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The War Against the Poor and Occupy Wall Street
The Politics of Financial Morality
We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now.![](/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/occupy_oakland_99_percent_signs_0.jpg ""By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99%, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem." (Creative Commons | Wikimedia | Brian Sims)")
"By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99%, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem." (Creative Commons | Wikimedia | Brian Sims)
The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.
By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99%, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem. Only a short time ago, the “morals” issue in politics meant the propriety of sexual preferences, reproductive behavior, or the personal behavior of presidents. Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and financial deregulation, was shrouded in clouds of propaganda or simply considered too complex for ordinary Americans to grasp.
Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protestors have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan “We are the 99%” reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren’t far off: the increase in income of the top 1% over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80%.)
The movement’s moral call is reminiscent of earlier historical moments when popular uprisings invoked ideas of a “moral economy” to justify demands for bread or grain or wages -- for, that is, a measure of economic justice. Historians usually attribute popular ideas of a moral economy to custom and tradition, as when the British historian E.P. Thompson traced the idea of a “just price” for basic foodstuffs invoked by eighteenth century English food rioters to then already centuries-old Elizabethan statutes. But the rebellious poor have never simply been traditionalists. In the face of violations of what they considered to be their customary rights, they did not wait for the magistrates to act, but often took it upon themselves to enforce what they considered to be the foundation of a just moral economy.
Being Poor By the Numbers
A moral economy for our own time would certainly take on the unbridled accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority (and the planet). It would also single out for special condemnation the creation of an ever-larger stratum of people we call “the poor” who struggle to survive in the shadow of the overconsumption and waste of that top 1%.
Some facts: early in 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 14.3% of the population, or 47 million people -- one in six Americans -- were living below the official poverty threshold, currently set at $22,400 annually for a family of four. Some 19 million people are living in what is called extreme poverty, which means that their household income falls in the bottom half of those considered to be below the poverty line. More than a third of those extremely poor people are children. Indeed, more than half of all children younger than six living with a single mother are poor. Extrapolating from this data, Emily Monea and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution estimate that further sharp increases in both poverty and child poverty rates lie in our American future.
Some experts dispute these numbers on the grounds that they neither take account of the assistance that the poor still receive, mainly through the food stamp program, nor of regional variations in the cost of living. In fact, bad as they are, the official numbers don’t tell the full story. The situation of the poor is actually considerably worse. The official poverty line is calculated as simply three times the minimal food budget first introduced in 1959, and then adjusted for inflation in food costs. In other words, the American poverty threshold takes no account of the cost of housing or fuel or transportation or health-care costs, all of which are rising more rapidly than the cost of basic foods. So the poverty measure grossly understates the real cost of subsistence.
Moreover, in 2006, interest payments on consumer debt had already put more than four million people, not officially in poverty, below the line, making them “debt poor.” Similarly, if childcare costs, estimated at $5,750 a year in 2006, were deducted from gross income, many more people would be counted as officially poor.
Nor are these catastrophic levels of poverty merely a temporary response to rising unemployment rates or reductions in take-home pay resulting from the great economic meltdown of 2008. The numbers tell the story and it’s clear enough: poverty was on the rise before the Great Recession hit. Between 2001 and 2007, poverty actually increased for the first time on record during an economic recovery. It rose from 11.7% in 2001 to 12.5% in 2007. Poverty rates for single mothers in 2007 were 49% higher in the U.S. than in 15 other high-income countries. Similarly, black employment rates and income were declining before the recession struck.
In part, all of this was the inevitable fallout from a decades-long business mobilization to reduce labor costs by weakening unions and changing public policies that protected workers and those same unions. As a result, National Labor Board decisions became far less favorable to both workers and unions, workplace regulations were not enforced, and the minimum wage lagged far behind inflation.
Inevitably, the overall impact of the campaign to reduce labor’s share of national earnings meant that a growing number of Americans couldn’t earn even a poverty-level livelihood -- and even that’s not the whole of it. The poor and the programs that assisted them were the objects of a full-bore campaign directed specifically at them.
Campaigning Against the Poor
This attack began even while the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s was in full throttle. It was already evident in the failed 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, as well as in the recurrent campaigns of sometime Democrat and segregationist governor of Alabama George Wallace. Richard Nixon’s presidential bid in 1968 picked up on the theme.
As many commentators have pointed out, his triumphant campaign strategy tapped into the rising racial animosities not only of white southerners, but of a white working class in the north that suddenly found itself locked in competition with newly urbanized African-Americans for jobs, public services, and housing, as well as in campaigns for school desegregation. The racial theme quickly melded into political propaganda targeting the poor and contemporary poor-relief programs. Indeed, in American politics “poverty,” along with “welfare,” “unwed mothers,” and “crime,” became code words for blacks.
In the process, resurgent Republicans tried to defeat Democrats at the polls by associating them with blacks and with liberal policies meant to alleviate poverty. One result was the infamous “war on drugs” that largely ignored major traffickers in favor of the lowest level offenders in inner-city communities. Along with that came a massive program of prison building and incarceration, as well as the wholesale “reform” of the main means-tested cash assistance program, Aid to Families of Dependent Children. This politically driven attack on the poor proved just the opening drama in a decades-long campaign launched by business and the organized right against workers.
This was not only war against the poor, but the very “class war” that Republicans now use to brand just about any action they don’t like. In fact, class war was the overarching goal of the campaign, something that would soon enough become apparent in policies that led to a massive redistribution of the burden of taxation, the cannibalization of government services through privatization, wage cuts and enfeebled unions, and the deregulation of business, banks, and financial institutions.
The poor -- and blacks -- were an endlessly useful rhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and make bigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new think tanks, political organizations, and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted the message that the country’s problems were caused by the poor whose shiftlessness, criminal inclinations, and sexual promiscuity were being indulged by a too-generous welfare system.
Genuine suffering followed quickly enough, along with big cuts in the means-tested programs that helped the poor. The staging of the cuts was itself enwreathed in clouds of propaganda, but cumulatively they frayed the safety net that protected both the poor and workers, especially low-wage ones, which meant women and minorities. When Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office in 1980, the path had been smoothed for huge cuts in programs for poor people, and by the 1990s the Democrats, looking for electoral strategies that would raise campaign dollars from big business and put them back in power, took up the banner. It was Bill Clinton, after all, who campaigned on the slogan “end welfare as we know it.”
A Movement for a Moral Economy
The war against the poor at the federal level was soon matched in state capitols where organizations like the American Federation for Children, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Institute for Liberty, and the State Policy Network went to work. Their lobbying agenda was ambitious, including the large-scale privatization of public services, business tax cuts, the rollback of environmental regulations and consumer protections, crippling public sector unions, and measures (like requiring photo identification) that would restrict the access students and the poor had to the ballot. But the poor were their main public target and again, there were real life consequences -- welfare cutbacks, particularly in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and a law-and-order campaign that resulted in the massive incarceration of black men.
The Great Recession sharply worsened these trends. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the typical working-age household, which had already seen a decline of roughly $2,300 in income between 2000 and 2006, lost another $2,700 between 2007 and 2009. And when “recovery” arrived, however uncertainly, it was mainly in low-wage industries, which accounted for nearly half of what growth there was. Manufacturing continued to contract, while the labor market lost 6.1% of payroll employment. New investment, when it occurred at all, was more likely to be in machinery than in new workers, so unemployment levels remain alarmingly high. In other words, the recession accelerated ongoing market trends toward lower-wage and ever more insecure employment.
The recession also prompted further cutbacks in welfare programs. Because cash assistance has become so hard to get, thanks to so-called welfare reform, and fallback state-assistance programs have been crippled, the federal food stamp program has come to carry much of the weight in providing assistance to the poor. Renamed the “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program,” it was boosted by funds provided in the Recovery Act, and benefits temporarily rose, as did participation. But Congress has repeatedly attempted to slash the program’s funds, and even to divert some of them into farm subsidies, while efforts, not yet successful, have been made to deny food stamps to any family that includes a worker on strike.
The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming “dependent” on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.
The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping -- and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.
- Posted in
52 Comments so far
Show AllThanks for the statistics, which will help those of us "out here" working to inform and move the populace. Wonderful clarity of thought.
Keep in mind that many of those who fall below the poverty line work like dogs in industries that once paid a living wage but are victims of a system that has created a race to the bottom for them.
For example, I know a truck owner/driver who works 80 or more hours per week but nets less than the $22,400 per year that is the cut-off for poverty.
The current economic system is purposefully destructive to the lives of the 99% Noam Chomsky describes the people who have been warred upon as the PRECARIAT, people who are now living economically precarious lives. He further describes the 1% as living in a prosperous PLUTONOMY. Occupy Wall Street is doing a fine job of raising people's consciousness regarding this reality. Bank Transfer Day was a success and helped raise consciousness. It is the big banks that brought this ruin upon people; therefore, Occupy Wall Street should support the suspension of student loan payments given the lack of jobs.
Amazing isn't it that we were told when our life savings, equity and pensions mysteriously disapeared, that the money just evaporated. But now we know exactly where it ended up:
" the increase in income of the top 1% over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80%"
Such is the nature of "markets", free, contrived, rigged and otherwise... they neither create money or destroy money, markets just move money.
Financial industry decriminalization (euphemistically called deregulation) during the past 30 years made it legal to rig markets to transfer money from the 99% to the 1%.
Until FDR's New Deal financial industry regulations are restored the "markets" will continue to transfer your wealth and my wealth to the 1%.
Yes we desperately need a new kind of moral economy. The rational reptilian attitude must be replaced with kindness, empathy and cooperation. These are the only sustainable attitudes.
Without them, we perish.
And anyone who wants to run interference for the predators out there with talk of the "pathologies" of altruism and the celebration of brutal and coldly calculating "winning" by intimidation strategies should be jailed!
The only patholgy that is killing us is a dearth of empathy for ALL life.
agelbert,
Hi brother, did you see the opening statement "We’ve been at war for decades now.."
It makes me wonder if the clueless Dim know it. Even if all the war’s stops immediately the damaged done will be far reaching for generations to come. Are we that stupid....oooh another one in the horizon "Iran?”
A big YES to a new kind of moral economy. And if any traditionalist protests the "new model economy", remind them we are just fulfilling tradition: "promote the general welfare" (same as the common good) was & is the main reason for forming the nation, ANY nation. Your excellent words flesh out this bare-bones concept. Notice it doesn't automatically endorse any "-ism" of economics, so capitalism and free-marketeering DOES NOT get a free-ride endorsement. Notice it is suitably general, non-sectarian, and secular, to bring ALL people of good hearts, together to engage in this work (of promoting the general welfare...of ALL life on this planet).
Check out the original citation on TomDispatch.com
It includes opening paragraphs not included here, which I found very interesting, about happenings @ OWS ....
Aquifer,
Thanks for the addition. It's really mind bogging, don't you think so? If we have a Repug president now in the WH, you would see the mass uproar, paralyzing this nation to an immediate standstill similar to the Vietnam war. Still there are many democrats praising Obama for the craps (Healthcare, SS, foreclosure, student’s loans, immigration...) and blaming it on the Repug.
I found the same at buzzflash.com, and I too found it very interesting.
Point of CD editorship, Aquifer:
FWIW, the opening paragraphs you cite are actually Tom Engelhardt's introduction to Piven's article. Here, for whatever reason, CD simply omitted Engelhardt's introduction.
But, as I recently pointed out, CD has also published Engelhardt's "teasers" or introductory prefaces to somebody else's article as separate, stand-alone pieces under Engelhardt's byline.
This seems odd to me, since they're clearly distinct from his own independent articles. Moreover, as here, CD usually also publishes the article that Engelhardt references, but doesn't explicitly connect Engelhardt's introduction to the associated article.
I think it would make more sense to consistently publish the Engelhardt prefaces and the articles together, as Englehardt presumably intends.
Where there's a will, there's a way to sort out the dual bylines, headlines, layout, etc.
There seems to be some confusion or inconsistency on the CD editorial level here.
We now return to your regular programming.
I realize that nobody really cares, so pardon this self-indulgence.
But the "missing" opening paragraphs have indeed been published a day late here, as a separate article:
"A Patrol in Enemy Territory: Wall Street" by Tom Engelhardt*
This seems like an awkward editorial practice of splitting the baby in half to me. Just sayin'.
* http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/08
This is a very excellent, accurate, and informative article by Frances Fox Piven; one of the very most important articles appearing on Common Dreams in 2011 (and in recent years in general). I recommend reading it twice.
I'll be joining a small group of 99%ers in Grants Pass, OR this coming Thursday. Be interesting to see how much the group has grown since being reported in the local paper last Friday. There were about thirty people at that first Thursday gathering.
What is so funny is the tea baggers trying to make the OWS believe they should join the tea party and fight against the REAL problem.
If one only read this article and Bill Moyers speech to Public Citizen they would have a good brief history of how the plutocrats rigged the system for themselves trampling over democracy and morality. Long live Frances Fox Piven!
Please help me to understand this; Greece's ruling Socialist government is about to name former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos as leader of their interim Government.
And I should believe government will work in my best interest because?????? I should trust them with more power and more money because???????? I should believe their goal is to serve the needy because??????? I should believe they will break bread with the masses and not stay within their confined circles because???? ?
I think I'll use my measly vote and reduced interest to vote for smaller government.
I really don't understand Progressives. I know my guys (CEOs) will eat my family for dinner if it assists their passions. No matter how often (Politicals) do the same, progressives still believe next time will be different. Progressivism is a religion.
I will try to help.
Your problem is that your position contradicts itself. On the one hand you say you don't trust anyone with power and are opposed to the government, then you turn around and say you are going to support and give power to - and trust - anyone who claims to be "for smaller government."
Would you trust a thief who claims to be in favor of less stealing?
Can you not see how you are being made into a fool? People craving to get into power are telling you they are not craving to get into power with this "smaller government" ruse.
Hello Two Americas,
Long time no see, and how are you?
Let's start by who to potentially trust. In my opinion, it is safest to trust those who have directly invested in you and your family. As a rule of thumb the greater the investment someone makes in you, the less likely the risk of ruse. (Apart from a few good friends, we don't take anything on faith).
With regards to a single issue, it is reasonably safe to trust those who have heavily invested in a position which is shared in common.
Outside of that, "Show Don't Tell"! Look at what others do, and pay little attention to what they say.
A person's tendency is to ally with their passions/investments/creations. If there is conflict between an investment and something/someone else, look for the invested party to side with the investment.
P.S. I think every vote we make is in favor of a thief who claims to be in favor of less stealing!
I know small gov politicians play me the fool, why would you spend so much time going up that ladder just to tear it down. But we have to vote for someone, and the big gov politician invests/creates bureaucratic monopolies and also has not invested in us.
Thanks for the response. Not sure what you are saying here.
What I am saying is that while you correctly stated that I believe power corrupts, a more dominant driver is human's natural tendency to care take their passions and investments above the greater good (investments meaning that which we have spent our energies on).
An example is while most would try to save others from a dangerous situation, we would make sure our child was with the first removed from danger.
So it is safest to trust those who have invested directly in you. Secondly, if someone is passionate about/invested in a like position or cause, they can usually be trusted to follow through regarding that position.
Finally, it is wise to distrust politicians of any stripe, because to get to the top, the politician has to have invested heavily in their career, and the government they hope to run. The same is true of a CEO.
Exactly who might these mysterious entities be who are "investing directly in me"? Your point is so impossibly ambiguous as to be nonsensical. You seem to imply that those politicians promoting small government, like Ron Paul, are busily "investing directly in me," or something. This makes absolutely no sense.
People who have invested directly in you would be your parents, possibly your siblings, your grandparents, possibly an employer if they paid for part of your education, possibly a union if they invested in your education, a close mentor Etc… Most likely not a politician of any stripe left or right.
Look just because I believe in small government doesn't mean I believe the rules don't apply to small government politicians. In my opinion trust Ron Paul as much as you trust President Obama or President Bush or Sarah Palin or Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan.
How much do you think I trust, or think you should trust Ron Paul? Even though I will be voting for him in the primary.
Keep interactions voluntary, limit coercive power.
Liberty - I understand what you are driving at. Let me just state in my own words that some degree of reason, pragmatism, and common sense are necessary for self preservation, notwithstanding whatever direction ones overriding emotions are pushing one in. Correct me if I misunderstood.
Hello richsmith2,
Have you ever seen a nature documentary where a lion pride is attacking a herd of water buffalo to separate out a calf and the mother will defend her young (has direct investment), but the rest of the herd runs and is disinterested in the outcome.
I think genetically/naturally we are also too predisposed to our intrests to work for a common good consistently.
I have seen in documentaries where a number 2 buffalo will gore an already wounded dominant male and leave the wounded brethren to the lions so to help his own position. This behavior is rewarded in government and in business. The behavior is in fact necessary and accepted to make it to the top. Think it's not true; give me an example of a major primary contest or election cycle where that behavior does not become dominant.
If I am to be honest, I find it idiotic to see the public witness this behavior and then be surprised that the offenders are not working for them.
I partner with people every day and believe cooperation is essential to our existence/betterment. But the partnerships must be voluntary and not coercive to limit the negative aspects of human nature. The coercive/monopolistic nature of government is incompatible with the more problematic aspects of human nature; therefore government should be limited and small.
Of course then there is the herd of elephants who will form a circle with their young in the middle and present a unified front to the "enemy" ......
Or the numerous instances where critters will "adopt" and care for others not their own, sometimes even of a different species ....
Wall Street is a confidence trick, a dazzling edifice built on paper promises, gambling, bets and rampant speculations. Wall Street doesn’t manufacture or produce anything. Wall Street , however attractive it may appear, is built on paper.
Wall Street speculation caused a 70% increase in the price of wheat from June to December 2010 and severed food crisis in more than 35 countries. However, there was no significant change in the global food supply or in food demand. The total value of Wall Street speculative financial derivatives reached more than $600 trillion – about 10 times global GDP. Wall street's speculative derivatives are virtually untaxed and banks often avoid paying tax on profits from selling derivatives. Every consumer is paying more for commodities including food and fuel due to the excessive speculation by Wall Street.
Modern day bank robbers are at Wall Street but they wear grey suits and not masks. Rampant speculators, propagandists and financiers of Wall Street are all given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers and the cumulative effect of the people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public’s trust in the present US government. There’s no question that Wall Street is rigged against the average consumers and taxpayers. Wall Street has a lot more information. Wall Street jerry-rigged the system so that Wall Street always win. If Wall Street loses trillions, the US Treasury will bail the Wall Street out so it can go back and do it again.
50 trillion dollars in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including 7 trillion dollars in the US stock market, 6 trillion dollars in the US housing market, 8 trillion dollars in the US retirement and household wealth, 2 trillion dollars in the US individual retirement accounts, 2 trillion dollars in the US traditional defined benefit plans and 3 trillion dollars in the US nonpension assets. Greed, arrogance and incompetence created a massive meltdown, cost trillions, and still Wall Street comes out richer and more powerful.
There are trillions dollars of new money taken again from Americans to make deals and hand out outrageous bonuses. And when these trillions run out, Wall Street will come back for more until the dollar becomes junk. The value of the US dollar declined very significantly during the last 70 years. The value of the US dollar in 1940 was worth 2,000% more than the value of the US dollar now.
Many big US manufacturers are outsourcing to Mexico and China to increase their profits, adding more unemployment in the USA. Manufacturing jobs in the USA declined 37% between 1998 and 2010. Since manufacturing industries has declined in the USA, the US competitiveness in the global marketplace has also declined.
Robust financial markets don’t imperil capitalism. In the early 1980′s Wall Street began to escape reasonable important regulations of the marketplace. The US government gradually adopted a “too big to fail” policy for the Wall Street, saving lenders with failing businesses from losses. The demise of Glass Steagall act helped spawn the credit crisis by allowing the Wall Street to create financial instruments that allowed them to escape reasonable limits, including constraints on speculative borrowing and requirements for the disclosure of important facts. The extremely lucrative hedge funds and other risk management derivatives including credit default swaps don't fund or invest in successful growing businesses. The credit default swap market was the single biggest cause of the crash 4 years ago.
Wall Street's suicidal capitalism built on rampant speculation eventually posed an untenable risk to the US economy—a risk that culminated in the trillions of dollars’ worth of the US government bailouts and guarantees that the US government scrambled starting in late 2008. But in 2008 the US government was compelled to replace private risktakers at the Wall Street with government capital so that money and credit flows wouldn’t stop, precipitating a depression. As a result, these Wall Street became impervious to the vital market discipline that the threat of loss provides. Wall Street lenders of the financial markets continue to understand that the US government would protect them in the future if necessary. This implicit guarantee by the US government harms capitalism and economic growth.
The top 6 US banks had assets of less than one fifth of US GDP in 1995. Now they have two third of US GDP. The financial crisis was created by the biggest US banks to consolidate power. The big banks became stronger as a result of the bailout by the US Treasury. The big banks are turning that increased economic clout into more political power. Wall Street has undue influence on the US government policies and this situation reflects a failure of democratic representation for the other 99 percent Americans.
Oligarchy is the political power based on economic power. And it’s the rise of Wall Street in economic terms, that it’d turn into political power.Wall Street will then continue to feed that back into more deregulation, more opportunities to go out and take reckless risks and capture trillions of dollars.
Wall Street only has the lobbyists. Today more than 42,000 Wall Street lobbyists manipulate USA's 537 elected officials with huge campaign contributions that fund candidates who support their agenda. It no longer matters who's the President of USA.
Nalliah Thayabharan
The political and economical leadership of the US has chosed to cartel profits and transformed the US economy to serve the colluding and unlawful oligarchy. The political and economical leadership of the US is bailing out failed paradigms with trillions of dollars while committing social injustice to its people. The political and economical leadership of the US including the US Congress have now become Wall Street's "Trojan Horses". The US banks are borrowing money at near zero interest from the US government, then lending it back to the US government at even mere fractions higher interest than they are paying. The net interest margin made by the US banks by lending the money back to the US federal government in the first 6 months of 2011 is 210 billion dollars.
Due to the oligarchs’ rapacious looting and their purchase of a politically protected luxurious lifestyle, the people of the US are on the road to permanent serfdom under a police state. The democracy was not given to the people of the US on a platter. It is not theirs for all time, irrespective of their efforts. Either people of the US organize and they find political leadership to take this on or they are going to be in deep trouble.
The failure of governance to address the current critical issues have already produced catastrophic consequences. Now we are experiencing a major global paradigm shift and it is still unfolding. Thirty-two US states including California, Illinois, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Michigan are on the brink of insolvency as their tattered and fading economy is now more dire than ever. Inevitably in very near future the US government will order police or military to martial law which may lead to a second American revolution.
“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires, no greater guilt than discontentment and no greater disaster than greed”
- Laozi
"Greedy desire is endless and therefore can never be satisfied"
- Buddha
THAYA: Great insights! You put the complexity that's operating behind a massive show of smoke and mirrors into an easily understandable narrative. What's amazing, given these numbers, is how the focus is on the "Super Committee" now tasked with stealing yet more from the citizenry by using the appearance of an emptied treasury as pretext for cutting every vital program that citizens rely upon.
Another article recently published on CD related that Bank of America received something in the order of 72 TRILLION dollars of bailout back-up! It's impossible to wrap one's mind around this figure; and yet while this gigantic transfer of bounty took place under the radar, we insted see the news cycle devoted to rationalizations for why millions will be shorn from Head Start, Food Stamps, Unemployment checks, etc.
... as the libraries were closed down, and the sick asked to go without medical intervention.
"They're fighting for YOUR liberties." The pro-troop propaganda proclaimed.
What an alias!
Excellent article. It is so important to situate OWS historically and show that this is a class war extending back to the 60s and 70s when the ruling elites became very worried about the prospect of a genuine popular uprising. They set about to change things via a coordinated attack on unions and the social safety net and have been very successful in enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. The ruling elite does not want a strong middle class. They want a weak or nonexistent middle class, because a strong middle class facilitates social movements for a more inclusive, meaningful democracy. Good work, Professor Piven.
I disagree with your analysis. The "middle class" has been the only thing that has allowed the 1% to stay in power in the First World and this system to continue. By bribing some of the working class, putting them in the "middle class" they have effectively held back a revolutionary challenge to the system. The declining rate of profit and rising up of the Third World against colonialism and imperialism has left the capitalist class with no options but to reduce the amount of wealth (bread crumbs) it could use to bribe this "middle class". With the "American Dream" exposed, as just a dream, we enter into a new political stage - the challenge to the system itself. They don't want a "weak and nonexistent middle class", but they can not avoid it. This is what "facilitates social movements for a more inclusive, meaningful democracy" - the end of the working class elites.
Just a "wild idea"-- maybe the far right and further right hate this woman because she defends our freedom.
Slick Wily also had a black retarded kid executed during his 1992 campaign helping him tap into the Klan vote in Loosana and the rest of the US South and maybe else where. I know for sure about the South. I can' remember so well some of the silly BS I had to put up with when I simply talked sense about civil rights being a part of democracy-- not that it's not made it prsence known in other parts of the USA. But I'm more familiar with the South, and I might add Minnesota where I now live. I had immediate family there I visited at the beginning of this millennia . My how things haven't changed despite all the hot air. But then here in Minnesota I've known of the law stopping blacks in my heavily whie neighborhood for being black. "America Satan shed his racism and lunacy on thee/And crown thy insanity with exceptionalist BS from sea to shining sea"-- thanks to our "enlightened liberal" mainstream media and failed educational system. "The world still looks the same/And history ain't changed. . ." as the Who would put it.
To put the poverty level of $22,350, into perspective. It is 2 parents, working at minimum wage of $7.25 per hour for 32 hours per week, each. In my town, child care is $200 per week, per child. So if the 2 children are too young to go to school, and there is no relative to babysit, then the family pays $400 per week for child care. The income of one parent's gross is $232 per week. Of course they could apply for subsidized child care, but it will take longer for them to get up the waiting list than for the kids to age into school.
So what is wrong with this picture?? Used to be that one parent's income would support the family, and the Mom stayed home and did PTA. Then prices rose and both parents had to work to maintain their same standard of living. Now, prices are so high that both parents need to work, but if they have young kids, it is not feasible.
The 1% is waging cyberwar on the Global Revolution chatroom
While it's true, the livelihoods of the bottom percentile of Americans are being demolished, nothing is going to bring the current system under democratic control unless Obama is impeached. Since 9-11 and the terrorism excuse, Bush/Obama have initiated a violent and intrusive police state. According to University of Illinois law professor, Francis Boyle, Obama is worse than Bush in his destruction of our rights as citizens. To date, Obama has murdered 2 American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Al-Awlaki's 16 year old son and 12 year old nephew were also murdered. These acts are contrary to the US Constitution and are impeachable offenses.
Professor Boyle has offered his pro-bono services to any US Congressperson willing to uphold the Constitution and begin impeachment proceedings.
Another excellent article, there are so many here on CD lately, shout out to my man Chris Hedges! To add a point to the "War on Drugs" being an attack on the poor and minorities I refer you to the great work of the late Gary Webb: "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.". Not only did the Reagan admin ignore the major traffickers but were actually intricately involved in sanctioning cocaine trafficking which lead to the widespread crack cocaine epidemic of the 80's. Crack cocaine (used by poor) has carried criminal sentencing 100 times longer than sentencing for powdered cocaine (used by rich). They can get away with volume discount for govt purchase of illicit drugs, but Medicaire has to pay full price! Remember also that the profits were for funding another illegal war, in Nicaraugua, where many tens of thousands of poor people were killed along with their democratic aspirations. Another note, seems ironic now, as part of the Iran-Contra deal, Israel was going to ship weopons to Iran! OCCUPY EARTH!!!
99% is about radical inclusiveness. Linking the "99% of Earth" would be awesome! All these O(ur) W(orld) S(urvival) protests from China to Tunisia to Cucamonga could be linked. Can someone make a website that can translate most languages so we can all get together in one place to talk with each other? Maybe some day we can all be the 100%.
That can't happen as long as extreme greed rules the world. The free market rulers.
I agree. Extreme greed should be treated as the disease it is. Put them in a safe place, heal them. Attention "free market" rulers, we are changing the rules.
The war is over!
Batman has come to save us all!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2058289/Occupy-Wall-Street-protests-Batman-arrives-scene-film-movie-sequel.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
"The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, refers mainly to a brief six weeks in the People's Republic of China in the early summer of 1957 [1] during which the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues, launched under the slogan: "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land." Following a brief period of liberalization, the Communist Party cracked down hard, forcing confessions, sending outspoken students to labor camps, and imprisoning many more.
Totalitarians of the right or the left never change their ways. The occupy movement is a set up.
Haven't been there, have you?
Thank you! I have been arguing for some time for the importance and relevancy of, and the need for the left to introduce into the conversation, the concept of "morality" - we have ceded the use and the definition of that term, and the ideas that flesh it out, to the Right for far too long.
We have to broaden the common usage of the term so that it is clear that it belongs in the boardroom as well as the bedroom ....
The reason that "free market" ideology is unsuitable as a paradigm for our economic lives, IMO, is not simply because it "does not work as advertised", but that it is an amoral, materialist philosophy that cannot encompass, let alone deal with, the moral dimension that we, as humans, have so "irrationally" insisted on clinging to over the millennia - a dimension that, once abandoned, as it has obviously been for too long in that economic sphere that determines so much of our lives, can only result in us being where we are now ....
The nation is in decline - not so much because of the lack of morality in the bedroom, as the Right insists, but because of the lack of it in the boardroom and the halls of government, where the only time it is introduced is when it refers to certain physical body functions. Bringing the moral dimension back into our economic lives should be, IMO, our rallying cry ....
I was on the board of directors for our Community Action Progran here in East Central Iowa back in the lqte 1980's for five years. I can say with all honesty the vast majority of the people we helped were the working poor. Those that didn't reach into those ranks were likely recently laid off, handicapped, or elderly. I can only imagine what it is now like. The food banks are feeding more and more people, the shelters are most always full to capacity,, the number of hidden people is beyond belief. I have a friend who is an advocate for the homeless veterans, she has distrubuted over 100 tents to provide basic shelter to veterans, and is always looking for more. Do we all have to become serfs in order to get the changes we need in our government and our tax code to at least provide the essentials? How low must we go?
Ms. Piven's data is superb as far as it goes, but she fails to acknowledge how the nation's welfare bureaucrats thrive at the expense of the poor, for example by increasing administrative outlays 5,390 percent (not a typo) even as they slashed stipends and services by 66 percent.
The 5,390 percent increase in administrative expenses and the attendant 66 percent downsizing of stipends and services are revealed by "The Statistical Abstract of the United States," the ultimate authority for data about federal and state governmental operations. The changes occurred over 20 years, from 1970 to 1990, the latter the last year for which complete state-level statistics were available when I, then a journalist of some three decades experience, exposed this atrocity via a 1995 Internet story.
In 1970, 87.7 percent of the nation's federal and state welfare expenditures went to stipends and services for the poor, while the remainder, 12.3 percent, paid administrative expenses. By 1990, aid to the poor had been downsized to 24.5 percent of the total, with the remaining 75.5 percent going to the bureaucrats, most of it for radically expanded payrolls.
These findings – all from "Statistical Abstract," show how the appointed guardians of the poor became predatory parasites instead.
Not only that: the bureaucrats willingly collaborated with Ruling Class politicians, academics and media celebrities to create the Big Lie of the “welfare queen” – typically an African-American single mother who was then falsely but universally scapegoated as the personification of runaway welfare costs.
But the statistics reveal the real “welfare queens” are the bureaucrats themselves – present tense because the same shenanigans that facilitated their bounteous 5,390 percent increase in administrative expenses are routinely employed today.
For example, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services formerly conducted recipient-eligibility reviews once each year. Now it imposes them quarterly, using the (wholly unnecessary) 300 percent increase in paperwork to justify retaining a maximum number of employees.
Meanwhile it boots thousands of people off its assistance rolls, inflicting starvation and death by neglect and abandonment.
Thus capitalism rids itself of those of us who are elderly, disabled, chronically unemployed or otherwise no longer exploitable for profit.
It is literally the U.S. version of genocide, all the more cunning for its lack of death camps. Not only is it a teachable moment; its revelations are among the most terrible truths about the United States.
What imprisons us in Wall Street's slave-pens is the notion infinite greed is maximum virtue. This is the core principle of capitalism. Popularized by Ayn Rand, it is drummed into us until we accept it without question – never mind it refutes every standard of ethics or morality our species has ever uttered.
As a result, capitalism's savage ethos is now as prevalent in the workplace as in the boardroom. From the bureaucracy to the shop floor, our national ideology is a relentless me-first/fuck-you selfishness.
Hence the class-traitors formerly called “Reagan Democrats,” the ultimate perpetrators of the ruinous decline in union membership that dis-empowered the U.S. Working Class. Hence too the welfare bureaucrats – the lowliest clerks included – who happily function as what has been aptly labeled “little Eichmanns.”
As Ms. Priven implies, many New Yorkers are appalled by the hatefulness and sadism of the war against the poor. But as James Baldwin said 53 years ago, the City truly is "Another Country." Out in America, where gentrification has forced me into permanent exile from my beloved Manhattan, the masses cheer, applaud – and vote the "little Eichmanns" back into office.
Though such voters are part of the 99 percent, they are conditioned to imagine themselves part of the One Percent. And until they develop a proletarian identity – until they stop identifying with the oppressor – they will never evolve the solidarity essential to what Ms. Priven calls “moral economy.”
Indeed it is the 99 percent's belief in infinite greed as ultimate virtue that facilitates capitalist governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us.
A variant of the same problem – assumptions and reactions tantamount to identification with the oppressor – threaten the Occupation Movement itself, particularly beyond the intellectual precision fostered by New York City.
Contrary to Ms. Priven's claims, there is grave danger that – once away from the City and its intellectual acumen – the Occupation will repeat the errors which nullified the revolutionary potential of the 1960s: that it will remain stubbornly bourgeois, cliquishly shunning the more obvious victims of capitalism.
Not only is there a lingering tendency to reject the poor for our inability to purchase the knowledge and technology required for participation in the Internet and other electronic media; our oft-outspoken grievances violate the white bourgeoisie's zero-tolerance taboo against anger – the very taboo that is the cornerstone of our oppression.
Nor – though I applaud the accuracy of Ms. Priven's description of the struggle – can I accept her implicit endorsement of reform. The history of the past 70 years – not just the destruction of the New Deal but the methodical murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and indeed every other effective reformer – proves reform is impossible.
Capitalism is in fact the greatest evil the human species has ever unleashed. It is terminal cancer not just of our body politic but of our entire planet. And until it is eliminated accordingly, every one of us is at deadly risk.
Excellent post.
Thank you. Alas my critique is utterly discredited by the fact I misspelled Ms. Piven's name in second and subsequent references, the sort of infinitely mortifying dyslexic error that has ruinously plagued me since medical problems forced me to quit smoking tobacco 16 years ago -- four months AFTER I wrote the investigative report on welfare statistics referenced above. I would never dare attempt such a project as a non-smoker; nicotine, a potent neurotransmitter, temporarily alleviates dyslexic dysfunction. Without nicotine, my writing skill is effectively nullified – hence my always deep and impassioned preference for photography has become vastly more compelling. By the time I discovered how my dyslexia had (again) ambushed me and (again) made me look like a drooling idiot, it was too late to correct the error because Common Dreams had closed the text to revisions. My deepest apology to Ms. Piven.
It is a minor error that does not diminish the impact of your post.
Thank you for your supportiveness, but as I know from my many many many years in journalism, nothing discredits a story faster or more totally than a misspelled name.