It turns out, when times are tough, capital gets concentrated and constipated. Moreover, competition is reduced. There are fewer players in any given game. There are more on the sidelines. Banks become conservative rather than cavalier. They lend less and only to sure bets, which means the tried and true, not the innovative and adventuresome. Banks get lean and mean. One needs to look no further than the 30,000 mere mortal employees to be released by Bank of America in the near future to understand the magnitude of the problem.
The elite in Washington, which includes both parties, have offered two scenarios for recovery. The Obama recovery plan includes a carrot-stick approach with tax incentives to stimulate small business and the loss of tax loopholes for the rich. The Republicans have nothing but carrots for the rich and sticks for the downtrodden. Their message to the poor is grab hold of your bootstraps, pull them up, and that gesture will pull you up as well. It’s a neat trick, like smoke and mirrors, and costs nothing. It also does nothing but leave the poor further behind and out of the running for the American Dream.
Government’s role in good times is to act as referee in the game of capitalism. In bad times it needs to act as re-distributor of wealth and initiator of play. Bad times are like end-games in Monopoly. There are no more properties to buy; there are no more hotels to place; the game is in the hands of the winner; the game is over, and it is time to start a new game, a new beginning. The meaning is in the journey to Park Place, not in sitting there at end-game.
Imagine an NFL season where all the top players are concentrated in one team. There would be no season. The sport would die. The results would be so predictable no one would subscribe. It is the uncertainty that makes the NFL vibrant. On any given day, any team might beat anyone else. There are mechanisms in place to assure competition. If we are so committed to competition in that arena, why are we so hesitant to foster it in our economy? Why do we not have strong mechanisms in place to ensure good competition in the marketplace?
The answer is capitalists try to eliminate competition. They do not thrive on it. A famous capitalist named John D. Rockefeller once proclaimed that competition is a sin. It therefore is up to government to make sure that capitalist entities do not destroy competition through monopolization of markets. Anti-trust laws are written to prevent monopolies.
Market winners continually try to fix the game in their favor. They grow so powerful and so large they are deemed economically immortal (too big to fail). They are made into “gods” who have their own games they play way above mere mortals who must struggle below and sift the fallen scraps for paltry rewards, which is what real trickle-down looks like. The “gods” (masters of the universe) have the resources to purchase politicians who work for their benefit both in and out of office. The professional politicians are either agents of preserving one form or another of the status quo while in office or they are lobbyists directly representing the “gods” and their business entities. The whole game takes place in the economic equivalent of very exclusive fraternity houses. No mere mortals need apply, unless you are a genius who can make one of the “gods” some real money.
America, alas, has become like Ancient Greece except the “gods” are real rather than imagined. The “gods” actually do control the lives of the masses and limit their growth by failing to keep the economic game open. Instead, the masses are given unsustainable entitlements and then blamed for not playing the game from which they have been excluded by the very blamers. The “gods” invest less and less in their less fortunate compatriots, export their jobs, and then blame the losers for not taking responsibility for the outcome.
Of course there are many companies that have chosen names from the time of Ancient Greece. There is Elysium Wealth Management, Centaur Pharmaceuticals, Hercules Incorporated, Hermes Financial Group, Amazon, Atlas Van Lines, and Delphi Energy, to name a few. However, the real titans of the business world today have more mundane names such as General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, and Goldman-Saks.
Yes, the masses were told by the minions of the “gods” that they, too, could have a piece of the American Dream if they bought a house with a sub-prime mortgage they could ill afford, but that failure is blamed on the duped buyers under the rubric of caveat emptor. They should have known better. Meanwhile the “gods” made out like bandits.
Now the Tea Party may look like a rebellion orchestrated by a segment of the masses, but it is actually a false rebellion orchestrated by the “gods” to convince the masses that they, the masses, are to blame for their problems. It’s another neat trick the “gods” have played on mere mortals.
The American “gods” warn that America could go the way of modern Greece if drastic austerity measures are not taken when, in fact, America has been acting out a modern day version of ancient Greek mythology: the “gods” always win. Now maybe we mere mortals will awaken to confront the duplicity and hypocrisy of the “gods” and send them all to Hades, otherwise known as Federal Court. But that possibility is remote as long as the “gods” and their political minions keep our attention on that unsustainable national debt which, according to the “gods” is the result of too much indulgence in entitlements for the masses.
As Francis Bacon once said, “Of great riches there is no real use, except in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.”
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
A Business Decision
I keep hearing the expression “It was a business decision” and have begun wondering how the expression came to be. I know “a business decision” is almost never good news for workers. I have yet to hear it used when describing a plan to hire more people. That usually occurs under the rubric of “business plan,” not “business decision.”
“A business decision” appears to be a euphemism much the same as water closet, powder room, or rest room is used to describe a room with a toilet. The term “business decision” is a way to gloss over the harsh reality of firings or layoffs the way “powder room” softens the harsh reality of defecation or urination.
“Downsizing” is another term used by management to describe the same process, but it carries a description or forecast of what the move involves, so it is a bit closer to the truth.
What all of these euphemisms do to one degree or another is lessen the harshness of the message for the purveyor more than the receiver. If we call job loss the product of “downsizing” or a “business decision,” it makes power holders feel more civilized, more removed from the other end of the process that results in job loss. The power end of the chain of command maintains distance through language.
The ultimate example of this is Hitler’s use of the term “final solution” in World War II. Six million Jews met death under the term “solution” which, for the Nazis, even put a positive spin on a horrible atrocity. “Final solution” was the ultimate euphemism, the ultimate gloss over, the ultimate expression of distance from truth.
But euphemism is not the only mechanism by which power “manages” the less powerful painlessly (again, for the deliverer, not the delivered). It also does so through program and principle. For example, the Tea Party is calling for smaller government, the elimination or privatizing of entitlement programs, less regulation of business, and lower taxes. The idea is that free enterprise will be freed up to stimulate economic recovery and growth. The only things holding back a recovery in the U.S. economy is government and its rising debt, according to Tea Party thinking.
The truth is radical surgery on government, entitlements, and current debt would throw the economy into terrible chaos. Even the business community would rather see a gradual reduction in debt and government services over time than a radical upheaval of the status quo. It is about trajectory, not a screeching halt. Business can cope with, even benefit from, an encouraging trajectory for government spending. It cannot cope with uncertainty that either the maintenance or an upheaval of the status quo would bring.
Meanwhile, what about the workers? What about unemployment? Tax rates for the rich have been lower for about a decade, and unemployment is still high. Calling for even lower taxes is the economic equivalent of “blood-letting” if lower taxes have not stimulated the economy to grow since the so-called end of the Great Recession.
The greatest problem for the American worker is “out-sourcing,” another familiar euphemism developed by the business world to soften the harshness of more American job loss. According to the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.*
If major powers in the business community are not hiring Americans, who else is going to take up the slack? If the government reduces corporate taxes in the U.S. from 35% to 25%, will corporations hire enough workers to justify the loss of corporate tax revenue? I say let’s give it a try by reducing the corporate tax rate on those corporations that show a significant increase in domestic hiring, thus reversing the trend outlined by the Wall Street Journal. Do it on a corporation by corporation basis.
Until then we the privileged will continue to hear the euphemisms bandied about and drift along inured to the harsh reality of what it is actually like to be unemployed because we the privileged remain removed from the actual fray. We can sit at our computers and send out our verbal drone missives through space and hope they penetrate the best defenses of the dogmatic, agenda-driven extremists who are certain about their solutions, and give them pause to consider the possibility that there are human beings suffering out there in America, who, regardless of principles, need a long-term solution they can earn, embrace, or even endure that puts actual food in their mouths and an actual roof over their heads. “Out-sourcing,” “business decisions,” and “downsizing” will not answer.
*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html
“A business decision” appears to be a euphemism much the same as water closet, powder room, or rest room is used to describe a room with a toilet. The term “business decision” is a way to gloss over the harsh reality of firings or layoffs the way “powder room” softens the harsh reality of defecation or urination.
“Downsizing” is another term used by management to describe the same process, but it carries a description or forecast of what the move involves, so it is a bit closer to the truth.
What all of these euphemisms do to one degree or another is lessen the harshness of the message for the purveyor more than the receiver. If we call job loss the product of “downsizing” or a “business decision,” it makes power holders feel more civilized, more removed from the other end of the process that results in job loss. The power end of the chain of command maintains distance through language.
The ultimate example of this is Hitler’s use of the term “final solution” in World War II. Six million Jews met death under the term “solution” which, for the Nazis, even put a positive spin on a horrible atrocity. “Final solution” was the ultimate euphemism, the ultimate gloss over, the ultimate expression of distance from truth.
But euphemism is not the only mechanism by which power “manages” the less powerful painlessly (again, for the deliverer, not the delivered). It also does so through program and principle. For example, the Tea Party is calling for smaller government, the elimination or privatizing of entitlement programs, less regulation of business, and lower taxes. The idea is that free enterprise will be freed up to stimulate economic recovery and growth. The only things holding back a recovery in the U.S. economy is government and its rising debt, according to Tea Party thinking.
The truth is radical surgery on government, entitlements, and current debt would throw the economy into terrible chaos. Even the business community would rather see a gradual reduction in debt and government services over time than a radical upheaval of the status quo. It is about trajectory, not a screeching halt. Business can cope with, even benefit from, an encouraging trajectory for government spending. It cannot cope with uncertainty that either the maintenance or an upheaval of the status quo would bring.
Meanwhile, what about the workers? What about unemployment? Tax rates for the rich have been lower for about a decade, and unemployment is still high. Calling for even lower taxes is the economic equivalent of “blood-letting” if lower taxes have not stimulated the economy to grow since the so-called end of the Great Recession.
The greatest problem for the American worker is “out-sourcing,” another familiar euphemism developed by the business world to soften the harshness of more American job loss. According to the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.*
If major powers in the business community are not hiring Americans, who else is going to take up the slack? If the government reduces corporate taxes in the U.S. from 35% to 25%, will corporations hire enough workers to justify the loss of corporate tax revenue? I say let’s give it a try by reducing the corporate tax rate on those corporations that show a significant increase in domestic hiring, thus reversing the trend outlined by the Wall Street Journal. Do it on a corporation by corporation basis.
Until then we the privileged will continue to hear the euphemisms bandied about and drift along inured to the harsh reality of what it is actually like to be unemployed because we the privileged remain removed from the actual fray. We can sit at our computers and send out our verbal drone missives through space and hope they penetrate the best defenses of the dogmatic, agenda-driven extremists who are certain about their solutions, and give them pause to consider the possibility that there are human beings suffering out there in America, who, regardless of principles, need a long-term solution they can earn, embrace, or even endure that puts actual food in their mouths and an actual roof over their heads. “Out-sourcing,” “business decisions,” and “downsizing” will not answer.
*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The New and Improved Department of Defense
Numerous right wingers have called for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. All right let’s do it. Let’s get rid of it and, instead, put education in the hands of the Department of Defense. Here’s why.
It would kill two birds with one stone. The “birds” the move would kill is the wishy-washy Department of Education that sets standards then gives waivers to any state that requests them. Would the Department of Defense do such a thing? I think not. Noses would be held to the grindstone? You betcha! The other “bird” would be the federal government's tendency to use the Department of Defense to start wars in other people’s back yards and thus leaving a semi-permanent bad taste in the mouths of those who are left to live in those yards. They would now be so challenged by educating American youth they would not have the time or energy to run off to, say Afghanistan or Pakistan to fight another away game. They would be forced to maintain a home schedule.
Now, some would argue that a department whose motto of late is “Don’t ask. Don’t tell” is probably not the one to foster open inquiry or a search for truth, but not to worry. They would have so much money available compared to the old Department of Education, Defense could easily reduce school size to, say, that of a company (max: 190) and class size to that of a squadron (max: 12). There would be no more problems with dress codes, haircuts, child obesity, class-cutting, classroom discipline, or graduation rates. Standards would be upheld, waivers would be non-existent, and attitudes would be positive, or else.
The federal government, through the Department of Defense, in turn, would have to focus on a real enemy instead of having to invent one. That real enemy, of course, is ignorance. Since there is no danger of running low on that omnipresent commodity, we need never worry about lacking a genuine, legitimate target. All of our defense resources could be focused against this enemy with full confidence we are doing the right thing. It’s a win-win situation all around.
The federal government would have to use the Department of Defense, in turn, to focus on the real enemy instead of having to invent one. That real enemy, of course, is ignorance. Since there is no danger of running low on that omnipresent commodity, we need never worry about lacking a genuine, legitimate target. All of our defense resources could be focused on that enemy without ever fearing that the public would get tired and disillusioned and want to withdraw from the fight. Since ignorance, like terrorism, comes in many forms and includes terrorism itself, we can open up our offense full throttle.
Imagine putting the ingenuity of Lockheed-Martin or GE or even Halliburton in the fight against ignorance. Why even they might benefit from seeing ignorance as the enemy and develop better tools and weapons to combat it perhaps even within their own midst once they are able to identify the nature of true ignorance, thanks to the help the Department of Defense will undoubtedly give them.
All in all, it is a great move, one that will save the country, reform our youth, and provide our richest department with a useful opportunity to invest its seemingly unlimited resources. I say, let’s do it. Let’s turn our Department of Defense loose on ourselves instead of on foreign entities and look forward to a better America.
Friday, August 12, 2011
You Are The Sum Total of the Stories You Believe
The 19th Century versions of Three Little Pigs were bloody and fatal to the two pigs who built their houses of straw and sticks. Their houses were blown down and they were summarily eaten by the wolf. The only survivor was the shrewd and more deliberate pig who built his house of brick. He even ended up eating the wolf, alone.
Today in Europe we have countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, to name a few) that have built straw and stick entitlement houses and are now begging the brick builders, Germany and France, to bail them out. The straw and stick “houses” were constructed by smoke and mirror financing and left to future generations to pay for them. Unfortunately, the birth-rate dropped and there were fewer new little pigs to earn the income to pay for the straw and stick entitlement houses, and the folks who were financially and strategically able to build brick houses in the first place are now footing the bill for those whose straw and stick houses are in danger of being blown away.
The brick-builders of the world are the ants in the Aesop fable The Grasshopper and the Ant. They listened to the story and took it to heart. They did not frivolously play and spend the summer of their lives only to find they had not enough to carry them through the winter years of retirement. Bully for them. But does that mean they get to be bullies?
A more modern version of Three Little Pigs has the straw-building pig running to the stick-building pig for shelter when the wolf blows his house down. Then, when the wolf levels the stick house, the two pigs finally run to the bricklayer pig’s house where they survive, thanks to his foresight and generosity. One wonders that the generation who grew up seeing in cartoon form this later version did not internalize its message and now suffer the consequences of not hearing or believing the more Darwinian one.
In Europe the Germans and French so far are taking in their profligate brethren in Greece and elsewhere. They are lending them the money to ostensibly rebuild firmer and sustainable houses. Whether or not the Greeks or Italians actually do that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, in America, the on-going Wild West version of the story looks more like the 19th Century one. The Brick-builders who keep getting richer by the minute are not about to take in the suffering pigs who were counting on Social Security and Medicare to keep the wolf at bay and carry them through old age. Instead, they are throwing bricks at them and blaming them for their stupidity in believing the slippery, cunning faux bricklayers in the first place that they too could have a brick house if only they signed right here on the dotted line. It turns out the loans were made of straw and the less fortunate got nothing but a stick in the eye. Meanwhile, the slippery banker faux brick-layers made millions or even billions.
We are at a cross roads in the world economy and in America. Which version of the Three Little Pigs will play out? Will we take in those who were duped and destroyed by the Buy Now, Pay Later ethos of the late 20th Century, or will we simply shut the door on them and leave them to the wolves?
In a sense the early version of the story is very Old Testament in flavor. The God of Wrath is alive and well and comes to us as the wolf that devours two out of three pigs – not a bad haul. Only the wily, clever, and long-range thinking pig survives, but he has no brethren. It’s the old bomb-shelter mentality of the Cold War.
The more modern version is more New Testament, more so-called Christian, more God of Love. The short-sighted pigs are taken in by the wiser brother and cared for while they presumably learn an important lesson and start building sustainably this next time.
Is it not strange that the religious Christian right seems inclined to adopt the Old Testament version rather than the New? That it is more inclined to smite than to suffer the foolish and forlorn? If the Germans and French can turn the other cheek and open their purses for foreign profligates, why cannot wealthy Americans do so for their very own countrymen by taxing themselves a little more as they bring government spending and entitlements to sustainability?
Is it the strain of self-righteousness (a form of narcissism) that drives the brick-layers to become brick-throwers? There is no tea being dumped by the Tea Party. There is only “I told you so” brick-throwing. It is time to stop the cruel self-righteousness which is the opposite of how almost any religious or humane philosophy suggests we behave. Enough is enough. It is time for real problem-solving, real brick-laying, not pretense and theatre.
Today in Europe we have countries (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, to name a few) that have built straw and stick entitlement houses and are now begging the brick builders, Germany and France, to bail them out. The straw and stick “houses” were constructed by smoke and mirror financing and left to future generations to pay for them. Unfortunately, the birth-rate dropped and there were fewer new little pigs to earn the income to pay for the straw and stick entitlement houses, and the folks who were financially and strategically able to build brick houses in the first place are now footing the bill for those whose straw and stick houses are in danger of being blown away.
The brick-builders of the world are the ants in the Aesop fable The Grasshopper and the Ant. They listened to the story and took it to heart. They did not frivolously play and spend the summer of their lives only to find they had not enough to carry them through the winter years of retirement. Bully for them. But does that mean they get to be bullies?
A more modern version of Three Little Pigs has the straw-building pig running to the stick-building pig for shelter when the wolf blows his house down. Then, when the wolf levels the stick house, the two pigs finally run to the bricklayer pig’s house where they survive, thanks to his foresight and generosity. One wonders that the generation who grew up seeing in cartoon form this later version did not internalize its message and now suffer the consequences of not hearing or believing the more Darwinian one.
In Europe the Germans and French so far are taking in their profligate brethren in Greece and elsewhere. They are lending them the money to ostensibly rebuild firmer and sustainable houses. Whether or not the Greeks or Italians actually do that remains to be seen. Meanwhile, in America, the on-going Wild West version of the story looks more like the 19th Century one. The Brick-builders who keep getting richer by the minute are not about to take in the suffering pigs who were counting on Social Security and Medicare to keep the wolf at bay and carry them through old age. Instead, they are throwing bricks at them and blaming them for their stupidity in believing the slippery, cunning faux bricklayers in the first place that they too could have a brick house if only they signed right here on the dotted line. It turns out the loans were made of straw and the less fortunate got nothing but a stick in the eye. Meanwhile, the slippery banker faux brick-layers made millions or even billions.
We are at a cross roads in the world economy and in America. Which version of the Three Little Pigs will play out? Will we take in those who were duped and destroyed by the Buy Now, Pay Later ethos of the late 20th Century, or will we simply shut the door on them and leave them to the wolves?
In a sense the early version of the story is very Old Testament in flavor. The God of Wrath is alive and well and comes to us as the wolf that devours two out of three pigs – not a bad haul. Only the wily, clever, and long-range thinking pig survives, but he has no brethren. It’s the old bomb-shelter mentality of the Cold War.
The more modern version is more New Testament, more so-called Christian, more God of Love. The short-sighted pigs are taken in by the wiser brother and cared for while they presumably learn an important lesson and start building sustainably this next time.
Is it not strange that the religious Christian right seems inclined to adopt the Old Testament version rather than the New? That it is more inclined to smite than to suffer the foolish and forlorn? If the Germans and French can turn the other cheek and open their purses for foreign profligates, why cannot wealthy Americans do so for their very own countrymen by taxing themselves a little more as they bring government spending and entitlements to sustainability?
Is it the strain of self-righteousness (a form of narcissism) that drives the brick-layers to become brick-throwers? There is no tea being dumped by the Tea Party. There is only “I told you so” brick-throwing. It is time to stop the cruel self-righteousness which is the opposite of how almost any religious or humane philosophy suggests we behave. Enough is enough. It is time for real problem-solving, real brick-laying, not pretense and theatre.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Who Has a Locke on Natural Rights?
It is clear now. He who has the most property wins. Life IS a Monopoly Game in America and perhaps throughout the globe. The object is to amass the best pieces of property, develop their potential worth, and rent them out at good rates of return. If you don’t have property, you lose. When Jefferson threw in the Pursuit of Happiness and took out Possessions from the Declaration of Independence, he assumed mention of possessions was unnecessary. After all, the founding fathers were all propertied gentry, and they were the only folks that counted, then and even now, as it turns out. It seems English philosopher John Locke’s (1632-1704) list of natural rights was right on: Life, Health, Liberty, and Possessions (Property).
We keep hearing about the widening gulf between rich and poor or between whites and people of color, and clearly the Republican strategy to reward propertied people with even more property is winning over any other strategy out there. For instance, while the banks got bailed out for their unfortunate investments in mortgage-backed securities, which were none other than risky loans to people who could ill-afford the houses they were enticed to buy with sub-prime mortgages, the poor suckers who took out the loans suffered while the bankers made out like bandits. “Too Big to Fail” was the mantra rationalization for the big bailouts while “Too Small to Win” was the fate for the soon property-less masses who suffered foreclosure.
The Republicans are making sure right now that the upper 2% of income earners in America are protected from any compromise of their disproportionate earnings by more graduated taxation while the poor folks try to survive on the cheapest food available: fat and fast. (There goes Locke’s inclusion of health as a natural right.) The Republican argument is that increased taxes would shrink jobs, but the fact is that throughout the past three years job growth has stagnated under lower taxation because most companies have outsourced jobs overseas. The holdings of cash that the typical multinational corporation once residing in the United States keeps abroad for fear of having to pay American taxes is a testament to the shift of production away from America and to foreign sites. Moreover, the stockholders are first in line to receive the rewards of profit-making while workers are at best secondary.
Republicans are interested only in preserving the property of the rich, which they assume is rightfully earned. In fact, those so-called earnings are because of the systematic, deliberate laws hammered out over the course of history that preserve the holdings of the rich whether they are tax laws, property laws, or stockholder rights. For example, mineral rights law (split estate) which gives mineral rights owners the advantage of being able to drill for natural gas within 350 feet of your house beneath your surface property is typical of the advantage the corporate rich have over regular folks. You have no say in whether or not they can drill there. They simply can by law.
Now the Democrats are shifting further and further toward the right in order to show some attempt to reduce the truly alarming national debt as well as the equally alarming rate of debt increase plaguing our national economy. But to put the burden of correction on the poor and middle class while the rich continue to distance themselves from the masses economically is the most egregious injustice imaginable. There is no trickle down thanks to corporate labor outsource policy, so taxation became the only way left to create jobs in America and that hasn’t worked either. The private sector simply won’t do it. And there is no incentive to do it.
What we have today is the corporate equivalent of the rich individuals who once upon a time squirreled their fortunes away in Swiss bank accounts. The wealth of America is off-shore, and many corporations are unwilling to bring their money back to the States.
If we lowered corporate taxes (we have one of the highest rates in the developed world at 35%) to something more competitive, would that solve the problem? Perhaps it would. Perhaps more money would flow into the Treasury coffers because corporations would import their profits more readily. So why is that idea not on the table? Why is it all about cutting spending?
But no matter how low we lower corporate taxes, will corporations not continue to seek out places to do business in the developing world where labor is cheaper and tax rates are still even lower? Of course they will because corporations, almost by definition (there are exceptions) are loyal to stockholders first and countries of origin when it is profitable. There is no loyalty unless a particular owner or CEO decides location of factories does not simply go to the lowest bidder. Her decision may include some sense of loyalty to national pride or her particular community. That used to be the case and still is to a select few corporate leaders such as the CEOs of Lincoln Electric or Smuckers.
The irony is that public ownership often brings a diffusion of responsibility and ethics because the ownership itself is so technically broad that CEOs can hide behind a veil of principles that say maximizing profit is all-important. To try to satisfy particular constituencies with other agendas is simply too difficult. Unless the stockholders themselves voice alternative priorities the CEO may pursue, the default priority is always profit. If we can’t hold our politicians accountable to serve the greater good, how can we possibly hold CEOs accountable when their “natural” priority is sheer profit?
Of course profit enables purchase which results in property: real estate, cars, and other stuff. The stock market has rebounded handsomely since 2008. The job market has stagnated. The purchasing power of the propertied classes has grown; the purchasing power of the working class has shrunk.
The fact is politicians, no matter what party, are propertied people. There is not a truly poor or actual working class person among them. It is in their self-interest, therefore, to preserve the status quo, to preserve the propertied privilege of the few over the many. Locke was more down to earth than Jefferson, more pragmatic it turns out. The Pursuit of Happiness is an ephemeral thing; property, on the other hand, is a real estate. As new politicians they may enter the political arena with the idealism of Jefferson, but sooner or later they will succumb to the reality of property as the driving force overpowering any other nod to virtue or altruism.
Therefore, we will continue to be a country not for the people or by the people; we will continue to be first and foremost a country for the propertied. Locke had a lock on what would become reality in America long before Jefferson sat down to write the Declaration of Independence. History has shown that no matter how man tries to move mankind in the direction of equality, property will always be the great separator of even those who allegedly were created equal.
We keep hearing about the widening gulf between rich and poor or between whites and people of color, and clearly the Republican strategy to reward propertied people with even more property is winning over any other strategy out there. For instance, while the banks got bailed out for their unfortunate investments in mortgage-backed securities, which were none other than risky loans to people who could ill-afford the houses they were enticed to buy with sub-prime mortgages, the poor suckers who took out the loans suffered while the bankers made out like bandits. “Too Big to Fail” was the mantra rationalization for the big bailouts while “Too Small to Win” was the fate for the soon property-less masses who suffered foreclosure.
The Republicans are making sure right now that the upper 2% of income earners in America are protected from any compromise of their disproportionate earnings by more graduated taxation while the poor folks try to survive on the cheapest food available: fat and fast. (There goes Locke’s inclusion of health as a natural right.) The Republican argument is that increased taxes would shrink jobs, but the fact is that throughout the past three years job growth has stagnated under lower taxation because most companies have outsourced jobs overseas. The holdings of cash that the typical multinational corporation once residing in the United States keeps abroad for fear of having to pay American taxes is a testament to the shift of production away from America and to foreign sites. Moreover, the stockholders are first in line to receive the rewards of profit-making while workers are at best secondary.
Republicans are interested only in preserving the property of the rich, which they assume is rightfully earned. In fact, those so-called earnings are because of the systematic, deliberate laws hammered out over the course of history that preserve the holdings of the rich whether they are tax laws, property laws, or stockholder rights. For example, mineral rights law (split estate) which gives mineral rights owners the advantage of being able to drill for natural gas within 350 feet of your house beneath your surface property is typical of the advantage the corporate rich have over regular folks. You have no say in whether or not they can drill there. They simply can by law.
Now the Democrats are shifting further and further toward the right in order to show some attempt to reduce the truly alarming national debt as well as the equally alarming rate of debt increase plaguing our national economy. But to put the burden of correction on the poor and middle class while the rich continue to distance themselves from the masses economically is the most egregious injustice imaginable. There is no trickle down thanks to corporate labor outsource policy, so taxation became the only way left to create jobs in America and that hasn’t worked either. The private sector simply won’t do it. And there is no incentive to do it.
What we have today is the corporate equivalent of the rich individuals who once upon a time squirreled their fortunes away in Swiss bank accounts. The wealth of America is off-shore, and many corporations are unwilling to bring their money back to the States.
If we lowered corporate taxes (we have one of the highest rates in the developed world at 35%) to something more competitive, would that solve the problem? Perhaps it would. Perhaps more money would flow into the Treasury coffers because corporations would import their profits more readily. So why is that idea not on the table? Why is it all about cutting spending?
But no matter how low we lower corporate taxes, will corporations not continue to seek out places to do business in the developing world where labor is cheaper and tax rates are still even lower? Of course they will because corporations, almost by definition (there are exceptions) are loyal to stockholders first and countries of origin when it is profitable. There is no loyalty unless a particular owner or CEO decides location of factories does not simply go to the lowest bidder. Her decision may include some sense of loyalty to national pride or her particular community. That used to be the case and still is to a select few corporate leaders such as the CEOs of Lincoln Electric or Smuckers.
The irony is that public ownership often brings a diffusion of responsibility and ethics because the ownership itself is so technically broad that CEOs can hide behind a veil of principles that say maximizing profit is all-important. To try to satisfy particular constituencies with other agendas is simply too difficult. Unless the stockholders themselves voice alternative priorities the CEO may pursue, the default priority is always profit. If we can’t hold our politicians accountable to serve the greater good, how can we possibly hold CEOs accountable when their “natural” priority is sheer profit?
Of course profit enables purchase which results in property: real estate, cars, and other stuff. The stock market has rebounded handsomely since 2008. The job market has stagnated. The purchasing power of the propertied classes has grown; the purchasing power of the working class has shrunk.
The fact is politicians, no matter what party, are propertied people. There is not a truly poor or actual working class person among them. It is in their self-interest, therefore, to preserve the status quo, to preserve the propertied privilege of the few over the many. Locke was more down to earth than Jefferson, more pragmatic it turns out. The Pursuit of Happiness is an ephemeral thing; property, on the other hand, is a real estate. As new politicians they may enter the political arena with the idealism of Jefferson, but sooner or later they will succumb to the reality of property as the driving force overpowering any other nod to virtue or altruism.
Therefore, we will continue to be a country not for the people or by the people; we will continue to be first and foremost a country for the propertied. Locke had a lock on what would become reality in America long before Jefferson sat down to write the Declaration of Independence. History has shown that no matter how man tries to move mankind in the direction of equality, property will always be the great separator of even those who allegedly were created equal.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Can You Afford Republican Principles?
By
Bruce A. Blodgett
When I see Republican Eric Cantor (aptly named) singing the tired and downright dangerous song “No New Taxes” even when the majority of the country is behind the idea of restoring a graduated tax code that only barely begins to address the only seemingly sustainable aspect of the economy: the ever-widening gap in income between rich and poor, I think of George Bernard Shaw’s character Alfred Doolittle of Pygmalion. Doolittle is trapped into middle class morality at the end of the play because, for a lark, Professor Higgins had suggested to Ezra D, Wannafeller (thinly disguised John D. Rockefeller) that the most original moralist in England is none other than Doolittle. As a result, Doolittle is “forced” to accept a generous stipend for a half a dozen lectures a year on behalf of the Wannafeller Moral Reform World League and become one who is “touched” by everyone rather than the one who “touches.” Before this all happened, Doolittle was a mere dustman who was free and easy.
Eric Cantor has become spokesman for the self-appointed moral reform society of America which is an apt description for the Republican Party. Unlike Robin Hood, this moral reform society wants to make sure that no matter what happens, the most important principles of property, wealth, and privilege must be preserved at any cost. If the poor suffer, so be it; if the old suffer, so be it; if the struggling masses yearning to be free suffer, so be it. What matters most is preservation or even enhancement of the way of life for the few at the expense of the many. Opportunity is for the quick and the resourced. The rest can live on the trickle down crumbs that haphazardly spill from the pockets of the rich. There is also a religious phalanx of the party that is pro-choice for light bulbs but anti-choice on abortion.
The main difference between Cantor and Doolittle is that Doolittle is a self-proclaimed member of the undeserving poor (before Wannafeller intercedes) while Cantor is a member of the self-appointed deserving rich. In Doolittle’s world there are the deserving poor, undeserving poor, and the middle class; in Cantor’s world, there appear to be simply the deserving rich, the struggling middle class, and the undeserving poor.
Doolittle sets forth his philosophy in Act II:
When asked by Pickering : “Have you no morals , man?”
Doolittle replies: “Can’t afford them, Governor.”
He continues to explain:
“I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story” ‘You’re undeserving so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is as great the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything….I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.”
When Pickering suggests Doolittle will make bad use of the five pounds he has asked for the sale of his daughter Liza to Higgins, Doolittle replies with a shake of the head at middle class morality: “Not me Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny left of it by Monday. I’ll have to go to work as if I’d never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think its not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.”
In the next part of the dialogue Doolittle refuses to take ten pounds offered by Higgins because it is too much money and would instill prudence at the expense of happiness. What Shaw is showing is how some self-denigrating poor may actually feel and why they remain mired in poverty; how the inevitable anti-materialistic counter-culture of a particular generation thinks; and at the same time Shaw is questioning the whole idea of the accumulation of wealth producing happiness and what truly and immediately provides employment for others, namely, consumerism.
Eric Cantor’s world is middle class morality on steroids. Undeserving rich is practically an oxymoron. The only possible people in this category would be those found guilty of breaking the law: the Ponzi- schemers, the Mafia, and the insider traders would be the candidates for this rarefied category in Cantor’s world. The deserving rich is almost a tautology. Of course the rich are deserving. Their wealth is a measure of their virtue. It’s been that way since the advent of capitalism. Never mind how the money is obtained, so long as the process is legally protected. If you have accumulated considerable resources, you are in a much stronger position to hold your position because you can afford the best legal defense of both your monetary and schematic means.
If a private equity firm can buy a company, squeeze more profit for investors at the expense of workers’ jobs, then in the name of efficiency that’s perfectly legal and moral in Cantor’s world. For example, if a Wall Street mogul could somehow take a company like Lincoln Electric which guarantees employment for workers in return for meritocratic piece-work wages, that would be just because it would be legal. We are a nation of laws, and just because the law favors the rich and powerful over the little guy, that’s just fine.
So long as Cantor sings “No New Taxes” for the upper 2% of incomes in America, you can bet that not much will change in terms of relative opportunity in America. The divide between rich and poor will continue to mirror the divide in opportunity access for rich and poor as well. The only means available for the redistribution of wealth and therefore opportunity in America is taxation. Industry has proven, by and large, not to be interested in providing the tools by which opportunity may spread across the classes in America. Therefore, only government will. May it do so now by providing funds for retooling the American workforce through grants to community colleges and technical schools utilizing income from increased taxes on the very rich.
We cannot afford to preserve the status quo that enables the rich to become richer and the less fortunate to stagnate. The Republican principles that they hold so dear are killing this culture slowly but surely. Like Alfred Doolittle, we cannot afford the principles of privilege and never could. We have a new generation of Robber Barons who hide on Wall Street and manipulate the markets to their benefit at the expense of the masses. If that is legal, it sure isn’t justice.
By
Bruce A. Blodgett
When I see Republican Eric Cantor (aptly named) singing the tired and downright dangerous song “No New Taxes” even when the majority of the country is behind the idea of restoring a graduated tax code that only barely begins to address the only seemingly sustainable aspect of the economy: the ever-widening gap in income between rich and poor, I think of George Bernard Shaw’s character Alfred Doolittle of Pygmalion. Doolittle is trapped into middle class morality at the end of the play because, for a lark, Professor Higgins had suggested to Ezra D, Wannafeller (thinly disguised John D. Rockefeller) that the most original moralist in England is none other than Doolittle. As a result, Doolittle is “forced” to accept a generous stipend for a half a dozen lectures a year on behalf of the Wannafeller Moral Reform World League and become one who is “touched” by everyone rather than the one who “touches.” Before this all happened, Doolittle was a mere dustman who was free and easy.
Eric Cantor has become spokesman for the self-appointed moral reform society of America which is an apt description for the Republican Party. Unlike Robin Hood, this moral reform society wants to make sure that no matter what happens, the most important principles of property, wealth, and privilege must be preserved at any cost. If the poor suffer, so be it; if the old suffer, so be it; if the struggling masses yearning to be free suffer, so be it. What matters most is preservation or even enhancement of the way of life for the few at the expense of the many. Opportunity is for the quick and the resourced. The rest can live on the trickle down crumbs that haphazardly spill from the pockets of the rich. There is also a religious phalanx of the party that is pro-choice for light bulbs but anti-choice on abortion.
The main difference between Cantor and Doolittle is that Doolittle is a self-proclaimed member of the undeserving poor (before Wannafeller intercedes) while Cantor is a member of the self-appointed deserving rich. In Doolittle’s world there are the deserving poor, undeserving poor, and the middle class; in Cantor’s world, there appear to be simply the deserving rich, the struggling middle class, and the undeserving poor.
Doolittle sets forth his philosophy in Act II:
When asked by Pickering : “Have you no morals , man?”
Doolittle replies: “Can’t afford them, Governor.”
He continues to explain:
“I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story” ‘You’re undeserving so you can’t have it.’ But my needs is as great the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything….I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth.”
When Pickering suggests Doolittle will make bad use of the five pounds he has asked for the sale of his daughter Liza to Higgins, Doolittle replies with a shake of the head at middle class morality: “Not me Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny left of it by Monday. I’ll have to go to work as if I’d never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think its not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.”
In the next part of the dialogue Doolittle refuses to take ten pounds offered by Higgins because it is too much money and would instill prudence at the expense of happiness. What Shaw is showing is how some self-denigrating poor may actually feel and why they remain mired in poverty; how the inevitable anti-materialistic counter-culture of a particular generation thinks; and at the same time Shaw is questioning the whole idea of the accumulation of wealth producing happiness and what truly and immediately provides employment for others, namely, consumerism.
Eric Cantor’s world is middle class morality on steroids. Undeserving rich is practically an oxymoron. The only possible people in this category would be those found guilty of breaking the law: the Ponzi- schemers, the Mafia, and the insider traders would be the candidates for this rarefied category in Cantor’s world. The deserving rich is almost a tautology. Of course the rich are deserving. Their wealth is a measure of their virtue. It’s been that way since the advent of capitalism. Never mind how the money is obtained, so long as the process is legally protected. If you have accumulated considerable resources, you are in a much stronger position to hold your position because you can afford the best legal defense of both your monetary and schematic means.
If a private equity firm can buy a company, squeeze more profit for investors at the expense of workers’ jobs, then in the name of efficiency that’s perfectly legal and moral in Cantor’s world. For example, if a Wall Street mogul could somehow take a company like Lincoln Electric which guarantees employment for workers in return for meritocratic piece-work wages, that would be just because it would be legal. We are a nation of laws, and just because the law favors the rich and powerful over the little guy, that’s just fine.
So long as Cantor sings “No New Taxes” for the upper 2% of incomes in America, you can bet that not much will change in terms of relative opportunity in America. The divide between rich and poor will continue to mirror the divide in opportunity access for rich and poor as well. The only means available for the redistribution of wealth and therefore opportunity in America is taxation. Industry has proven, by and large, not to be interested in providing the tools by which opportunity may spread across the classes in America. Therefore, only government will. May it do so now by providing funds for retooling the American workforce through grants to community colleges and technical schools utilizing income from increased taxes on the very rich.
We cannot afford to preserve the status quo that enables the rich to become richer and the less fortunate to stagnate. The Republican principles that they hold so dear are killing this culture slowly but surely. Like Alfred Doolittle, we cannot afford the principles of privilege and never could. We have a new generation of Robber Barons who hide on Wall Street and manipulate the markets to their benefit at the expense of the masses. If that is legal, it sure isn’t justice.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Our Puritan Legacy
While reading Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline, I began to realize something startling: Puritanism is alive and well in America. It takes many forms today, but the essential spirit of it is preserved. It allows various groups to attach themselves to beliefs so rigid and adamant that no facts or contrary information need apply. These groups are posited on the right and the left of any issue and inevitably suffer the hubris of certainty. In all cases they are truly anti-scientific in process and instead begin with self-appointed truths rather than hypotheses. Hypotheses are for pragmatists and other promoters of relativism.
On the left there are puritanical environmentalists who would rather see people starve than introduce genetically engineered crops because they are “unnatural” or who would ban nuclear energy in favor of renewable sources such as solar and wind even though solar and wind will assure a continued gap-filling dependence on burning coal that will kill tens of thousands more people than nuclear energy ever has or will.
On the right we have “Gospel of Wealth” true believers who insist that the Market will solve all economic problems and continue us down the road to progress if we can only free it from intervention by evil government. And we have true believer religious fanatics who are certain what God wants us to do and not do who are perhaps the most direct descendants of Puritanism. Finally, there are those who refuse to believe in climate change because Al Gore does.
In either case, the trial and error shiftiness of science with its hypotheses and murky data are not to be trusted. Science is just too full of doubt and uncertainty to warrant serious consideration, unless it reinforces one of our existing beliefs. Then its evidence is selectively plucked from the tree of knowledge, polished until it gules, and presented as an additional commandment, even when additional data and syntheses suggest that the original hypothesis was wrong.
For example, genetic engineering, the process of which actually does occur in nature, is considered evil by the puritan strain of environmentalists who insist that hybridization or cross breeding is the only natural way to develop pest resistant crops. They are so married to their idea of organic, they cannot entertain the notion that genetic engineered food is safer and less risky scientifically and rationally than hybridization is. Hybridization is the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun approach to advancement as opposed to engineering which is more the rifle and scope approach. (Brand uses the analogy of marrying a whole village as opposed to marrying a spouse without in-laws)
On this 4th of July, as we celebrate our independence from the British, perhaps we can consider gaining independence from the certainty of belief and submit to the slow, deliberate process of science. Just as we get frustrated with democracy at times because we have to put up with all kinds of theories and notions that get bandied about in the general discourse of our nation, we get frustrated with science’s grinding, deliberate method. And yet it is the best tool we have yet developed to move away from ignorance and toward truth. If it does not produce ready answers to everything, we should still listen to what it has to offer, which is far better than some undocumented, untested belief that we latch on to at our probable peril.
The loudest voices preach; the quiet ones consider.
On the left there are puritanical environmentalists who would rather see people starve than introduce genetically engineered crops because they are “unnatural” or who would ban nuclear energy in favor of renewable sources such as solar and wind even though solar and wind will assure a continued gap-filling dependence on burning coal that will kill tens of thousands more people than nuclear energy ever has or will.
On the right we have “Gospel of Wealth” true believers who insist that the Market will solve all economic problems and continue us down the road to progress if we can only free it from intervention by evil government. And we have true believer religious fanatics who are certain what God wants us to do and not do who are perhaps the most direct descendants of Puritanism. Finally, there are those who refuse to believe in climate change because Al Gore does.
In either case, the trial and error shiftiness of science with its hypotheses and murky data are not to be trusted. Science is just too full of doubt and uncertainty to warrant serious consideration, unless it reinforces one of our existing beliefs. Then its evidence is selectively plucked from the tree of knowledge, polished until it gules, and presented as an additional commandment, even when additional data and syntheses suggest that the original hypothesis was wrong.
For example, genetic engineering, the process of which actually does occur in nature, is considered evil by the puritan strain of environmentalists who insist that hybridization or cross breeding is the only natural way to develop pest resistant crops. They are so married to their idea of organic, they cannot entertain the notion that genetic engineered food is safer and less risky scientifically and rationally than hybridization is. Hybridization is the equivalent of a sawed-off shotgun approach to advancement as opposed to engineering which is more the rifle and scope approach. (Brand uses the analogy of marrying a whole village as opposed to marrying a spouse without in-laws)
On this 4th of July, as we celebrate our independence from the British, perhaps we can consider gaining independence from the certainty of belief and submit to the slow, deliberate process of science. Just as we get frustrated with democracy at times because we have to put up with all kinds of theories and notions that get bandied about in the general discourse of our nation, we get frustrated with science’s grinding, deliberate method. And yet it is the best tool we have yet developed to move away from ignorance and toward truth. If it does not produce ready answers to everything, we should still listen to what it has to offer, which is far better than some undocumented, untested belief that we latch on to at our probable peril.
The loudest voices preach; the quiet ones consider.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
