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Stimulus for All?
The staggering gulf between the rich in America and everyone else is the root cause of our financial crisis. We can only stimulate the economy if we solve inequality.
There would have been no sub-prime mortgage crisis had there not been poor families with unstable jobs to trick with bad loans. There would not be outlandish interest rates and record consumer debt had credit schemes not been invented to sucker those with limited cash. Healthcare costs would not be bankrupting families if we had established health as public benefit not a private privilege.
More to the point, these and other structural inequalities were allowed to spiral out of control because our government got out of the financial regulation business at the behest of big corporations and the super-rich who wanted their profit - and thus, inequality - to grow.
Trying to revive our stalled and stumbling economy without addressing the fundamental problem of inequality that got us here is like trying to fix the flat tire on your car just by adding air. It's no solution at all: there's still a hole in your tire.
There is a giant hole at the bottom of the American economy that has been engulfing poor families for decades but which many others are noticing for the first time as they too are falling through it.
The Congressional Budget Office recently forewarned that, if there is no government action, the nationwide unemployment rate could approach 9% by 2010. In the Bronx borough of New York, where there has been little government action for years, unemployment is already at 8.3%. The same in Detroit. President-Elect Obama recently suggested that in the absence of a stimulus package, unemployment could hit double digits. But in parts of Appalachia, unemployment has been over 13% for years. In Youngstown, Ohio, the unemployment rate is over 14%.
Meanwhile, we're finally acknowledging the national crisis that 47 million Americans lack health coverage and 79 million more have significant healthcare debt. But poor families and low-wage workers have been without adequate health coverage for decades. Inner-city African Americans and Latino immigrants have long received substandard care through unequal services.
In our increasingly interconnected and complex world, it's naïve to think something isn't a problem until it affects us directly. If compassion for others wasn't a sufficient wake up call, hopefully the low balance in your retirement account now is. Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres suggest that the canary in the coalmine, whose premature suffering warns the miners of impending danger, is a fitting metaphor for communities of color and poor people whose experience at the margins of our society illuminates crises threatening us all. We're in this financial crisis now because we failed to heed the signs of danger as noxious inequality rose all around us.
Few have talked about the financial crisis in terms of rich and poor. Most of the focus is on the "disappearing middle class." But where do you think the middle class is disappearing to? They're not sailing their yachts to Hawai'i. The middle class is rapidly joining the ranks of the poor, reeling from the inevitable, gravitational, polarizing pull of inequity.
Barack Obama himself said that, in addition to providing "a jump-start to the economy" we should use the stimulus package to "put a down payment on some of the structural problems that we have in our economy." What might that look like?
Well, while construction jobs are valuable and important, those jobs don't usually go to those at the bottom of our economy. And communities like Detroit and Youngstown have infrastructure needs that go far beyond buildings alone. They need early childhood education programs and health clinics and better schools - which happen to be areas more likely to employ women and people of color and low-income communities. In addition to physical infrastructure, the stimulus package should invest in community and human infrastructure - and related jobs - as well.
And similarly, we should not only be helping those who have lost their healthcare recently but make a down payment on affordable, quality healthcare for all. Many children and families haven't had any health coverage for some time, many others are receiving unequal care due to racial disparities, others are finding the hardships of the financial crisis multiplied by mounting healthcare debt. Reinvesting in Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program and removing the barriers to participation in these programs would not only lift the financial burden on families and state governments but be a significant down payment toward ultimately universal care.
The Campaign for Community Values, a national alliance of more than 150 community organizing groups organized by the Center for Community Change, is bringing grassroots leaders to Washington everyday to press this agenda on Capitol Hill. You can help by visiting www.communitychange.org and joining our list.
In his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." For the economic stimulus package to work, it has to get everyone working - and make our economy work for all of us. And that means finally addressing the inequality that got us into this mess.
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63 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
I agree with Ms. Kohn's analysis. Certainly the critical mass now being confronted by most Americans makes it a ripe time for these issues to hit center stage. The tidal surge of lots of dissatisfied Americans may prove a sufficient enough force (and momentum) to push the elites off their comfortable niches so that the beginning of more equitable trickle down might advance into a long-awaited deluge.
I have been harping on this ever since Reagan put us on the "greed is good" train, and it amazes me that I saw this happening almost 30 years ago when those who are supposed to "have all the information" either didnt' see it or ignored it entirely.
Now the bill is due, and we are fresh out of money, because it's all in the hands of the very few. Think they are going to be willing to give it up? Not a chance. They worked too long to steal it from the rest of us, and they won't cough it up without a hell of a fight.
This is the final outcome of republican economics. They get it all and we get nothing. We get called "whiners" and told to buck it up. And this is what happens EVERY TIME. It happened the last time they got in power, and brought us the great depression. When will people stop thinking with their wallets and start using their BRAINS?
Damn, I just HATE it when I'm right about things like this, and eespecially when I think it was so freaking obvious in the first place! You just can't starve the majority and expect the rich to cough up anything of substance. They won't. They never do, and they never will. How is it that they get rich in the first place? It's because they live by greed, not by "enlightened self interest", regardless of what Ayn Rand said and Greenspan lives by. To trust them to do si is folly, and it's cost this country everything it once had, lived by and stood for.
Yes, it has been obvious, especially since Reagan, but before that. We could trace the roots of the problem back to the federal reserve act, change in the election of the senate, and the income tax act early last century. And we could trace it back to the origins of man-king systems predicated upon aggrandizement, and the essential enslavement of the multitudes in service to their man-king aspirations. And we can look to ourselves to wonder why we never learn, and keep adorning the rich and powerful with our adulation.
"The Creature from Jekyll Island"
"Now the bill is due, and we are fresh out of money, because it's all in the hands of the very few. Think they are going to be willing to give it up? Not a chance."
No their not going to be willing to give it up. If you think about it though most of their wealth is nothing but over valued paper. Pure speculation. As far a the real value, property they can't take it with them if a flee the country but it can be taxed. So it shouldn't be impossible to equalize the real wealth among all Americans.
Rickster
Good article. For an excellent solution to solving the wealth inequity problems please read up on Huey Long, Louisiana State Governner 1929-1932, and US Senator 1933-1935. He was a real progressive who threatend the money elites. And don't believe the smear campaigns aimed at him annd his policies, they are promoted by you know who.
Please hear the "Barbecue Speech", "Every Man a King", and "Share the Wealth",
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hueyplongshare.htm
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hueyplongking.htm
And you can read his wikipedia bio to better understand the man and his policies, and why the monopoly corporations wanted him silenced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1963 & 1968- Dallas and Los Angeles Coup d'État by the US Military Industrial Junta completed, according to modern examination of old evidence
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein. (Ed note: WHITE PHOSPHOROUS, DENSE METAL SUPER WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STICK UP, MISSILE DEFENSE, AND PROPAGANDA!!!!!)
Good article and great posts.
Every industry has been winner take all, with CEOs and their cronies raking in the cash and the foot soldiers walking around with empty pockets hanging out. How can a health insurance ceo be a billionaire, while the phone operative forced into lying be dispensable and hang on to their jobs for dear life?
Boy, the democracy here has been a snow job.
The Berkley rioters were partially defanged by Reagan and Johnson. Brute force was used to silence them- the army and the police force have become protectors of the Cheney's and Rush Limbaugh's America. Some of them did push on, put they have been marginalized. We need 1968 all over again. Where is Mario Savio( I hope I got the name right) when we need him?
The poor have been disenfranchised. We have no voice, and there just an illusion of democracy maintained by the skin of its teeth. Cheney and company are investing heavily in prisons. Everyone with no powerful connection is a target.
We need a leveller, or we will have our Bastille day. And we will need our own protetors, because neither the US police force, the military, or Prince/Blackwater are going to come to the poor's aide.
Again let me reiterate, even if we are completely non-violent, as the Berkley crowd was, we are going to be anhilated by the Bushes and Roves.
We have to devise a legal way to get back to parity. We will soon find out if Barack Obama is on our side.
Love
Zero
Hello Zero,
Mario Savio died in 1996, in large part because he could not afford heart bypass surgery. I have never known anyone else who combined his commitment, intelligence, charisma, integrity and modesty. He is missed and loved.
But a word about Berkeley in the 60's. (I arrived in 1964) We were known worldwide for the riots. (I used to joke that it would be hard to learn to breathe again without tear gas.)
But what was extraordinary about Berkeley to those who lived here was the community, the collectivity, the comradeship. The way people of all races would say "keep the faith" to each other and mean it. The way we would meet not just in rallies, but in constant deliberations and conversations, on street corners and in organizations of dozens of ideological shadings. (The internet is great; but somehow it doesn't take the place of arguing tactics while stuffing envelopes.) The communal institutions we built: Free Clinic, Free Church, Free Clinic, block level food co-ops and labor sharing plans, hundreds of communes, Peoples Parks (not just the famous one, but little ones all over town.) In 1967, the Summer of Love, people put out signs in their windows saying, "This is a Free House, Crash Here," to the thousands of kids who flooded our streets from all over the world. Amazing. Forty two years ago. I can't believe it.
Of course it couldn't last. Communes pulled back after the abuse of our hospitality. Stoned people lighting fires. Drug fueled dogmatism and narcissism. The police shootings; firebombs thrown in our offices. Governor Reagan jacking up university tuition so that students could no longer afford to drop out and organize.
And relentless infiltration. In 1971 the left elected a city councilman whose main preoccupation was to call his colleague a white bourgeois bitch. He got recalled, and the left was split up and down. Only much later was it revealed that he had been hired by the Los Angeles Police Red Squad to get elected in Berkeley. (Few people know that. No media attention, of course.)
But here's the point. We won a lot of battles in Berkeley (Peoples Park still exists) primarily because of our community and solidarity. I still remember Mario in one of his great speeches telling us how he found in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, that black people survived under attack by physically holding on to each other.
I often hear people arguing about how to relate to the "enemy." But that is the wrong argument, or at least a premature one. Our first concern should be how to relate to each other. If we are to solve the primal issue of inequality, we first need to study the art and the science of solidarity.
With love,
Laurence of Berkeley
I meant, "Free Clinic, Free Church, Free UNIVERSITY." Sorry. Late editing
Thank you Laurence and Ardee.
A generation owes a lot to you.
Can we recreate the movement without it's faults?
Love
Zero
.All things made by men are flawed. We were trying to reinvent the wheel in those days, using naivete and passion. Much good was accomplished lest we forget.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
.You might be interested in another side of Mr. Savio.
Bob, as he was known in school, was a student like none I have known since, he was also a friend of mine at Van Buren High School, where he was the valdectorian of our graduating class, 1960. We spent some time together as we rode the same bus after school and shared an interest in physics ( though he was head and shoulders above me there), as well as a few classes. Bob was inflicted with a terrible stutter, ironic considering his spearheading the Free Speech Movement later in life. He completed his freshman year at Manhattan College, a Jesuit school, while a senior at Van Buren. We lost touch after graduation as he went to school locally and I went to Michigan. I did see him on the infrequent visits home a few times though that ended when he went to work with the poor in Mexico ( I think) and I went to Viet Nam.
After a few years on the road ( damn that book and the Dharma Bums as well)I was working in New Orleans when I went to San Francisco for a visit. I decided to stay and a mutual friend reintroduced me to Mario ( as he was now calling himself). He was a dramatically different person , quite shocking fact, but still a great guy and very concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. We remained in touch, even as he accepted a teaching post at Sonoma State, I would ride my bike up there on some weekends and we would talk politics and discuss actions. It was a very sad day when he died, and the world lost a brilliant mind and I lost a friend.
Hope you dont mind the memories....
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Contrary to fixing "structural problems in the economy", Obama is further weakening the structure of the economy by throwing ever more money at the people who systemically undermined the structure of the economy for the past 30 years.
Once again, here are numbers from the Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/
In 2004, the distribution of wealth in this country was:
- The richest 1% had 34.3%
- The next 9% had 36.9%
- The next 10% had 13.4%
- The poorest 80% had 15.3%
To view most of these numbers in a pie chart (which emphasises the disparities), go to:
http://www.inequality.org/
Click on "By the Numbers" and page down to the pie charts.
Bush's tax cuts gave more money to the richest people. See:
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines06/0405-12.htm
Medicare for All Now !
Incremental answers will only end in failure ....
Single-Payer Health Care Would Stimulate Economy : posted by John Nichols @ The Nation
There is an unhealthy tendency on the part of politicians and journalists to see discussions about economic recovery and health care reform as separate debates.
In fact, one of the most important steps on the road to economic recovery – or, more precisely, toward a new, responsible and sustainable prosperity – involves the fundamental reform this country's broken health care system.
But it must be the right reform: the establishment of a national single-payer style healthcare reform system by expanding the existing Medicare system to cover all Americans. According to a new "Single Payer/Medicare for All: An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation" study released today by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, such a reform would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy. This reform would, according to the study, add $100 billion in wages to the currently sputtering U.S. economy.
Indeed, notes the NNOC/CAN, the number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008. "These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery," says NNOC/CAN c o-president Geri Jenkins, RN.
Specifically, notes Jenkins, expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and those on Medicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for those with limited Medicare, would:
1. Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008) -- and jobs that are not easily shipped overseas
2. Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues
3. Add $100 billion in employee compensation
4. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues
"Through direct and supplemental expenditures, healthcare is already a uniquely dominant force in the U.S. economy," says the study's lead author, Don DeMoro, who directs the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the NNOC/CNA research arm. "If we were to expand our present Medicare system to cover all Americans, the economic stimulus alone would create an immense engine that would help drive our national economy for decades to come.
The union is highlighting its "Single Payer Job Recovery" plan with a major rollout today and activists with Progressive Democrats for America and other groups that support single payer are staging a national call-in to Congress Thursday. Here's the PDA Action Alert on the new push for single payer:
Congressman John Conyers will reintroduce HR 676, his single-payer healthcare bill in the 111th Congress. Please ask your representative to cosponsor the bill and actively work with Rep. Conyers to gain additional cosponsors. In order to ensure HR 676 is part of the healthcare discussion in Congress, we need 150 cosponsors by the end of February.
Former Sen. Tom Daschle, President-Elect Obama's nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, called for "a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare" in testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as part of the solution to our healthcare crisis. His plan also includes health insurance corporations. Only HR 676 would implement a sustainable, fair, and efficient solution to the healthcare crisis as well as providing economic stimulus.
While single-payer healthcare proponents have made good headway in the House, there is still no companion bill in the Senate. Urge Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor a companion bill to HR 676 in the Senate.
Although I strongly support Single payer Medicare for all, realistically
it will ultimately cut a lot of unproductive jobs. All those clerks, Administrators,
Call Center people in Drs. Offices, Hospitals, Insurance companies will mostly be out of work. There won't be a need for a couple "Insurance specialists" for every Drs Office to wrestle with Health Insurance companies for payments. There will still be a need for some to deal with Medicare payments but not nearly at the current level.
And there won't be the need for the enormous army of clerks and others and in particular hugely paid Corporate executives mostly paid to deny medical payments.
But there will be MORE need for productive healthcare professionals to provide the
medical care now more open to all. However even this if it leads to
better preventive care should be more productive and will probably reduce
crisis medical care demand.
Numerous studies have shown that European countries are as productive as the US
even though they have medical care, pensions, shorter work weeks, etc.
I wonder if the greatly improved productivity of their healthcare system unencumbered by the 30% corporate insurance bureaucratic waste has a lot to do with that.
Of course the other reason for increased productivity in Europe is not having
the gargantuan $1 Trillion war waste spending of the US...
Another major source of unproductive wasted labor and resources..
Barack Obama is still selling snake oil to us yokels in the sticks. With grand oratory he intones about the stimulus package that will create 3 million jobs and make all of our dreams come true. Unfortunately, he forgot to mention that there is no money for health care, education, infrastructure or any of the other social programs we lefties hold dear.
The most radical of the reactionaries in the Republican Party have already drowned the government in the bathtub. The financiers along with their enablers in Congress and the Bush White House have looted whatever was left of the nation's treasury.
The economy has no where to go but down.
No one (except of course Isreal) has figured out that Amerikkka is soooo over as a world power.
Here is the best suggestion I've heard in a long time -- it appeared in a letter to my local newspaper, and is brilliant in its simplicity: Give every taxpayer a hefty, meaningful bail-out, say, $50,000 per individual ($100,000 for a couple). The amount should diminish and disappear as adjusted gross income reported for 2007 reaches, say, $250,000, so we're not giving everyone this incentive, only the middle to low income taxpayer. I would estimate that the total bill will be in the ballpark of the Obama proposed $800 billion stimulus plan. The beauty of this bottom-up plan is that the money goes straight to the segment of the population that is guaranteed to spend it in some way. Either they will pay down their debt -- freeing up money to banks to lend more money out, and creating a competitive environment to attract borrowers; or they will pay for college educations, or long-delayed home repairs, or long-neglected health care concerns -- or maybe even buy health insurance; or replace the 20yr old heap with a new(er) model. There is a nearly endless list of ways that the middle to lower income populace will put this money into circulation. The initial $350 billion injected into the economy with the TARP plan has disappeared into the untraceable vapor of the world of banking and high finance. They claim they can't track it, no promissory notes were signed, no records of wire transfers, apparently. So, if Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department is unable to manage the money, they might as well give it to us (it is, after all, our money) and let us mismanage it ourselves.
Yea that sounds like a good plan. I would use it to buy twenty acres and start a truck farm. Home grown veggies are the growing thing you know but it takes quit a bit of money just to get started. It takes quite a few years to get your investment back but you can make a decent living doing it. You won't get rich but a living can be made.
Rickster
Why only give it to certain people? If your goal is to pump money into the economy at a time when there is no money around, you should be giving the money to everyone.
If your already making $250,000 a year do you think they are going to spend that money? No they will stick it into some kind of interest bearing tax free account that doesn't do anybody any good. That's what happen to the bail out money for the banks. A rich man doesn't spend money he hordes it.
Rickster
.Do you remember the Bush tax cuts? Those he gave to the wealthiest among us caused not a ripple in the economy, the six hundred per couple he gave to the rest of us actually manifested a bump in the economy.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Wow I'm impressed a bump. I paid bills like electric, phone and water. Bought a few groceries and it allowed me to buy some gas to look for jobs. That about all it did for the rest of the people I know. Well most of them paid on their credit card bills. I don't have any credit cards, haven't had for almost twenty years. I don't even have a credit rating.
Rickster
I am strongly against paying federal income taxes. It's all about taking your tax dollars and doling it out to the perpetrators on Wall $treet who started this who ENRON domino effect in the first place as if there weren't enough policies enriching them with our taxpayer money anyway ! For a real stimulus, get rid of the federal income taxes (unconstitutional by the way) and institute a NATIONAL SALES TAX. That way there will be no more doling out to Wall $treet, no more spending on shitty wars with no purpose such as Vietnam and Iraq, no more tax cuts for the wealthy or the corporations, and no more doling out high tech weaponry to Israel ! Oh, and we can cut down useless consumer spending. Now there's room for REAL PROSPERITY.
THE WYOMING WAY !!
P.S.: I wouldn't be against federal income taxes had both parties not spent it for the reasons mentioned above. They ABUSED our taxpayer money and it is time we POUNDED them and given them DAILY HEADACHES instead of more taxdollars to ABUSE !!
Hey Wyoming,
Money collected through sales taxes can be abused just as easily as income tax money.
The difference between sales and income taxes, however, is that rich people pay a higher income tax bracket, whereas sales taxes are regressive. The poor pay more as a percentage of their income. Why? Because poor people spend everything they earn. Millionaires, on the other hand, save and invest most of their income. If the sales tax rate is six percent, therefore, a poor person pays six percent of their income. A millionaire, on the other hand, may pay three or one percent.
The campaign against income taxes is composed of two kinds of people. One, rich people who want to reduce their taxes, and two, people who don't know whose interests they are serving. Which one are you?
Oh, one more thing about Federal taxes. In Wyoming, and in most of the Red, Republican states where local taxes are low, the Federal government pays the states much more money than it collects in Federal taxes. In New York and California and many other Blue states, on the other hand, taxpayers pay out much more than the state gets back from the Feds. Nevertheless, it is in Wyoming and such places that people rail most against Federal taxes. Go figure. But beware! If we in California stopped paying our taxes, Wyoming would be in big trouble!
The internet makes doing research much easier. If people would only go and do some, our election results would be very different.
Hmmm, you're right. I forgot the federal government has a lopsided set of ideas. It's just another reason to not trust them. I can see how taxes, sales or income, are easily prone to abuse. Maybe we do need another plan to gun down those politicians abusing our taxpayer money the way they've been doing so for the past 28 years.
In a more rational world, we would be actively debating whether capitalism even works.
Of course, that would be blasphemy. But someone needs to explain why the corporations--having been given everything they could ever want in the last eight years, with record profits to show for it--are now in need of bail-outs.
To the unprejudiced mind, this suggests capitalism system doesn't work for doodley-squat. If the government has screwed up a tenth as much as the corporations have, we would all be talking about how terrible government is, etc. It shows you how one-sided our public discourse is.
Instead of the reckless,thieving bankers and hedge fund managers being pursued with criminal charges,theyget the first huge bailout.Logical and just ,eh? No trail for this pot of gold either.Could it get any more inhumane or disgusting? Why yes,these arrogant sociopaths are confidently waiting for the next batch of multi-billions=this one may have some modest conditions.
The people of the US are in serious trouble-ALL of it caused by these few thousand scumbags.
Liberals and moderates need to unite now,the kleptocrats have all their billions and the ruthless mercenaies in place-this is one lopsided battle. Would anyone like to discuss the equivalency of The White Rose Society?
Great Op Ed. But it won't work unless a PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAX is added to the agenda.
Dear Sally Kohn,
Of course you are completely correct. "The staggering gulf between the rich in America and everyone else is the root cause of our financial crisis. We can only stimulate the economy if we solve inequality." It can't be said better than that.
I was excited to turn to your website, www.communitychange.org and to learn of all of the organizations taking part. When I clicked on "/our work", however, I discovered that there is no project about taxes.
There is "health care," "housing," "immigration," and "worker justice." All great, but how can these projects be paid for, especially the first two, if the rich do not pay taxes. Reagan cut income taxes on the rich from 70% to 28%. Now it is 35%. The Republicans have been successful. They have strangled government in the bathtub, and the poor are going down the drain.
Unless the rich start paying taxes again at pre-Reagan rates, Obama's "stimulus package" of jobs, spending, and trillions in borrowing will only work for a short time. After a few years, either debt will destroy the dollar, or he will have to cut back spending and jobs. Either way, the economy tanks again and the Republicans take over again. And equality goes off the agenda again.
Unless. Unless... you and your coalition lead a charge of all union and progressive forces to restore a real graduated income tax.
A real stimulus plan requires that money be taken from the obscenely rich, who don't spend their money, and used to create jobs for workers, who will spend it.
Tax reform (or restoration) is not the only way to combat inequality. The Employee Free Choice Act, a much higher living wage, FREE vocational and higher education (as in most of Europe), public campaign financing (so the rich won't take it all back), and much else, are all crucial. But anyone who is serious about the plague of inequality also has to focus on taxes. And anyone who has organizational clout has a responsibility to lead.
Please drop me a line at Laurenceofberk@aol.com. I would like to help.
Thank you, Laurence
For real change to occur, we must look into our own hearts. Remember how some of us who thought we were doing 'better' than those we deemed to be 'beneath' us? Perhaps we drove a more expensive car or lived in a bigger house. Did we even deign to talk to those whom we considered to be 'common trash'? Did we condemn others for using social services we thought we would never need--or secretly consider ourselves superior when volunteering to help 'them'? Now that we're in (or soon to be in) their shoes, those judgments are coming back to meet us; we ARE them (and really always were)! This kind of comparison and emotional pride is the nature of ego and dark human nature. As long as we harbor such feelings in our hearts and minds, we cannot help but create a world of want and disparity.
Just be aware, though, the stick you use to 'measure' others MUST come back to measure YOU. It is a spiritual law. Want to genuinely transform the world? Then you must transform yourself!
Wow. I didn't think it was possible for someone to have LESS than a zero understanding of the world and how it works. What Marxist wack jobs like Sally Kohn don't understand is that, if you tax the dog snot out of so called "rich people" (who defines "rich", anyway? Last I checked, The Golden Boy was defining his definition of "rich" downward from $250,000 to $100,000/yr), they will take their toys and leave. It is a known FACT that the Marxist concept of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" has failed every time it has been tried. Why does it fail? Because it destroys the will of the most successful members of society to produce to their full ability. Why bust your ass if you don't get any of the reward? Oh, to help fellow man, you say? Sorry, humans aren't wired that way. So when the rich stop producing or leave, where is the government going to get the money it needs to pay people for sitting around? People like Sally Kohn and others of her mindset need to get a good dose of Atlas Shrugged to realize what happens when you expect the most successful producers in a society to provide for everyone else. Heck, just a look at recent world history will tell you that. We would all be richer if we stopped handing people checks and instead encouraged them to become productive and contributing members of society.
Here is a little thought for you folks to ponder. If you support someone at or just above the poverty level long enough, you destroy that person's ability to fend for themselves, thus insuring that person will never be able to elevate themselves out of poverty.
No government has ever taxed its citizens into prosperity. What I find most amazing is that people keep falling for those who say that this time will be different.
It did work before in this country. Back before the seventies the rich were taxed at a high rate and they kept getting richer. Everybody else made better wages and were able to make a living then also.
As far as the statement you made "It is a known FACT that the Marxist concept of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" has failed every time it has been tried." has actually never been truly tried. Greed and corruption by the few destroyed that concept every time it was tried.
"they will take their toys and leave."
Let them leave, there just toys and it would open up opportunity for the rest of us. Do you actually think they can take the land, buildings and other infrastructure with them. If the on paper rich want to leave let them we can always void their paper. Their homes would make nice condos wouldn't they.
As far as being truly successful and earning their money I don't think so. Most of the filty rich are nothing but scam artist and actually earn very little of it. Name me one CEO that actually earns the money he makes. Most of them corporations are going under because the rest of us don't make enough to support them.
Rickster
Oh, but it didn't work in the 70s. Ever hear of stagflation? Economic growth was stagnant in the 1970s, primarily due to the crushing tax burden imposed on the most productive members of our economy. It was not until Reagan cut taxes that our economy took off. One thing the economic justice crowd seems not to notice is that a rising tide floats ALL boats. The poor in our country are infinitely better off than the poor in most Third World countries. Methinks those who want to destroy what the rich people have are merely envious, but what they don't understand is that Communism only creates suffering and death for all but a few.
"Economic growth was stagnant in the 1970s, primarily due to the crushing tax burden imposed on the most productive members of our economy."
The middle class.
"It was not until Reagan cut taxes that our economy took off."
You mean it started snowballing down hill for the majority of Americans. Reagan and his tax cuts for the wealthy started the process we're in today. Reagan, till bush came along, was the worst thing that ever happened to the average citizen of this country.
Rickster
"As far as the statement you made "It is a known FACT that the Marxist concept of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" has failed every time it has been tried." has actually never been truly tried. Greed and corruption by the few destroyed that concept every time it was tried."
You clearly don't know your history. It was tried in the 17th century in North America, in the Virginia Colony beginning around 1600. The result? They almost starved to death, because the most productive among them stopped producing. A series of governors sent by England tried to force the people to produce, but without the profit motive, it is just not possible. All the attempts at coercion accomplished was to create people who were starving AND demoralized. The brief experiment was given up around 1620 in order to save the colony.
In short, a free people will not accept Communism, it must be forced on them. The only way to true prosperity is to allow people free reign to produce what they want, selling to whomever they want, and keep the proceeds. Are rich people evil? Some undoubtably are, but without them, we will all be poor.
"You clearly don't know your history. It was tried in the 17th century in North America, in the Virginia Colony beginning around 1600. The result? They almost starved to death"
You clearly need to go back and study it some more. Most early attempts that failed were underfunded and planned. They were doomed to failure to begin with. It was like sending men into space on a two week mission with only three days of supplies.
"In short, a free people will not accept Communism, it must be forced on them."
That's funny in a sense because what we are living under now is nothing short of fascism. We only had to be fooled into it.
Rickster
And just how is additional planning and funding supposed to create a successful Communist society? The very fact that it is planned is what dooms it to failure in the first place. And as for funding, it has to come from somewhere. If the British government had continued to fund the operation, treating it like a welfare colony, they would not have had to worry about producing enough. But what happens when it's not just a colony, but an entire society? Sooner or later there will be no one left to pay the bills. In short, a "successful" communistic society still must depend on producers, since it cannot produce on its own. The Chinese finally reached this realization when they allowed free market principles into their society.
"The Chinese finally reached this realization when they allowed free market principles into their society."
You better check again. They haven't allowed free market principles into their society. they have just increased the amount of wages they give their people and they have allowed some to make a little more than others. It's still very difficult to export goods into China unless it's something they just can't produce enough of them selfs. They will allow business to set up shop in their country for export out and internal consumption. That's not the definition of free market principles as I know it.
What I don't understand is why anybody would buy the cheap crap coming out of China anyway. Most of the time I will do with out before I buy something made in China. I'm the type of person who mainly buys the things I need and save up for the things I want and theres not very many things I actually want.
Besides if the people at the top didn't collect money and call it wealth the American workforce could produce everything we need and want at prices we could all afford.
Rickster
If you don't think you are buying stuff that is made in China you better start reading the labels.........and most Americans don't give a rip where it's made....cheap is all that matters.
"made in China you better start reading the labels"
Oh I do read the labels and like I said I don't buy unless I really need it and have to and I don't buy things very often just because I want to. Even then it's something I can get some real use from. Most of the things we need are still being made in America. You have to hunt for them and you won't find many of them at wal-mart.
Rickster
While some Chinese made stuff is getting to be better quality, most of it stinks. American made stuff is tougher to find, costs more, but it largely better quality. There is some very high quality product out there, but most people would rather buy something cheap, even if they have to buy it often, than just buy it once. You can spend 10 cents until you spend a dollar, or you can just go ahead and spend the dollar.
I got friends like that. They call it the poor mans way. I got a friend who buys a four roll of toilet paper even though I've shown him were he's paying four time as much as I am buying a twenty four pack. I finally got him to spend twice as much for a water hose two years ago, Buy the way it had made in America on it. Its still in good shape. He was replacing them twice a year. Same way with electrical extension cords.
"You can spend 10 cents until you spend a dollar, or you can just go ahead and spend the dollar."
Yea and usually save ten dollars. At least that's my experience. Take electrical receptacles I was buying them at wal-mart and replacing them yearly. I started buying American made receptacles at a local electrical supply shop and have not had to replace one in five years. The cost difference was around thirty cents.
Rickster
A perfect reason not to shop at big box stores. Sure, Home Despot is cheaper than Joe's Plumbing Supply, but Joe stocks the good stuff. So does the local mom and pop hardware store, which I frequent as much for the quality of their products as I do their selection (ever try to find 5/16 stainless carriage bolts at Home Despot or Blowes?) Plus, HD is not necessarily cheaper.
"Sure, Home Despot is cheaper than Joe's Plumbing Supply, but Joe stocks the good stuff."
Even the same brand is of higher quality at Joe's. The reason why is in an attempt to maintain higher profits, not to be confused with lower cost, big box stores buys seconds. You can buy blue jeans at the big box store just to wear them out with ripped seams in six months or you can pay a few dollars more and buy blue jeans that actually wear out because of hole in them in about a year.
Ripped seams wouldn't be so bad but they always seem to happen suddenly and catastrophically in the crotch or rear end areas. I've had them rip all the way to my knees in few minutes time. squatting down to pick up some weight can be such a bummer sometimes.
Rickster
Back before the seventies the USA was still a nation that made stuff. We had a huge manufacturing base for the products we produced and purchased. This is no longer true. Do you really believe a company is going to pay a "living wage" to someone to produce something in a currently non-existent factory when the company can buy virtually everything from China much cheaper, and sell to Walmart and others those products by the millions, and at a big profit? Why would they?
"Let them leave, there just toys and it would open up opportunity for the rest of us. Do you actually think they can take the land, buildings and other infrastructure with them. If the on paper rich want to leave let them we can always void their paper. Their homes would make nice condos wouldn't they."
Ok, and who is going to use those assets to produce? The State? The State is incapable of making the required economic calculations, which is one of the main reasons socialism is a failed ideology. This fact was established for all time by Ludwig von Mises in the 1930s when he published his exceptional tome on socialism. Just ask the folks in South Africa and Zimbabwe how well that is working out for them. They kicked out the rich farmers, because they were "evil", took their land and distributed it to the people. Well, guess what happened? The people who got the land didn't know how to farm, and individually didn't have enough land to produce enough even if they did. Zimbabwe went from a net food EXPORTER to a net food IMPORTER, as did South Africa. Likewise, Stalin killed or imprisoned the Kulaks, because they were considered an enemy of the poor peasants. Why? Because they were successful - they owned land and produced a surplus of crops which fed the nation. So Stalin took their land and gave it to the poor peasants, The result of Stalin's action? The Soviet Union became a net food IMPORTER. Who supplied most of that food? The U.S., a net EXPORTER of food, due primarily to our capitalist system and the inherent incentive to produce.
"Ok, and who is going to use those assets to produce?"
Sell it to the highest bidder. Unlike you I don't think the rich are going to walk away from this country. They would be stupid to do so.
"which is one of the main reasons socialism is a failed ideology."
Tell that to the people in Canada and most of Europe whose people on average are better off than we are.
"Just ask the folks in South Africa and Zimbabwe how well that is working out for them."
You consider that socialism? Did you go to a private school?
"They kicked out the rich farmers, because they were "evil", took their land and distributed it to the people."
Actually I believe the people revolted and greed of the few took over and turned them countries into fascist dictatorships. Were not far from that here, I'm sorry to say.
"Likewise, Stalin"
A dictator not even related except by your definition to socialism.
"a net EXPORTER of food, due primarily to our capitalist system and the inherent incentive to produce."
You ever wonder why people in this country are going hungry. It doesn't make you wonder why small farmers are failing? Why are we having problems with poisoned food from China? Especially when we can be growing it here. Fascism, called capitalism in our country, is taking control and our own people in our own country are suffering.
You don't know the difference between a fascist dictatorship and socialism much less the true definition of communism. That's plain to see.
Rickster
"You don't know the difference between a fascist dictatorship and socialism much less the true definition of communism. That's plain to see."
and you seem to lack the basic ability to comprehend a simple point.
"Sell it to the highest bidder. Unlike you I don't think the rich are going to walk away from this country. They would be stupid to do so."
Okaaaay, and that will change things, how? You confiscate the means of production from those that possess it, sell those means to the highest bidder, rinse, repeat. Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for prosperity to me. How many cycles of that do you think will occur before people stop buying?
"Actually I believe the people revolted and greed of the few took over and turned them countries into fascist dictatorships. Were not far from that here, I'm sorry to say."
and why did they revolt? Because their assets were being confiscated and their farms collectivized by a Communist dictatorship. Stalin killed or imprisoned them to stop the resistance. The end result was the destruction of the Soviet Union's most productive farmers. That's why they were successful you know, because they were good at farming.
"A dictator not even related except by your definition to socialism. "
And that relates to the point, how? The point was that forcing farmers to collectivize destroyed productivity in the Soviet Union, turning them into a net food IMPORTER for the rest of their existence.
"You don't know the difference between a fascist dictatorship and socialism much less the true definition of communism. That's plain to see."
I do, the question is, do you? Let's hear your definition of fascism.
"Let's hear your definition of fascism."
Look around you, where living in it. When any individual starts making/hording so much value that it deprives others of the opportunity just to live comfortability fascism is starting to take over. I'm an advocate of a maximum wage also. Any thing over that amount is taxed. anybody who spends $40,000 on a car where a $20,000 car would do pays a premium in taxes for that car. Anybody who buys a car that only gets 20 MPG versus 30 MPG pays a premium in taxes for that car.
You want to make lots of money no problem, I think you should pay a higher percentage in taxes for that privileged. Your still going to make more money than you need to live comfortably on. Your still going to live a privileged life. Your still going to be able to pay someone to wipe your butt so that you don't get your fingers smelly. You still will be able to make your self think you're better than the people who don't really wish to be like you.
I tell you what I think all the low paid workers in this country ought to go on strike for a week maybe two. I bet the filthy rich dastards would be absolutely lost. Let there trash and garbage pile up for a week or two. Let the market completely collapse. We could survive it I don't think the wealthy could.
Rickster
That's your definition of fascism? Yikes.
Scary isn't it. It's true though. it doesn't matter if government takes over control of business/wealthy people or business/wealthy people takes over control of government the result is fascism.
If it keeps going the way it's going the only people who is going to have any money is the wealthy and we will continue our slide into third world nation status. Right now were on the border line of being there.
Rickster