If This Is Such a Rich Country, Why Are We Getting Squeezed?

from AlterNet:


If This Is Such a Rich Country, Why Are We Getting Squeezed?

By Heather Boushey and Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 18, 2007.



While the rich are getting richer, they're slashing social security, medicare and other social programs for the rest of us. What gives?

The commercial media is telling us two perfectly contradictory stories about the American economy. The first is how wonderfully rich we are in the United States. The stock market's booming -- some analysts predict the Dow will break the 15,000 this year -- the economy is expanding at a healthy clip, productivity growth is up and unemployment and inflation are relatively low.

But, at the same time, we're also told that we don't have the money to pay for a robust social safety net. When it comes to paying for universal health coverage, affording retirement security for our elderly, investing in programs for the poor or educating our children, we need to pinch pennies. According to this storyline, we face a looming "entitlement crisis" -- we won't be able to afford to keep the Baby Boomers in good health and out of poverty, we're told, unless we slash their benefits and privatize the programs that their elderly parents enjoy today.

This is the line we hear from the Administration when it talks about entitlement "reform": Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says that "The biggest economic issue facing our country is the growth in spending on the major entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security." The solution, according to the Heritage Foundation, is to cut entitlement spending: "Reforming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is the only way to get the budget under control."

How can two narratives that are so clearly at odds with each other be so pervasive? Are we seriously supposed to believe that Paris Hilton has to dig between the cushions of her sofa to buy a can of tuna?

What reconciles these two themes is absent from our mainstream economic discourse: we "can't afford" all sorts of programs that are clearly in the common good because most of the benefits of our growing economy have gone to a very small group of Americans, who have, in turn, seen their taxes slashed again and again in the past six years. It's a story that isn't told as often as it should in the commercial press because it's a supposedly "liberal" narrative -- never mind that über-conservative former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that there is a "really serious problem here, as I've mentioned many times … in the consequent concentration of income that is rising." .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/57180/

A median (typical) salary in the US peaked in the early 1970s, and has declined fairly steadily since. What now passes for a Democrat would be far to the right of a Republican of 30 years ago - heck, during the first two years of Eisenhower's presidency, the Republicans had the Presidency AND both branches of Congress - and they kept a 91% top tax bracket. All told, the wealthiest Americans paid about 50% in federal taxes back then - now they pay about 17%.

But we're the idiots that keep supporting those that screw us - we have met the enemy and they is us.

In terms of self government we appear to be the stupidest people on the planet.

lesser of two evils.

It's too hard for other parties to get on the ticket. And for something big, such as US senator or Pres, most of the time they wouldn't have the do-re-mi.

I don't remember a presidential primary where there wasn't at least one good choice. But we Democrats prefer to listen to the rhetoric du jour instead of sizing up a candidate based on voting record and political courage. So we get two-faced, weak-willed candidates.

We used to be citizens of a republic, then it was "we". Now we are all just "employees" or parasites on the corporate state.