted a mean and heartless society, you've got one. For whatever reason, Americans have seemingly become more isolated in their 'individuality,' and in the process seemingly forgot about compassion.
jakenewton: Let's go beyond loaded terminology and ask ourselves what it is about what you conceive to be "socialism" that kills incentive to creative, produce, etc. From my research & observations, I would conclude that it is a controlled/monopolized resources (controlled ultimately by force of violence), the feeling that no matter how hard you work you'll never really get ahead, a complex and organized economy that produces goods which can only be the product of dozens of professional fields, hundreds or thousands of organized laborers, global tapping of natural resources, control of shipping and banking, etc. (e.g. Zaibatsus).
For all practical purposes, on the average person, both socialism and modern corporotism kill any incentive for invididuals to create or innovate. And for precisely the same reasons.
Though I should add that "socialism" is not a monolithic thing in the sense that capitalism has become. It is possible to conceive of small-scale, decentralized, or democratic socialism (the same cannot be said of capitalism in the modern era).
Daniel David January 23rd, 2008 1:59 pm
"A full stable of Democrats will come the nearest to attempting our return to post WWII prosperity via the tax code. It was the Reagan Republicans who did the chipping away in that regard."
The tax code doesn't create prosperity, only jobs do, and the Democrats that you so slavishly praise were the first to start sending good middle class jobs overseas in large numbers to low wage unregulated areas of the world.
Lobo Gris
Yeah for the giant clit! Stimulate it!
I don't know whether Ehrenreich or some headline writer came up with the title of this piece, but when considering the movie it is based on (Desperately Seeking Susan--1985) it works on so many levels it's serendipity.
Hey Georgie boy, the oil rich Middle East and the manufacturing rich Far East don't care a hoot about you--they want the key in your pocket!
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ACTIONS THAT A DEMOCRATIC OR INDEPENDENT PRESIDENT WOULD HAVE TO TO DO TO DEAL WITH THIS CURRENT TERMINALLY DECEASED ECONOMIC MODEL, PUT IN PLACE BY THE PROATARIATE OUT OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL OF BUSINESS.M Freeman THE CREATOR OF THE CURRENT MODEL THAT SHOULD BE CAST OUT ,BURNED AND BURIED FOR GOOD.
I WOULD SUGGEST THAT WE TAKE ANOTHER CLOSE LOOK AT BRINGING BACK THE ONE MODEL THAT BROUGHT US OUT OF A SIMILAR DERAGACIOS TIME IN THE 30'S iT CALLED ON A BALLANCE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS AND PRIVATE SECTOR INVESTMENT. IN THIS MODEL AUTHORED BY JOHN MAYNARD KEYES. this MODEL LOOKS TO BALLANCE AS ITS MATRIX. No ONE ENITY CAN BECOME TO POWERFUL AND OVERWELM THE OTHER COUNTER WEIGHT.
AS AN EXAMPLE; IF YOU HAVE A PRIVATE BUSINESS SRVING FOOD, THEN YOU WILL NEED TO OFF SET THIS OPERATION WITH INSPECTORS TO DO ANNUAL INSPECTIONS OF HOW SAFE AND SANITARY THIS OPERATION IS. SPREAD THAT OUT OVER AN ENTIRE EONOMY IT WOULD LOOK A HOLE LOT DIFFERENT THEN THE CURRENT FREE MARKET RIPOFF.
It could be argued that a stimulus package aimed at the poor would generate more spending in the economy than a stimulus package aimed at middle income America because middle income America will more likely use the money to pay off existing debt. In any event, since America now consumes more than it produces the net effect will be to piss away yet more of America's wealth and underscores the folly of putting forth a stimulus package at this point, that such a stimulus package can only work if the fundamentals of the economy are sound. Here's a suggestion. Get people back to work doing jobs that add value to the country. Buying trinkets at the mall isn't going to repair neglected infrastructure.
lino: There are verious government agencies that produce regular reports on the things you ask about, such as the BLS for employment statistics. Before saying that you would not want to trust such statistics, recognize that you then cannot use those stats when they support your position either, and also that you would be left to find another source or to just guess at what the numbers are.
Barbara, Bravo
Also, let's get out of Iraq!!!
The Ponzi scheme called the U.S. economy has just about reached the end of the the road. The bottom of the pyramid is disintegrating and that means that everyone goes down. All the greed freak imbeciles who bought into the criminal syndicate called the Republican Party thinking they were "in on the game" are about to find out what a bunch of suckers and rubes they were. Get out of town because the endgame ain't going to be pretty.
America is replicating the decline and fall of the Roman empire. Bread and circuses, uncontrolled greed, misadventures in to foreign lands, hostile bickering in the higher ranks of the military, even more bickering in Congress, ect.If you get your television programs on the Dish Network, check out the Chinese channel get view of the next big empire.
Today's 600-point Dow upswing was mostlikely based on another rate cut expected next week and on rumors at Bloomberg.com of a scheme to rescue bond-insurers at public expense, apparently hatched today in New York or Davos, Switzerland.
The country's foremost campaign contributors, elites who hate government and always denounce regulation, have been clamoring for a federal bailout, and they usually get what they pay for. Don't be surprised to see taxpayers' alleged fiduciaries in coming days solemnly volunteer to make "tough sacrifices" for America's economy. They will deepen public debt by buying bad paper from banks too big to fail.
Then watch CEO's open their 100-million dollar parachutes and float to safety. But beware of golden showers and do not eat the yellow snow. What glitters like gold is only the usual trickledown from "free" market lobbyists.
GlenGoodman: There are people much better at it than me who will explain to you why you are wrong. Listen to them. Richard Nixon's caps caused problems.
Thank you, St. John, you get it.
Total joke: That is what they think of you too, a parasite. They think you live off the jobs they provide and are ungrateful for it.
A response to WhatToDo January 23rd, 2008 6:16 pm and comments to Barbara, et al: I agree that we are better off with fewer mouths to feed and responsible parenthood. I am a non-parent(male) by choice and was active in my youth with an advocacy movement on behalf of non-parents. However, we live in a time when planned parenthood and easy and cost-effective access to birth control is made very difficult. Abortion, while not the best or most efficient method of birth control, is becoming ever more difficult, and therefore more expensive, to obtain. Both of these "problems" are the result of a religious movement that sees its responsibility as monitoring the sexual morals and related behaviors of all of us, and "protecting" their young and the rest of us from the evils of un-Christian behaviors.
As to the rest of the article, and in response to many writers here, the real issue is one of compassion and respect for human life and the life of the planet, which we all share. Pure economic discussions of the distribution of wealth, resources, food, shelter, clothing, jobs does not touch on what is at stake. We are facing the greatest challenge in the history of the Human Race. Because of the shrinking of the time/space connection between all the continents, and the capacity to literally destroy all living beings with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, we stand on the brink of terminal catastrophe. It matters not if the billionaires become trillionaires, or the middle class shrinks to nothing. What matters is that we recongize, for the first time in "civilized society", that we are one, interdependent lifeform and that we cannot survive as separate individuals, competing for finite resources. The health of the planet is at stake, and that means the health of Her occupants. She will survive, no matter what. The questions is: will we?
I love the image of the U.S. economy as a giant clitoris, and the economists and political leaders, mostly male, looking for a way to stimulate "her" to a greater response than has ever been felt. Well guess what: she needs to be lubricated or she will get raw and irritated and then no one will be happy. That lubricant is Loving Kindness, not force. The economy cannot be forced to respond without causing even more harm. So, lets look upon the body of the population and the systems of the United States, and include the entire globe, and see how we may make love to this body in a way they pleases all of us.
peace,
st john
How about CAPPING PRICES. Start with gas. put the ceiling at a buck fifty. Then tell the insurance thieves that if profits are forty percent, then cut premiums thirty percent. Then tell the pharmaceuticals to stop gouging us.
The problem isn't economic stagnation, it's that thieves are robbing us blind. If there's any cream on the top they will damn well take it, and their paid for politicians help them.
Hard to believe that not one Democrat is as left wing as Richard Nixon who capped prices rather then watch a deep recession on his watch.
"Bush proposed to hand out cash tax rebates–except to families earning less than $40,000 a year. This may qualify as an example of what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism," in which any misfortune can be re-jiggered to the advantage of the affluent."
Bush Tax Cuts, Bush Tax Rebates, Bush Privitizing Social Security.....and on and on. Bush is a member of the Greenspan (and others) Robber Baron Cabal:
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0123.html
thank you, ms. ehrenreich, for yet another article here on cd that is full of contradiction. somewhere in it, you lost the way, or you at least lost me.
in one paragraph you state that major corporations are in the process of laying off tens of thousands of people (deja vu). later you state that "we've seen the economy grow..." and "we've seen productivity grow..." and "we've even seen unemployment fall..." unless you are encompassing a greater time span than of which i speak, please state where you've received (or heard) these facts. i'm not sure where you've been for the last seven years, but during that time, i've "heard" of hundreds of thousands of people being laid off in this country. that, along with rising fuel prices, does NOT translate into a growing economy, into falling unemployment rates, into increased worker productivity (maybe in a sweat shop in china).
although you may think of this as a "current crisis", this "current crisis" has been going on for some time, and as frank 1569 states, is by design; as were a number of other great deeds by this administration: enron/911/iraq/increased property taxes/sub prime debacles/fema/and on and on and on.
the "appropriate imagery" has been nasty for many people for longer than these affected people care to think about. likewise, the economy has been a joke since the first bush gas hike of, say, seven years ago. this did not happen overnite.
With all do respect to Ms. Ehrenreich, perhaps responsibility is more important than producing more babies. It continues to baffle me that it is unfathomable to expect people to take care of their own children. If you live in this country, you know (for the most part) how much it will cost to feed and clothe your child(ren). The vast majority of those receiving government assistance have not JUST been unemployeed. I agree with making life easier, and profits less important- Absolutely. Would it not be far easier to shift the cycle of poverty without so many mouths to feed? Is this unreasonable to ask?
I love Barbara Ehrenreich - there is no straighter moral compass writing today.
And while I think she has the calculus on the basic stimuli packages being offered correct, she misses, as far as I can tell, two absolutely fundamental issues.
First, regardless of which people will spend the money faster, this economy has far deeper problems than can be solved by a little bump in consumer spending. Indeed, consumerism and the unending quest for more - whether it be for cheap consumer goods or high-dividend investments - is the principal reason we are in this mess. "Bubbles" and crises such as the sub-prime mortgage mess are the inevitable result of a society continually trying to leave beyond its means.
Second, the mess that is our economy also currently depends on a constant supply of cheap energy. And geuss what, the price of fossil fuels (and particularly oil) are now going through the roof, and ain't coming down. And those same fossil fuels are the major contributors to a global warming phenonmena which is destroying the very basis of life (including both "the economy" and "the real economy") at a horrifically accelerating pace.
So we should indeed be giving additional support to those who need it in this country, but as part of this we also need a major, crash national program of massive energy conservation and building retrofitting to renewable energy - like when the entire U.S. auto industry switched to wartime production in six months at the beginning of WW II. (At a bare minimum on the level of what we're spending in Iraq every week, which is where we should get the money, not the couple billion here and there that the Dem Presidential candidates are talking aobut.)
The job creation coming from such a program would take months as opposed to weeks to materialize, but it would provide real, longterm economic support. It would also address the basic issue of rising fuel costs, which is hammering our economy and, more importantly, our life-support system, the earth.
That would just be the beginning, but exactly these types of major changes in our economy have to happen - or there will not be any economy left to stimulate.
Gordon
The preceeding post seems to have missed the (tangential) point. Babies really should be breastfed whenever possible, even if some cannot be. Born back in the very early baby boom days, I was allergic to both my mother's milk and cow's milk. Since the corporations hadn't yet figured out how to displace breasts yet, I survived the first few months of my life on goat's milk. That substitute for infants unable to nurse properly seems to have been forgotten even in poorer countries where mothers have been seduced into using formula even though both goats and functional mother's breasts are plentiful. As you can see, I did survive, even if both of my brothers, who were properly nursed, grew up larger and healthier than I did.
To the important stuff. Thank whatever gods may or may not be for Ehrenreich. She not only gives us wonderful lines like the first one in this article but she is also one of the unfortunately few thinkers who is devoted to given content to that heretical slogan "People, Not Profits". Here's hoping that my grandchildren will see a world in which the slogan is realized. Then again, given the current "leadership" of the world, it may be too much to hope my grandchildren will have a world at all.
"Babies should be breastfed, not given Enfamil."
Nonsense!
Some mothers have milk that is toxic to babies and some don't have enough to feed a baby.
The unspoken assumption is, "People only create or innovate to make more money." But this is really only an axiom of an ideology---the same one foisted upon me in high school, " no matter how much someone has, he/she will always want more" But this is no more than dogma. The simplest proof is the disproof by counterexample: The comedian Dave Chapelle turned down millions of dollars from the Comedy Central channel because they wanted creative control. Apparently, Dave Chapelle creates for reasons other than pecuniarial ones. Many children create for the motivation of helping others or pleasing their parents. Albert Einstein created simply because " he wanted to know the mind of god". How about creating for the sake of saving life on the planet as an incentive for those of us who aren't Einsteins?
This house of cards must crumble first to build upon it's asshes a new economy...in the mean time the Iraq war is costing us 2 billon dollars every 10 days and that subject, along with Impeachment, is off the table!
Here we go again, taking seriously words from the thieves who deliberately created this catastrophe by design, which is like counting on the guy who just stabbed you in the back to stitch up the wound while he receives a "rebate" for the original knife purchase but not on the needle and sutures required to save your life.
You know, we're all like little children of alcoholic parents, sure that THIS time "they" will "do the right thing" in spite of NEVER doing the right thing before. Then we'll all act surprised that, in fact, "they" did the wrong thing, again. Hey, let's get the same dudes who f--ked up the levees the first time to rebuild them!
"Stimulus" does not necessarily have to come from Federal Drunk Daddy. As when a vendor or grocery store offers coupons, banks could offer very low interest rates; credit card companies could freeze interest rates for one year at, say, inflation-plus-one rates; corporations could voluntarily fork up their "real" fair share of taxes owed; and the "elite" could start wildly investing their obscenely hoarded wealth into local businesses all across America. For example.
Or, we can continue to hope our drunk-driving Fed will from now on drive sober - as soon as the Jaws of Life arrive to extricate them from the bus they just wrapped around the tree.
I cross-posted this.
There are two very good articles today that point out why any stimulus plan will fail, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA24Dj01.html and Chalmers Johnson's here at CD; it just amounts to BAU corporate welfare dressed as a middle class bailout.
My Bailout proposal: Eliminate $400,000,000,000 in "defense" spending and allocate it to the poorest 75,000,000 households–$5,333.33 each. Reset tax rates to those of 1978, eliminate a further $500,000,000,000 in "defense" spending and establish a firstclass single-payer healh system. Mandate 100,000,000 Solar Roofs (both thermal and electric) and wind machines of this type, http://www.windside.com/index.html while intituting a carbon and "offshoring" tax. Half of the usual corporate subsidy is redirected, which forces corporations to change if they still covet the largess; about 1/4 is redistributed through the new tax and medical care regime; and the remaining 1/4 goes to pay the debt.
The above would be a start toward a new paradigm; and we must start somewhere
My point is gov't benefits are just a band aid to the root cause of the problem which is the corporate takeover of democracy, our government, and the economy.
What bothers me about this argument is that the government is expected to bail out everyone because the private sector is failing and exploiting their employees (the Walt Mart effect see the movie "High Cost of Low Prices). Why should the government (us taxpayers) pay for the failings of the private sector to pay people a livable wage? That's right a livable friggin wage so that they can afford healthcare, a family, and a roof over their heads. Government should be pressuring and forcing the private sector to pay us all a real livable wage and to regulate the economy instead of giving these greedy corporations tax breaks. The real problem is the private sector bought our government and we have no voice! Secondly, government should be regulating the banks and not bailing them out! Ughhh
We need to hold the corporations accountable! Ralph Nader has it right.
Paul, I think socialism had it's place in small tribal settings and similar, but does not scale well.
I do so love reading Barbara's columns. It's a voice of clarity in the wilderness of hype.
I would go so far as to suggest that not only babies but people in general are more important than profits. It seems, these days, to be a far stretch of the imagination to call our society civilized.
Thanks again Barbara.
greenerthanthou, I doubt any mom living on $1/day is in any condition to produce adequate milk for a baby . . .
The proposed tax rebate for only those who pay taxes saddens me. I volunteer at my local emergency food pantry. Households must wait 30 days between visits so there is enough food to give out. Families, with FULL-TIME jobs are coming in every 30 days. They don't get much. A gallon of milk, a dozen eggs and a pound of butter, along with their selection of nonperishables, based on a formula according to household size. Each Thursday that I volunteer, I see 1-2 parents of my children's schoolmates come in. These folks are working folks-some with 2 or more jobs. Many have lost jobs or incurred high medical bills which has changed them from donors to donees.
It's after helping these hard-working people that I get so upset when conservative acquaintences complain about the same folks who are accepting hand-outs and are worthless dregs of society. Most likely the same folks who think they don't deserve the rebate b/c they didn't work for it.
They work only too hard.
AdeleTC: While I would love to comment at length about the principle, I'm not sure I would be able to do it justice in this type of blog. I encourage you to go to copy and paste the following into your browser, http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/topics/parecon or google znet which will provide a link for parecon on its site.
Pay people $15 an hour as a minimum wage, and you'll have all the consumer demand your economy can handle.
Why don't we start with the premise that labor creates wealth and that people deserve a living wage for their labor? Oh, I forgot, we are a capitalistic society and it's every man for himself.
kathyodat
DD: I knew I'd agree with you sometime. The post by MikeBinSC is indeed the correct answer here. If you happened to watch DEM NOW! this morning Robert Kuttner had a very clear take on the issue.
Short term economic stimulus will never solve a problem that extends far beyond our capital markets and global equity disasters. Capitalism is on the ropes. A new vision needs to replace the vacuum of creativity currently in place - It's time for our nation to consider a new vision for economic development. Perhaps that vision should be a frank discussion of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel's work on Participatory Economics (Parecon) which has been taken very seriously in other countries.
I propose those who are familiar with this work write some articles about the subject for CD and those who are not familiar with it read and become familiar with it.
How about it Barbara! Much of this work is based on the problem of coordinator class theory you yourself wrote about many years ago. Parecon is a concept whose time has come. At least let's get some media coverage of the concept in order to build insight and vision for where we'll need to go beyond the empire. How about it Mike Nichols, Robert Kuttner and others (you know who you are) How about some serious articles in your publications about economic vision for the future? How about something about Parecon? What are you supposed progressive publications waiting for? We have been underserved by the very people who should be responsible for getting this information into the public dialog.
REMEMBER DANTON.
ZERO tolerance for white collar crime, urban gangs are small potatoes next to the kind of misery visited on the population of our world by our military/corporate mafia.
Hallibuton built our concentration camps, now they can live in them!
MikeBinSC has a very short, very good post above. It speaks volumes. A full stable of Democrats will come the nearest to attempting our return to post WWII prosperity via the tax code. It was the Reagan Republicans who did the chipping away in that regard.
As for "stimulus", dropping the CD rates at the bank from 5% to 4% to 3% to 2% is more "stimulating" for the banks than for the people. They might be be reasonably expected, for instance, to drop credit card default rates from 31% to 30% to 29% to 28%. A big fix, right?
Babies should be breastfed, not given Enfamil.
Perhaps we need paid maternity leave, so that new moms can nurture their babies, instead of enriching formula companies. That would put money into the economy.
Unemployment comp, of course. Food assistance, yes. Housing assistance, absolutely. But I think the things that are hobbling folks on a day to day, month to month basis are the EXHORBITANT interest rates they are paying on consumer loans. The tens and hundreds of dollars going to the Banks, every month, for money they only pay 4% for. Criminal!
We need to set rate limits for mortgages and consumer loans (credit cards, auto loans, etc.) and amend the debt-slavery inducing Bankruptcy Bill. These two things would unchain a lot of people from the cycle of debt and debt only enriches the corrupt Banks/Investment firms who sold electrons flitting in cyberspace to fleece the world. Unshackled from debt, the average household could afford to SAVE money AND SPEND money. Everyone is tapped out, working two Mcjobs ain't gonna pull us out of that. In addition, NAFTA, GATT and other "free trade" deals have exported our vital production needs and living wage jobs.
Screw what these economists and MBAs say or do. They're the ones who fucked this all up, why should we be bailing them out at all? Parasites.
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
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!
EDWARDS '08
Beyondempire: Could you give us a hint regarding Parecon? Is it similar to, or an expansion of, Muhammad Yunus's Social Entrepreneurship?