[Vision2020] Greed is Our Greatest Danger (Molly Ivins)

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (July 12, 2006) Spokesman Review -

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Greed is our greatest danger
Molly Ivins 
July 12, 2006

I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at $5.15
an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican
move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the
minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the
dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the
minimum wage, quietly killing it. 

Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer
and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers - this is Bush
country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts. 
 
According to the current issue of Mother Jones: 

. One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income. 

. Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any
one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent - 37 million Americans - are
officially poor. 

. Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000
and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million save
$42,700. 

. In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, compared those who point out such
statistics as the one above to Adolf Hitler. (Surely, he meant Stalin?) 

. Bush has diverted $750 million to "healthy marriages" by shifting funds
from social services, mostly child care.

. Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with
disabilities by 50 percent.

A series of related stats - starting with the news that two out of three new
jobs are in the suburbs - shows how the poor are further disadvantaged in
the job hunt by lack of public or private transportation. 

Meanwhile, for those who have been following the collapse of the pension
system, please note a series in the Wall Street Journal by Ellen Schultz
taking a hard look at executive pension obligations:

. "Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension
obligations in the United States, an average of 8 percent (of large
companies). Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's
pension approaches $100 million."

. "These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't
distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial
findings."

. "As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions of
regular retirees - which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -
can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives."

. "Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid until years from now,
drag down the earnings today. And they do so in a way that's
disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated
assets."

We've seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not
going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism; it will be
destroyed by its internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop
an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like the Wall Street
Journal's editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting any form of
regulation is bad. But for whom? 

It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair -
"justice for all" seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have
rigged the "lottery of life" in this country in ways we don't even know
about yet.  The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules
are worse.  The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an
inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts.  We
don't see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for
years, but it's starting to affect us already.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"In America, anybody can become president.  
That's one of the risks you take . . ."

- Adlai Stevenson

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