Great Article: that says it all ---"Wanted: A High Road Economy"

This article sums up perfectly the fricking mess that the Bipartisan Corporate Concensus has created over the last 30 years. If the Democrats would take on this as a CORE ISSUE, the GOP would be consigned to oblivion.

P.S. This was on Common Dreams, via Bernie Sanders website.


http://bernie.house.gov/documents/document.asp?issueNum=4823

3/17/2006, Common Dreams
Wanted: A High-Road Economy
by Holly Sklar

Waving the banner of "global competitiveness," corporate and government policymakers are running the U.S. economy into the ground. We are becoming a nation of Scrooge-Marts and outsourcers—with an increasingly low-wage workforce instead of a growing middle class.

We are living the American Dream in reverse.

The minimum wage buys less today than it did when Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton opened his first Walton’s 5 & 10 in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1951. It would take more than $9 in 2006 to match the federal minimum wage peak reached in 1968, adjusting for inflation. At today's $5.15 an hour, it takes nearly two minimum wage workers to earn what one made 38 years ago.....

CUT

We will not prosper in the 21st century global economy by relying on 1920s corporate greed, 1950s tax revenues, downwardly mobile wages and global-warming energy policies. We will not prosper relying on disinvestment in place of reinvestment. We can't succeed that way any more than farmers can "compete" by eating their seed corn.

CUT

Instead of pretending the problem is overpaid workers and accelerating offshoring, we need to shore up our economy from below and invest in smart, sustainable development. Raising the minimum wage is a vital step. The high road is not only the better road, it is the only road for progress in the future. An America that doesn’t work for working people is not an America that works.

This is too good to sink to the bottom so fast without a trace

I agree, this thread must live!

But now that the Chickens are Coming Homne to Roost from their prolonged indifference, it's time to bring some reality back into the political system.

Way way way past time. But now is a good time for a reality comeback, because everybody has the failure of following illusion smacking them right in the face.

Interestingly enough, there is a gigantic body of data to support that the size, discretionary proportion of income, and stability of likely future income (employment security) are the basis upon which the periods of highest real GDP growth have occurred. In addition, the highest periods of growth of corporate net income, market value growth have been conincident to these periods.

Lastly, more very rich people get much richer, and more people become millionaires and billionaires during these periods.

So, the robber baron days weren't even the best of times for the robber barons! The securing of the employment base and stabilization of the middle class is the single most important element of the economic policy that gov't could contribute.
The Professor

It's just common sene to realize that when everyone does better, Everyone Does Better.

It's amazing that as a society we have bought into such nonsense as "Allow us to cut your wages and ship your jobs overseas, and you will be better off." Or "Allow us to form a monopoly to protect competition."

for the percent of a percenters at the tippy top?

"Lastly, more very rich people get much richer, and more people become millionaires and billionaires during these periods."

Must cause an intolerable hemorrhaging of power from the have mosts to the mere have mores. And that will Not be tolerated.

can I get a 'sarcasm' people?

The people at the top have ALWAYS done even better when there is a huge middle class! A strong and dominant middle class is better for EVERYONE!
The Professor

thanks for the link.

Holly Sklar said:

"Instead of pretending the problem is overpaid workers and accelerating offshoring..."

It's vital that we raise the min. wage, but offshoring (and inshoring) is very much a problem.

How can we "shore up our economy from below and invest in smart, sustainable development" while jobs are being outsourced.
Short of ignoring the economy that's in place and creating our own, outsourcing is a very real problem.

April 12, 2004 issue
The American Conservative

Suicide by Free Trade

by Pat Buchanan

http://www.amconmag.com/2004_04_12/buchanan.html

""Indeed, if the issue is jobs, Republicans ought to be thrown out. For not only are they not creating them, they have no idea how to stop exporting them. In their hearts, some of them think it a good thing. They are like the doctors of old who sincerely believed bleeding the patient was the way to get rid of the disease because that is what their textbooks and wise men told them.""

The issues she raises in the article SHOULD be the cornerstone of a Liberal and progressive Democratic Party.

But too often the Democratic Corporate Establishment ignores them, as do the Piggy Corporate Factions of the GOP and other conservatives.

However, at base it is an issue of both common ense and basic human decency and collective self-interest. It only makes sense, both from a social standpoint and from mthe standpoint of the self-interest of the majority of Americans.

Although conservatives like Pat Buchanan may come from a different starting point than progressives like Bernie Sanders and Holly Sklar, they do share a common recognition of the problem -- and recogize the importance of rebuilding the domestic economy.

is based upon psychotic values.

The Corporation
http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=2

""THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES
To more precisely assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath." "

Charming but amoral and lacking in any sense of conscience.