Heartening if true
I hope the Democrats are serious about this:
[T]he latest populist resurgence is deeply rooted in a view that current economic conditions are difficult and deteriorating for many people, analysts say, and it is now framing debates over tax policy, education, trade, energy and health care. Last week, Senate Democrats held hearings on proposals to raise taxes on some of the highest fliers on Wall Street, the people at the top of private equity and hedge fund firms.
In the House, Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Financial Services Committee, convened party leaders and economists for a searching discussion of “globalization, outsourcing and the American worker — what should government do?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, offered the participants some blunt marching orders: “The American people want to know what we’re doing about their economic security.”
Obviously, holding a panel on this stuff isn’t enough. The Dems really need to follow through with some serious reforms that will provide people with more economic security.
The most obvious place to begin is by dismantling the employer-based health insurance system- it provides a drag on businesses, it’s inefficient and it limits consumer choice. Additionally, people are changing jobs more frequently than they have in the past and will often go for prolonged periods of time without coverage. As someone who had to pay $150 for a simple doctor’s visit last year, I know what I’m talking about.
Other obvious things to do:
-More investment in public transportation to lessen peoples’ need to drive, thus saving them money on travel expenses.
-A temporary moratorium on any new trade deals until we have the infrastructure in place to help displaced workers. Denying Bush fast-track authority is a good place to start.
-Support unions. And if Bush sends you an anti-labor wingnut judge for confirmation, send him packing.
And that’s just the easy stuff. Doing the tough stuff- i.e., empowering workers around the globe to fight for better labor standards and higher wages- will take decades.
UPDATE: Kevin Drum points out another part of this problem:
THE NEW GILDED AGE….What a depressing story this is from Louis Uchitelle in the New York Times today. I mean, it’s nice to know that there are a few rich people who aren’t complete assholes, but it seems safe to say that the majority fall pretty safely into this category. Do they seriously believe that American executives in the 50s and 60s just coasted along on waves of cash while they not only had a world red in tooth and claw to tame, but were responsible for personally taming it without help from any other human being on the planet? Apparently so:
The new tycoons describe a history that gives them a heroic role. The American economy, they acknowledge, did grow more rapidly on average in the decades immediately after World War II than it is growing today. Incomes rose faster than inflation for most Americans and the spread between rich and poor was much less. But the United States was far and away the dominant economy, and government played a strong supporting role. In such a world, the new tycoons argue, business leaders needed only to be good managers.
….That changed with the arrival of “the technological age,” in [Lew] Frankfort’s view. Innovation became a requirement, in addition to good management skills — and innovation has played a role in Coach’s marketing success. “To be successful,” Mr. Frankfort said, “you now needed vision, lateral thinking, courage and an ability to see things, not the way they were but how they might be.”
Oy. Where do these people come from? I’m at least moderately sympathetic to this kind of argument when it comes from a genuine entrepreneur like Bill Gates or Sam Walton, but when it comes from some guy who thinks he practically risked life and limb by climbing to the top of the corporate ladder and then engineering a couple of big mergers, it almost makes me want to retch. These guys wouldn’t know risk if it hit them in the kneecaps with a two-by-four.
As I’ve said before, I have no problem with people getting rich. If someone works from the bottom up and makes a successful business, more power to ’em.
But lately, America has had less people like Bill Gates and more people like Paris Hilton. More and more, we’re becoming a nation of a permanent aristocracy where people at the bottom and middle rungs of the ladder have less hope of climbing than they did in the past. Thus, we see people at the top expressing the belief that they’re allegedly “better” than all those swarthy working-class people who just weren’t smart enough to get their MBAs at Columbia Business School. If not for the ultra-rich, they argue, the entire American economy would collapse, since everyone around them is a lazy fuck.
Let us cross our fingers and hope that there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Also, finding some way to give relief to college students graduating with a shitload of debt, and to increase Pell grants and raise the income limits required to receive a Pell, would be an enormous help.
Shit, the Democrats could do a whole buch of good, just by doing obvious stuff, right now. But in order to do it, they’d have to stand up to the Republicans, and our pathetic excuse for a media. Wonder if they will.
atheist- they’ll also have to drag many members of their own party, who are themselves addicted to corporate cash, kicking and screaming along with them.
Well, yes. I got carried away I guess.
Its a nice daydream ain’t it tho?
Gore Vidal once said that the US was now a “free enterprise for the poor, socialism for the rich”.
Miguel.
What always kills me about the right’s response to talk of a new gilded age is the apparent desire of the underclass to remain in the underclass. That is, lower middle class and poor right wingers voting to ensure tax cuts for the corporate-jet crowd. The same people who basked in the glow of two seconds of false popularity by telling the cool kid that they voted for him for student body president.
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm
Hey, they had decades in Congress already. Democrats controlled the House from 1949 to 1993. With the exception of eight years, they controlled the Senate throughout the same 44-year period, by a 30-vote margin in the Kennedy/Johnson years and by about 10 votes for most of the following years (with six years in the Reagan era making up the bulk of Republican control prior to 1993).
Does that sound like political economists to anyone else?
Bill Gates didn’t quite work his way from rags to riches either, you know, more from millionaire to billionaire in his case, and most of his wealth was created by the hard labour of his employees, not by himself.
If not for the ultra-rich, they argue, the entire American economy would collapse, since everyone around them is a lazy fuck.
This is one the (many) rightie sentiments that pisses me off. It goes with the idea that any tiny bit of socialism is bad because it allegedly discourages innovation and entrepreneurship and initiative.
You know what kills my initiative and motivation? The fact that no matter how hard I work for this company, it won’t benefit me one bit. The fact that going without health insurance and a steady income in these days of lingering debt (from a layoff) makes taking any decent steps to improve my lot either unacceptably risky or irresponsible (change job, full-time master’s, move to area that has a fucking economy, etc.). The fact that it’s getting next to impossible to improve one’s lot without viciously ruining the lives of others in the process, directly or indirectly. The fact that just living an American life these days is tantamount to ruining the lives of millions around the globe.
A Repub would say that the problem is simply that I’m “weak,” which translates into English as “not a rampaging asshole.” There is logic to this, amoral as it is. But it’s less and less surprising to me, given that fact, that life in America, and the American people, are getting meaner and meaner and greedier and greedier. Either that or fall headfirst right out of the middle class, as I’ve been in the process of doing for some time now.
most of his wealth was created by the hard labour of his employees, not by himself.
$150 for a doctor’s visit? Good god, I dream of paying only $150 for a doctor’s visit….
most of his wealth was created by the hard labour of his employees, not by himself.
Actually, most of the wealth was created by the staff of other firms who were gouged with high fees for Windows and Office.
The problem is power. The entrenched wealthy have it. Economic power, political power, every kind of power that matters.
The “people” only have two kinds of power – the same kinds they’ve always had. They have the power of the vote. This used to force politicians to at least give some thought to how best to give the people just enough to keep them voting your way, without upsetting the powerful elite. Now, money’s more important than votes, and hell, if only thirty percent of the people vote they’re just that much easier to manipulate or ignore.
The only other power the people have is the power of the rabble. They can get their pitchforks, light their torches and take to the barricades. And it’s surprising to me how much worse things have to get for that to happen. At what point are people going to recognize that the game is rigged, the dreams are simply that, and everything they do benefits rich guys a whole lot more than it benefits them and their families?
Nope, the people don’t have the power to force the politicians to genuinely act in their interest. There’s just no reason for them to do it. It doesn’t get them anything, and their lives are so much better and easier if they play the game. So it comes down to people power, people in the streets, general strikes, riots, cities in flame, storming the Bastille, the whole kit, kat and kaboodle.
Wake me up when you’re ready to go…
mikey
This policy discussion by the Democrats was conducted in English, and Brad finds it “heartening.” Did I not say we needed a common language to “hearten” one another? Interesting…
*elbow*
Dammit, mikey, wake up!!!
*elbow elbow*
This is the one thing I DON’T like about Laphroaig…
Shit, if America REALLY wants to protect American jobs, they’ll start pushing unionization everyfriggingwhere it ain’t. That’s the ONLY way Third World workers are gonna catch up to American living standards.
This policy discussion by the Democrats was conducted in English, and Brad finds it “heartening.” Did I not say we needed a common language to “hearten” one another? Interesting…
I also noticed that none of the Democrats involved in this discussion had been the victims of an abortion…and I’m dead!
Yeah, I read that article in the Times, and the notion that earlier business leaders were somehow not innovative, unlike those in the technological age of today, is laughable. Where does this guy think the technology came from?
Hmmm….this sounds familiar…
PETER
The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s just that I just don’t care.
BOB PORTER
Don’t, don’t care?
PETER
It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime. So where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now!
BOB SLYDELL
I beg your pardon?
PETER
Eight bosses.
BOB SLYDELL
Eight?
PETER
Eight, bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my real motivation – is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y’know, Bob, it will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired.
Yep…
OK, that “Peggy Noonan” up there is frighteningly realistic. Gave me a bad start on a Monday morning.
I’m convinced that once most people reach a certain level of wealth and power it makes them mentally ill. Viciously so. The blogger Driftglass calls it the Big Church Of Fuck Everybody But Me. And this nonsense of”the universe provides if you just have a positive attitude”ala The Secret or some other Oprah crap is WAY too often embraced. The universe may be limitless,but the planet we live on isn’t. Someone goes without so you can have the way we live today,especially if you have billions of dollars hoarded all to yourself.
What is sadly lacking here is community. About the only thing left anymore is via churches,which means if you don’t belong to a church you’re mostly SOL. Try finding a neighborhood with sidewalks even,in some parts of the country that’s pretty much impossible. Hell,offering to do something nice for someone,just because it’s being a good citizen is considered freakish or wierd anymore. IMHO,that IS the problem. People don’t have much left to fight FOR anymore,we’re too worn out from fighting against all kinds of things. It might behoove us to look at who gains from us fighting against each other so much.
Gah,I live in red state America,it’s getting to me.
Rightthink: Has a conscience = LOSER.
“only” $150! lucky. I just had to pay $600 for two uncovered visits. fun fun fun.
Here’s a radical proposal:
What about actually making corporations pay their fucking taxes?
Tax reform would be nice, but we could start by actually enforcing existing tax law by closing all the loopholes that allow mega-corporations to basically skip their tax bills.
I KNOW somebody didn’t just pretend to be Ronald Reagan up in here. I will deliver a slanderous mambo metaphor to anyone I catch doing that!
P.S. Lick my snatch.
(that better, Snowwy?)
It would probably be a heartening discussion if it were held between Bill Richardson, Loretta Sanchez, Antonio Villaraigosa, Fabien Nunez and Robert Menendez, all in Spanish, dear Peggy.
The stupidest guy I ever known, in that he managed to lose some of my money, but way, way more of his own, had a Harvard MBA. I saw it in his office. I was, I admit, impressed at first, while a voice in my head kept on saying: “he’s dumb and past it, to boot”.
I still don’t understand why some of us engage in adulation of Bill Gates. Sure Bill did a great job starting Microsoft but don’t forget that Bill led Microsoft down the monopoly track and turned Microsoft into a no-holds-barred bully boy in their industry.
Gates’ talent and intelligence are undeniable, but it helped him a great deal to be in a wealthy family (his father was one of the founders of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, and his mother was the daughter of a bank president who her self served on the board of directors of another bank) and hence have a secure source of venture capital. That part always seems to be left out when talking about Microsoft.
Sanford Weill “made” $113,419 an hour as CEO of Citigroup in 2001. If the average employee of Citigroup earns $30,000 a year then Mr. Weill had that covered around 9:20 AM on the first working day of the year. Plus, thanks to his frat-boy wonder, he got a fat tax cut, too
Mikey’s comment on power is very well put. It’s why there is rarely economic advancement for working people unless they are organized in some way.
Also, I think Gates is admired (or at least not reviled) in part because he does some pretty major charitable work. OK, not work. Let me rephrase: his foundation puts a lot of money into charitable causes. Drop in the bucket compared to his net worth, but still.
Better public transportation in this country would be teh awesome. I think about this at length when I am driving the seven-and-a-half hour drive (at 65 mph, heh heh) between my central Ohio hometown and central New York where my partner lives.
Bill Gates is quite simply the greatest marketer who ever lived. He bamboozled IBM into giving him rights to the OS they bought, he created a world that allowed cloned BIOS, he took a series of inferior applications and through a brutally effective marketing channel made them the de facto standard for user computing. Think about it. We know the OS was/is buggy and insecure. We all can name products at any given time that were far better than anything he ever sold. But by anticipating (not creating) the future he was selling business application software on the basis of “integration” and “collaboration” long before either of those things even truly existed in the computing world. He has consistently demonstrated a sense about what to buy, what to crush, what to live with and what to fight. He has repeatedly proven he knows when to buy market, when to leverage market, and when to just give stuff away. He’s made bad decisions, but does not hesitate to reverse course when it becomes apparent. He is brutal, ruthless, rapacious, manipulative, creative and dogged. Say what you will, but that is a marketers wet dream…
mikey
Gates is also a fucking thief. Search “Gary Kildall.” He came up w/ most of the stuff that makes your devil-box work, but Gates (w/ the capable assistance of IBM) managed to get his hands on it, the rest is unfortunate history, as Mikey details above. Ahd I’m w/ Mikey on we, the rabble, getting our pitchforks (or better) &, well, you know. We must use the (death & destruction dealing) knowledge our vets were given before it’s too late.
Not really sure how much of an “entrepreneur” Sam Walton was, but his activities haven’t resulted in much of a “trickle-down” (other than the obvious) to the employees of his ventures. (And the flood-down to his descendants, of course. We need a much more serious estate tax, as well.) Certainly Costco is a better example of big-ass stores working for all concerned.
As to public transportation, that’s vital, but a big part of that problem is sprawl. People here in
HellSouthern Calif. often spend four hours a day on the road commuting to & from work, because they feel they have to have that mortgage deduction, but can’t afford to buy w/in a reasonable distance of work. This results in middle-class latch-key children (not good for that family unit to which the RW love to pay lip-service; see Romney’s new ad @ tbogg today, Mittens quotes Peggy Noonan!) as well as many cases of people literally falling asleep at the wheel on their way home from work, often to the death/injury of themselves/others. Making developers re-develop urban areas, w/ real requirements to provide/maintain housing for people who actually work for a living is as necessary as more & better public transportation.And a general rule to live by: EAT THE RICH!!!
Pure classwar and envy on display here, bias against initiative and hard work, pleas for socialistic big gov solutions to everything. here in the heartland we know you are all wrong.
Gary, I live in the heartland, and I don’t find that folks particuarly approve of guys that make big bucks for doing piss-poor jobs. If CEOs lost money when they performed badly (i.e. were exposed to “risk”), then you might have a point, but getting big stacks of cash and stock options for doing a piss-poor job isn’t indicative of “initiative and hard work”.
As for class warfare, that’s your side’s doing. Almost none of the big boy CEOs came from poor backgrounds and worked their way up through the ranks, any more than the current President did.
Rupert has suckled from the tittle of mammon and proclaimed it “good.” I am still hesitant.
“hey Rupie baby,” I query, “good is alright, but is it sweet?” You see I have a serious sugar fixation and good sometimes doesn’t cut the ketchup.
WTF, class warfare has been the undeclared dirty war the rich have always been fighting while we twiddle our big toes. The problem is convincing the Ruperts of the world that “big daddy” really doesn’t give two hoots about anything except him and his.
MCH, I just love falling from jobs to the next best thing… I’ve gone from rags to nice rags back to rags in the last 15 years.
Is it time to storm the Bastille yet?