| |
"How the permissive captialism of the boom destroyed American equality." The New York Times learns that the rich are entrenching and everybody else is getting the shaft.
Oct. 21, 2002
Well, every week I fight my struggle with the New York Times; I want to read the hulking Sunday edition, but in nearly every page I am reminded that I'm not a member of the meritocracy or the plutocracy, nor am I famous, good-looking or living in Manhattan. Much is the pity. I suppose the title of this article could be "Envy In Richmond, Virginia" but it is a bit more complicated than desiring what other people possess.
The magazine of the New York Times, Oct. 20, 2002, features a commedia del'arte duo, a top-hatted, moustachioed rich man kicking a homberg wearing middle class guy off the cover with apparent relish. The NYT writer, Paul Krugman, and the paper, seems, as Police Capt. Renault remarked in "Casablanca" upon shutting down a casino in which he'd placed bets, was "shocked, shocked to find gambling going on here," well, the NYT is apparently "shocked, shocked" to discover that the "the share of the rich in total income [in the United States] is no longer trivial. These days 1 percent of families receive about 16 percent of the total pretax income, and have about 14 percent of after-tax income. That share has roughly doubled over the past 30 years, and is now about as large as the share of the bottom 40 percent of the population."
The article goes on to say many interesting things.
"Median family income has risen only 0.5 percent per year--and as far as we can tell from somewhat unreliable data, just about all of that increase was due to wives working longer hours, with little or no gain in real wages."
Or:
"Since the incomes of American's wealthy have soared while ordinary families have at best seen small gains, you might have expected politicians to seek votes by proposing to soak the rich. In fact, however, the polarization of politics has occurred because Republicans have moved to the right, not because the Democrats have moved to the left. And actual economic policy has moved steadily in favor of the wealthy. The major tax cuts of the past 25 years, the [Pres. Ronald Reagan] cuts in the 1980's and the recent Bush cuts, were both heavily tilted toward the very well off...The major tax increases over that period, the increase in payroll taxes in the 1980's, fell most heavily on working class families."
And:
"Not to put too fine a point on it: as the rich get richer, they can buy a lot of things besides goods and services Money buys political influence; used cleverly, it also buys intellectual influence. A result is that growing income disparities in the United States, far from leading to demands to soak the rich, have been accompanied by a growing movement to let them keep more of their earnings and to pass their wealth onto their children."
I could go on citing this piece, but my egalitarian and proletarian indignation and subtly curbed rage might cause me to spout something vaguely revolutionary. We've been divided and conquered in the U.S., the poor and working class whites and blacks, persuaded that we should hate each other, our differences writ large, our similarities seemingly unaddressed.
The golden rule, of course, is that the those who have the gold, make the rules. As our culture splits between the haves and have nots, we are losing an entire country.
I can attest to more homeless people on the streets and while suburban mansions are getting built in the farflung areas outside of town, 25 percent of Richmond's 195,000 or so persons are living at or below federal government standards for poverty. Yet Virginia itself consistently is in the Top 10 of the states with personal weatlh. Richmond is just big enough to reflect the nation around it and what I see in Richmond what is happening throughout the country, perhaps even the world.
It says in the article that Swedes live longer, have more vacation from work and their higher tax burden accounts for national health care. There is a lesson in this, somewhere.--HEK
 comments [5]
| |
| |
comments
no worry about money - 22/10/2002, fiordeponti@iworld.de
dear amie,
thanks for the link to twin oaks.
itīs good to know that there are
alternative ways of life!
specially after living 3 months in zürich. itīs all about money here!
Dreams coming true? - 22/10/2002, aoliver2@vcu.edu
Well, there are still places where one can live and grow old and not worry about money...but they are few and far between, One is the Twin Oaks Community, not far from Richmond. The link below will take you to this commune that I have visited a number of times in past years.
I was expecting it to be very retro-hippie - and there are certainly hippies living there - but other than that it was a very progressive pro-active place full of solar homes and green houses - with a diverse community of indiviuals who all live together. There was a big article about Twin Oaks in the New York Times Magzine several years ago. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but I think its a very cool alternative to giving one third of my income to Uncle Sam.
 Twin Oaks Community
will my dream come true? - 22/10/2002, fiordeponti@iworld.de
will my dream conme true!
after being married for 4 years, i finally
convinced my husband that
we have to do something about our
altersvorsorge. and we are paying
some money every month in an insurance
who will hopefully, manage to make at least
a little bit more money out of what we pay.
and i wanted also invest a little bit of the money
we got back last year from the taxes.
now after all what happened on stock market
and after all you describe zebu, what the hell
shell we do? guess we could also throw it out of the
window.
i have this dream of being old and not worrying
about money anymore!
Nobody Knows Where The Money Is Going - 22/10/2002, harryk@richmag.com
Zebu:
I think the current monetary situation here, with several hundred billions that vanished out of the economy in the past few years, is a definite concern. Here especially there is discussion about what is going to happen to our Social Security pensions that are supposed to alleviate the suffering of our retirees, once the economic system has made sufficient exploitive use of them. And that will be me one day, unless the heretofore unknown Kollatz Millions suddenly come my way.
But the collapse of large corporations, Enron, Tyco, Worldcom etc. and the transparent greed of their executive officers, especially at Enron, where employees were not allowed to withdraw their stock, is a dark lesson. Corporations don't care about us except as units of both labor and consumption. I think this is the real heart of the debate: how can a nation survive if its population is persuaded that it must spend money for its own salvation?--HEK
What about the future? - 22/10/2002, zebu kluth,
berlin
Hi Harry,
concerning the poor people getting poorer I have a question from my german view on the US as some kind of avantgarde of the problems we will have sooner or later also here in Berlin...
What about all the middle class people who had money invested at the Wall Street to have some kind of insurence for their old-age pension? Is there any fear of having a huge wave of poor old people in some years since all that money was burned in the several stock-market crashes?
I ask this since our system of state insurences for our old-age is "globalised" (means privatised) more and more and people have to build their future more and more on speculatively money (on the stock markets). And as we have learned and seen in the US, this is not a very save way of staying middle class over the years?
Is there a discussion in the US about this problem? All the people who have lost their money in a more unvisible way than people lost their money down there where Gladys tries to make her life?
| | |
all articles
