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Now let's look at what is really going on with the average person in an economy where the attention of our leaders seems solely upon Wall Street (and ways to reduce their own millionaire level tax burden). And even more into forbidden territory, let's discuss the buzzword: Taxes. And soon the Transfer of the same where it belongs. (And that's not necessarily just back into your wallet I hope you are beginning now to realize.) Nearly 700,000 layoffs in 1998, 56 percent higher than the year before; the biggest surge in unemployment claims in six years; and a study of four Northwest states that revealed more than half of the available jobs do not pay a living wage. And of course the last two years seem to bring news of another major layoff weekly or more.
At the same time, corporate America (that is outside the Rustbelt where jobs had fled overseas) had never been more robust. In fact, since 1990 – the supposed end of the Greed Decade – the pay of CEOs has gone up an average of more than 440 percent. While the conventional wisdom holds that America is thriving, (or was before Dubya snuck in the back door of the West Wing) it's hard to escape the notion that the United States has been torn in two – divided between a moneyed elite that has greatly benefited from globalization and an increasing number of citizens who have been left choking on the dust, and worse, of the bulls as they rush past. In 1964, 36 million Americans lived in poverty. Thirty-five years and a War on Poverty later, 35.6 million Americans live in poverty – and that is with the government setting a qualification point far too high to keep the official number down. (Just try to live and provide for a family of four making just above the poverty-line, without government assistance. Go ahead.) The War on Poverty? It "failed" chiefly because the programs were largely NEVER FUNDED by a reactionary Congress, they made damned sure the money never got where it was supposed to go, though they incredibly tell the bald-faced whopper that over a trillion dollars was spend on it – in fact most of a far smaller real amount went elsewhere – like into crooked politicians' and developers' and providers' wallets and pork-barrel projects for key Senators' hometowns... But in fact, the main part of the Johnson War on Poverty was (and is) a rip-roaring success, despite the best efforts of conservative mossbacks to prevent it, and their screaming pundits to spread the falsehood of failure, Sargent Shriver made it so intergral a part of the infrastructure, only the loopier conservatives (the same ones against student-loans and bans on guns in church) speak against these programs: Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, and the Youth Corps. (Shriver also created the Peace Corps, another "liberal" program the conservatives fought tooth-and-nail to destroy). Now that the reality of the RW sandbagging of most of the poverty, training, and "enterprise-zone" programs have been forgotten (and never well reported) by the Corporate Press; and we now have hundreds of RW AM Yak-Radio dissemblers, bolstered by conservative think-tank fake-search, telling us just how "useless" it is to "throw money" at social programs, but so great for the economy to give it by the truckload to CEOs, the super-rich, Wall Street knaves, and millionaire politicians instead of to the working poor. As it was "proved" by the failure of the War on Poverty that you simply cannot help "those people." It's in their genes to be failures, don't you know. Shades of Mr. Scrooge! The Casey Foundation' s "Kids Count" report, released the spring of 2000, identified 9.2 million children "growing up with a collection of disadvantages that are cause for exceptional alarm" and focused on "the persistent exclusion of far too many of our children and families from the full promise of American life." "Kids Count" directly contradicts the rosy data being spun from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue by reporting the significant increase in the number of children – 5.6 million – in families of the working poor. Despite the economic boom and an unemployment rate at a 25-year low, the U.S. child poverty rate remains at over 21 percent – the highest in the developed world. And we set the bar higher here to keep the numbers down. In the spring of 1999, the United Way of Los Angeles released its "Tale of Two Cities" report, spotlighting the growing disparities in the richest city in the nation and concluding that "economic conditions for children have not been so precarious since the Great Depression." One out of three children in Los Angeles lives below the poverty level, the number of abused children placed in foster care has risen 86 percent in the past decade and even with the recent drop in violent crime, homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under 18. According to officials of 30 major cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "The strong economy has had very little positive impact on hunger and homelessness." Ninety-three percent of those responding expected requests for emergency shelter to increase further next year. Second Harvest, the biggest national network of food banks, says its clientele is growing by 10 percent a year, a rate not yet rivaling Starbucks, but demonstrating the growing divide. A flurry of reports over the last few weeks documents the split:
I will add newer numbers here shortly, but most will be worst, not better. Real unemployment is increasing. (Don't forget you ain't counted in the unemployment numbers if you have a part-time, or temp job, no matter how pitiful the earnings. Or if you aren't officially registered with a government agency as currently looking for work.) Okay, here's some newer numbers:
At the same time the United States has the second-lowest taxation rate of all the industrial countries, higher only than that of Switzerland (which makes much of its own budget for fees in hiding stolen tax money from the US). It also falls far short of all other industrial nations in the provision of social services to its citizens. Stop and consider that for a few minutes please. It is so contrary to "common sense," what you hear all the time. what the news-pundits endlessly repeat. But get real; if you really spent nearly all your paycheck on taxes, where'd that new SUV or minivan in the driveway come from? How'd you pay for the vacation to the Islands or Disneyworld? How'd you afford the computer you are likely reading this thanks to? And for all the Washington bullfunky about their oh-so-wonderful tax-breaks, haven't local and state taxes gone up, and/or services gone down? Aren't schools cutting back on programs, libraries with shorter hours or even shutting their doors? And frankly did the give-back amount to more than a fraction of your usual tax-refund? And while the government had that money it was paying down the debt which has reappeared since GW Bush got the White House via one corrupt Supreme Court vote (why does that one count more than the thousands of the majority votes by the people for Gore?). Estimates are now that if Bush is reelected the next president will be facing a debt of over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS! A bill that our kids will get stuck with just as our parents let Reagan stick us with his "tax reform."
Does that make any sense to get "back" a few bucks for obesity-producing burgers and fries so the rich can sock away millions, all of it by stealing money from our children? Just to make the economy look "good" by methods not dissimilar to what an embalmer uses to pretty up a corpse. So Dubya can befuddle the public into letting him keep his job, and with his millionaire cabinet rob the taxpayer of even more of their commonwealth. The heavier taxed Western European nations measure their socio-economic success on factors that are seldom mentioned in the United States. Factors such as universal medical coverage; free education through university or trade school; state-owned and operated public transportation; fully paid and adequate family leave programs; national child care programs; lengthy vacation provisions for workers; adequate unemployment provisions; and housing assistance. So while they pay a lot of taxes, they end up with more left over to spend without ensuring the consumer debt we see in America! Yes, more taxes can mean more spending power – as the state provides much of what otherwise you pay out-of-pocket to some greedy multinational companies to provide. And usually not nearly as well. This means also the companies that employ you have less burden to provide benefits the nation provides, so can offer other incentives for increased productivity. Or even just pay and treat workers right! For example, compare maternity and family leave in the United States with other countries:
Other aspects of Norway's approach to quality of life are telling. Norway provides annual stipends of $1,620 for every Norwegian child under the age of 17. Retirement pay is provided for all homemakers, equivalent to industrial workers' pensions. There is a national health program that provides reimbursement for all medical costs exceeding $187 a year per individual. There is free day care as well as free education through graduate school and Norway's Lifelong Learning Plan . Health Minister Gudmund Hernes stated, ''The state's investment in worker's health, financial security, and education pays big economic dividends.'' There is much talk in the United States, particularly by our elected officials, about family values. There can be no doubt that a nation's value system, reflected by the care provided children and all citizens, is most important. But is that what "family values" about really? Or is it a cover to push a fundamentalist and intolerant "morality" down everyone else's throats? Success in the United States is exclusively measured by the (declared) profit margins of corporations and the perception of the stock market's stability, neither of which tells us about the quality of life for much of the population – and often little about the corporation or economy either for all the fuss made. Work by itself is seen as an overriding virtue, whether or not it provides an adequate wage for a family (thus the fraud of Work-fare). Individualism is the hallmark, and programs that provide government assistance are castigated as "socialism." Never mind those "socialist" companies are turning better profits and have higher productivity.
Let's look at things from a different perspective. Try to forget all those Big Lies about the t-word Feudal-Corporate Capitalism has told you since you were first exposed to the mass-media and school texts. In fact, let's call it something different. If President Bush can payback to all the election money of the timber companies, with an executive order allowing clear-cutting (stripping to the bare ground) PUBLIC forests for microscopic fees and no assurance of proper replanting, and get to call this rip-off his "Healthy Forests" program; then why cannot we call the money paid by citizens to maintain their nation Democratic Dues? Let's also look at the government as not the enemy (and it's certainly not to corporations, it's their biggest customer and benefactor), but as a giant credit-union, or group-benefits program. As our collective agent. With lots of warships and guns to protect our interests. By combining fairly assessed democratic dues (those making more and better able to pay kick-in more than those with minimal incomes, rather than a "flat-tax" that cheats the middle-class and working poor, to give even more back to the rich), a nation has the operating capital to properly fulfill its duties as collective agent for the society. Does anyone sane really seriously think private interests would do what the government does half as cheaply? Where is the real evidence? Outside the crap from RW thinktanks, which makes grocery tabloids seem reliable news sources? (Most cases put forward leave out a lot of the real costs; such as how much the government provides to those "private" companies not carried on the company books. Like job-training, highways, tax incentives, cheap leases, and no costs to advertise for a customer, and so forth. The pundits ignore that "market forces" are very much restricted in nearly all of these deals, as with "private" prisons. Add in the costs the taxpayer is picking up above and beyond the fees themselves, and the supposed private advantage of private prisons disappears.) For one thing, how much real competition is there for especially the larger of those government contracts? Not a lot of people can build a nuclear carrier. Or stealth bombers. Or supercomputers. A lot of time you are lucky to have three choices. (Where you have rally open bids, and transparent oversight, guess what? You even have agencies run as cheap or even cheaper than any competitive private company's service. But you seldom heae anything about those! And they're not uncommon in federal or state government not totally controlled by special-interests. Like we see in Texas and Florida.) The big governmental deals are often as not cost-plus. With the crappy oversight (thanks to graft), this is basically a free-meal ticket. A big reason for cost-overruns is they can do so, and get away with it, again and again and again. As we've sunk too much already to drop the program or change suppliers (if any exist). Corporations really love those cost-plus government deals. They make out like bandits, and get to then fund OP-ED pieces complaining about "government" inefficiency. (And write those ads off.) Why shouldn't we let government handle those things that should make little or no profit (as it involves natural monopolies or captive customers), and those that need to be made available not just to those that can pay whatever the market can bear, but ALL those entitled as members of the commonwealth? Would you really want private companies handling national defense? (Look what a fine job they did with Iraq. The elephant in the room on the Abu-Ghraib prison story, is how much that happened was the fault of "independent contractors." Including some with direct links to the administration.) When the profit motive is left unchecked with public monies, costs do not go down, as standard economic theory claims, but, whenever possible, they go up. The balancing forces have been bypassed. And "government" gets the blame. But it is not innate, it is usually cheating. Then blaming the victim. You cannot depend upon self-regulation or common decency to keep the greed under control when the market is short-circuited (as it is in much of the "private" sector as well as public). Look at American lumber companies; until a no more than a couple of decades ago, few companies (especially in the South) bothered to do more than a token replanting. Too many clear-cut forests; which allows erosion, devreasing the soil to grow new trees, when one gets around to doing so. They seemed to think they could always bride some Department of the Interior bureaucrats for a few million more acres of public forests to strip. But those public lands are finite. We've run out. If we want to keep any (as we have a certain percentage burning off naturally each year). At least charge what it costs to repair the damage after the timber companies get done, and provide safe havens for protected species! Since it takes decades for a new crop of trees to mature, many timber companies are now squeezed, as they failed to replace their trees when they should. So they squeeze their mostly non-unionized workers. Who cry and moan and groan to public officlals (elected with timber company funds) to let their poor starving grossly-mismanaged and rather stupid companies destroy even more public lands, so a few thousand workers can keep their dangerous underpaid jobs with next to zero job-security or advancement. And guess what?! Most of the good lumber goes overseas to Asia, while North American lumber and especially paper costs skyrocket, year after year after year. Only health-care costs can compare in cost rises. Just a generation or so ago, most ordinary doctors were NOT rich. Only those at the upper reaches of specialties or treating the wealthy. Doctors were decidely middle-class, and not always upper middle-class. It was a profession and calling, not an excuse to print money. Then Medicare came along. To get it to pass, LBJ put in (he hoped temporarily) the cost-plus fee structure demanded by the American Medical Association. Since then doctors' incomes have far outstripped inflation. In fact only health-care costs have risen as rapidly. Think that's a coincidence? Nowadays, not just doctors are on the Medicare gravy-train. Medical suppliers, testing labs, insurers, service companies and so forth. Making a bundle off Uncle Sam, while bragging about their capitalist success in the "free market." If doctors, sworn to put the health and well-being of their patients foremost, with a proud tradition of public service and sacrifice, act like a drift of pigs let loose in a ripe corn field, how can we expect better of private companies in it strictly for the money? Again and again, companies have made ungodly profits, for little or no out-of-pocket costs to themselves, when providing "public" services (especially when all the subsidies and tax-breaks are figured in), while fussing about the absurdly small (compared to other developed countries) taxes they actually pay. Forgetting it's the Democratic Dues that provide their incomes in the first place. But then look how long it took companies to realize that if they want the public to buy their goods, then they have to pay their workers enough to have money left-over to be consumers. (A big reason the United States was basically little more than a third-world nation until early in the 20th century, and England lost its empire.) Capitalists are so often really rotten economists. But then so are most economists. Want some (or all) of what citizens in other countries take for granted in public services? Shut down the lobbyists. No more lunches and vacations paid for by special intersts for government officials. Unless you want to share a cell with Martha Steward. The private sector can discuss their desires at public meetings just like the rest of us. NO PRIVATE MONEY WHATSOEVER IN ELECTIONS OTHER THAN BLIND CONTRIBUTIONS TO A GENERAL FUND IN WHICH ANY QUALIFED CANDIATE CAN SHARE. We sort of have that now with Federal Elections, but not taken near far enough. Money is NOT "free speech" as those with more money get more "speech." So allow blocks of time for no or small fees to true public-formed groups, not just company front-groups. Small groups as well as large get a chance (maybe a lottery for best slots). Limit elections to six months maximum, including primaries and such. Why in hell drag it out, if we get to really here from the candidates, have some real debates, and and double-check via the Internet their records? (Because the people providing access to what are technically public forums are making a BIG fortune, the longer it goes on.) Provide means to open public debate, dissent, and information about alternative choices. Like a series of debates or all candidates securing ballots of at least 5% of the possible electorate. Public funded handbooks (or at least websites, with printed material available on demand, bia an 800 number) providing each potential voter, with basic positions, and so forth. Major election day a paid holiday, if you vote. And why not make certain public services, not vital ones though, available only to registered voters? We provide incentives for damned near everything else but being a good citizen? Which seems odd for a capitalist state if we really believe in the Market/ And demcorcacy? As it now stands, the TV broadcasters have with the current anti-public system of election the greatest gimmick since the first pyramid scheme (probably before the Pyramids). They pay nothing above filing and other minute bookkeeping costs to utilize invaluable (and limited) public airwaves. We own the spectrum, not the broadcasters (though FCC Chairman Michael Powell seems very confused about this, but then he never meet a media giant he didn't love). Not even a tiny royalty is paid by broadcasters toward Public TV and Radio (which is kinda crazy, it is public property they are using, so why not a lease payment, as we do with forests and ranges?). As surveys show, the broadcasters cover less and less of local elections (which they are SUPPOSED to be doing to qualify for a license). A recent look showed 54% did not do any real election coverage beyond a few "horse-race" updates for a few more contested races, averaging 18 seconds! Some not even that. So if anyone wants to run for public office, their biggest expense, by a couple orders of magnitude (10X is a magnitude, two magnitudes is 10X10), is broadcast time for their ads, so the public at least knows their name, if little else. Question: Should people running for public office be entitled to a certain block of time on public airwaves? Why not, beyond it is cutting into some of the TV broadcasters' unholy profits, and the graft to public officials? It is not that covering election has to be boring or lose viewers. Stations that do it right (fewer every year) are usually the top-rated news-casts locally. But by sloughing the job, greedy and lazy stations rack in billion of dollars each major election, by peddling acces to the same public airwaves they got for free. Yet never lose their licenses for what can be considered malfeasance as it is gross mismanagement of public property; and it is certainly malfeasance involving the public officials supposed to be protecting public interests regarding their electromagnetic spectrum. Make all government biddings open and "transparent." (It is for many already.) Close the tax loopholes and havens for the rich and corporations. All the thousands of them. Make foreign companies pay their fair share of the dues to market and operate here in America (as their own governments do, in sneaky ways, at home against American companies). Attach a "fair wage" tariff (and to hell with the WFO's screams), so countries underpaying their workers can not steal American jobs. Or undercut American companies paying living wages and not polluting. And do the same thing internally so cheater-states can not steal jobs from other states with low wages and low taxes and depriving their citizens. Those are just a few baby steps (though the pundits will make it it would be equivalent to moving the planet to a new orbit), but they'd bring back home jobs, and increase the democratic dues available, as well as massively decrease the graft. Then we could pay off our debts, and have enough to do what needs to be done (and is done elsewhere). Invest in our children and the future. (BTW, one reason health systems overseas are strapped now is that American companies dominate the heath service and equipment field, and they are so greedy after decades on the Medicare teat, that like our greenhouse gases, it adversely affects other countries as well. So the stupid crap going on here affects everyone, and that comes back to us, decreasing trade and available capital, for a double whammy.)
What are the consequences of such an ideologically driven system where capital-return is the monad? The sole criterion considered? The United States ranks 18th among nations in infant mortality despite having many of the best hospitals and the majority of the doctors on the planet. The United States has the highest divorce rate of any industrial nation – 50 percent of all first marriages, 60 percent of all second marriages, twice as high as naughty Sweden with easily available porn and causal nudity (and sex), and Americans break-up four times as much as supposedly libertine France. It is estimated that between 30 to 50 million people have no health insurance, and almost every city has a homeless problem, and many of the homeless are families with children. Taxes are what pay for social programs, and if we want a nation with a high quality of life for all the people, then we should be willing to pay for such programs. Of course, programs to be really effective should not be specific to certain groups; e.g., the poor, the elderly, children, the disabled, etc. Programs should be directed at the total society – that is, a national health program, equitable education for all through university and trade school, national child care, adequate unemployment insurance, adequate public transportation, etc. All of this would require somewhat higher taxes. A tax reduction for everyone is a regressive tax in a nation where tax reform benefits the rich and provides nothing more than rhetoric for workers and the poor. And we need to consider making the corporations, especially the large ones, actually pay their fair share – which they haven't since the Fifties. Those that pay anything at all, and certain foreign corporations especially seem to be invisible to the IRS, owning income taxes in some cases for over a decade! But then, it's actually LEGAL for corporations to keep two sets of books; the ones they show investors, and those, with much smaller incomes and lots of "losses" to the IRS. Gee, isn't that just a wee bit shady? Currently in the last (hopefully) year of the second Bush tyranny, the tax-cheaters among the corporations (which insiders like the VP for taxes at HP and former IRS commissioners estimate at about half the Fortune 500 companies at least) it's costing the actual tax-payers at least $300 billions of tax-revenue a year. That's 15% of the total taxes for the federal government, which the rest of us have to make up for. (Imagine a 15% real drop in your taxes, without increasing the National Debt.) Since the super-rich and big-business got the IRS auditing staff chopped way below what it needs to keep up, there has been a huge surge in tricky tax-shelters. Every time the IRS closes one scheme down, like the notorious LILO (lease in-lease out) cross-border scams that were so stinky the worst offender of the "fiscal services" providing these schemes, First Union, had to change its name to Wachovia, the thousands of tax-attorney and immoral accountants filling so many office buildings in downtown NYC (and the Cayman Islands) come up with another fabricated shelter scam, with artificial transactions, and phantom losses. Hidden by laundering the racket through layers of phony holding companies with rent-a-boards The way the tax-code has been written to suit the rich, some of these tax-ripoffs are (barely) legal. But since audits are a 1000-1 shot nowadays, and the penalties far less than commissions, legality is a minor consideration. [First Union/Wachovia has absorbed more banks and fiscal firms, is now the largest fiscal service in the Southeast United States by second-quarter 2004.] The result is that no major corporation pays anything close to the "official" rate of 35%. Back in the Reagan-Bush rip-off era, the real corporate tax rate averaged out to 17%. But thanks to the "tax-cut" the real tax-rate for megacorporations is down to SEVEN PERCENT! That means that corporations, who used to pay 35% of the total tax load when Carter was President, had that rate drop to 20% by the new millennium, and is estimated to be now 15%. And dropping. And you know who makes up the difference. To make matters really obscene, the Dubya Debt now has the United States about 7.5 trillion dollars in the hole. Let's repeat that; when you add up everything owed out, the National Debt has increased to $7,500,000,000 or so. That far offsets any "boost to the economy" for actual investment in industry as Uncle Sam is soaking up every penny of available loan capital just to pay interest on the debt. That's partly because consumers and smaller companies have been forced to spend on their own debts (and increased tax loads) so much that savings (the main source for capital lending or Treasury borrowing) are half what they were a couple of decades ago. So many companies cannot borrow money to upgrade or expand. Which forces them to go to Wall Street and float more stock. Which opens them to hostile take-overs. Or to join the enlarging percentage of bankrupts (now about 20% a year). So it amounts to a doubled-up hidden tax, to pay for that wonderful "tax-cut." In the most economically idiotic and self-destructive manner even the conservatives could dream up. Just consider a moment if corporations paid on how much their total value increased, not just what they were allowed to consider taxable income. And they did not get to write the tax code. It has often been even worse at the state and local level, especially as to pass the buck and make it LOOK like government is cutting back, Washington has shifted a lot of the load the last forty-five years outside the Beltway. In 1955, state and local taxes averaged about 12% of the wage and salary incomes of the average worker. Now it is close to 25%. Doubled in other words. And exemptions have decreased at both Federal and state levels, the federal personal exemption for a family of four in 1955 amounted to 54% of the median income being hands off from Uncle Sam - now it is half that. So the middle-class tax-payers have fewer and fewer tax-exemptions while some estimate corporation exemptions are now hundreds of times what they were under Eisenhower. There is a clear linkage between countries with "high" taxes and strong economies. The countries with low taxes (unless they are soaked in oil or provide a high-profit service to rich countries) are pretty much all places people are trying to leave, not move to. Tax-money does not drop into a black-hole into another universe after all. Taxes go to pay for construction and upgrades to the infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, and so forth), Taxes pay for health care and research. For the military. For all the government services only the brain-dead would want to give up. AND it pays the salaries of those that do this work, and provide the services. National and state governments, and the private companies and non-government agencies that support the government (from cleaning services to think-tanks), employ perhaps the majority of full-time jobs (and probably most of the ones still provide adequate benefits) in America. Those workers spend their earnings for consumer goods, local services, and, yes, taxes. But as even whispering about increasing taxes is certain death for a politician seeking votes, so let's trick people into it. Lotteries are such a way. They are a "voluntary" form of taxation. And since people are gullible (and greedy), they will increase in numbers. Money (some of it) will go into schools and such. But via often poorly controlled ways. With the lottery (and gaming) boards usually made up of the governor's biggest campaign donors. As if these folks were really whom should really decide where the money goes? Aren't they just the ones you'd trust with your spare money and potential savings? And that's what it is. If even just half what people blow on gambling "legally" went into direct taxes; they'd be better monitored and more likely to actually get to where they'd do some good. As the tax-collection mechanisms are already there, the cost of lottery promotion, buying and maintenance of equipment, yet another bureau for collection, and the pay-outs to dealers and winners would be eliminated. Ditto the gaming board. People would have more money in their wallets for vital needs (or to save so capital is available for investment by the economy). And we have better schools and roads. Less encouragement for illegal gambling (which doesn't go into public needs except in a very slight manner). And we'd all have a better shot at heaven. But that means asking even the super-rich and multinationals to pay a tad more taxes...
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