You Know What Say About Suckers And Even Breaks
A recent cartoon shows President Clinton bragging on the 8 million jobs that have been created since he came into office. A waiter standing nearby with a tray full of glasses is thinking, “Yeah, and I’m holding down three of them.”
It is the genius of cartoonists to take headlines like “Worker Earnings Post Rise of 2.7 Percent, Lowest on Record: Wages Stagnant in Latest Year Even as Economy Expanded” and make them comprehensible to us all. As the headlines keep telling us, the economy is roaring along - a 4.2 percent growth rate in the last quarter.
But most of us are worse off than we were 20 years ago. The proportion of workers holding two jobs to make ends meet is higher than it has been in 50 years. We live a great nation, n’est-ce pas?
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan kept telling us that we had to increase productivity, productivity was the key, we had to be as productive as the Japanese. So we were right-sized, downsized, streamlined and plain old laid off to a fare-thee-well.
And by George, productivity just shot up there; we are just producin’ fools these days. And most of us are still worse off than we were 20 years ago.
Our canny corporate leaders have shifted to day laborers and “temps” (“permanent temp” is a phrase that managers can now say without a glimmer of a smile) so they won’t have to pay for health insurance or retirement benefits. Even full-time employees are now having to pay a larger share of such benefits.
So who’s gettin’ the dough? Executives and stockholders, stockholders and executives.
The Progressive Caucus in Congress went through the Republican budget and found $122.5 billion in new tax breaks for CEOs and others with incomes of more than $100,000 a year. That works out to 4,224 times what all minimum-wage workers would receive if they all got a $1-an-hour increase for each of the next seven years.
The problem of stagnant wages, especially at the lower end of the wage scale, is critical; men without college degrees have had their wages drop by 12 percent in 15 years.
But the Republican budget will aggravate this very problem. By sharply cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Republican budget effectively raises taxes for low-income workers. And, of course, the Republican Congress will not even consider increasing the minimum wage.
In early October, 101 distinguished economists, including three Nobel Prize winners and seven past presidents of the American Economics Association, signed a statement asking Congress to increase the minimum wage. They noted that the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is at its second-lowest level since 1955, and its purchasing power is 26 percent less than it was on average during the 1970s.
The cautious economists emphasized that the old argument that raising the minimum wage makes jobs disappear is not borne out by the facts. “On balance, the evidence from recent economic studies … suggests the employment effects were negligible or small.”
Nor do economists fear that wage increases will touch off inflation. In fact, most of them are puzzled as to why increased corporate profits and greater productivity have not already been reflected in higher wages. Executives and stockholders, stockholders and executives.
Meanwhile, with corporate profits already at a 40-year high, the Republicans continue to offer more tax breaks to corporations. According to the Progressive Caucus, repeal of the alternative minimum tax on corporations will cost the treasury $25.2 billion, which happens to almost match the $23.3 billion tax increase on working families earning less than $28,000 a year from cuts in the EITC.
The $14 billion tax loophole granted by Republicans to highly profitable mutual insurance companies would restore food stamps and nutrition assistance for 7 million children. But hey, the Republicans are determined to balance the budget, and who needs that $14 billion more - hungry children or mutual insurance companies already making high profits?
I’m always pleased to hear Republicans carry on about moral decline in this country. Bill Bennett, one of my favorite Public Scolds, is now on a crusade to elevate the tenor of TV talk shows a worthy endeavor. Boy, that’s getting right to the heart of what’s wrong with this country.
It used to be, in the Texas Legislature, we could occasionally get our right-wingers to vote for some social program by carefully showing them how it would save money in the long run - prenatal nutrition programs, well-baby care, infant care and so on. Maybe the new key to getting Republicans to act in the public interest is show them that moral decline will result from certain policies.
I can pretty much guarantee that taking $23 billion a year away from families making less than $28,000 will result in their moral decline, especially when the money goes to eliminate that tax on wealthy corporations. You see, people will notice what kind of behavior gets rewarded in this system, and they too will take up greed, disloyalty, irresponsibility and gouging their fellow man without a twinge of guilt.
Get Bill Bennett on the phone - quick!
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