Poverty in the USA

Look at this picture: Doesn't it break your heart and hurt your very soul?
How is this possible in our wealthy nation? Homeless people all over and indescribable squalor and poverty... And tomorrow you could be one of "them".

But this "problem" isn't unique to the USA, but reaches all over the world.
We, the "common people" need Social Conscious Populist Revolutionaries like Hugo Chavez
to destroy the malicious power of the New World Order to bring Social Justice
and fair distribution of the Wealth of this earth to mankind.
When will the People of this Nation and all over the earth AWAKEN to what is done
to them by the rich and "privileged"?
To Hell with the Republican Neo-cons and the phony Democrats!
They are ALL part of the conspiracy to enslave mankind.
To Hell with phony churches and preachers as they too are part of the problem.
And the problem is much to large and much too serious to hope for "salvation"
and help from what little they are willing to offer. Smooth talking, self righteous pacifiers
aren't needed!
We need to AWAKEN and ACT before it is too late!
Let's face it, unbridled Capitalism has FAILED just as Soviet Communism, as
BOTH come from the same source... the bankers and financial conglomerates,
the financiers of Capitalism, Communism and THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
Thus we need to abandon old concepts of "left" and "right", as they too are
part of the scheme to keep us busy with divisive concepts and meaningless
squabbles. We have to rise above these labels and face who our true
enemies are in order to reach the necessary UNITY needed to become effective.

WE MUST FIND A NEW FORM OF SOCIAL POPULISM
BASED ON THE SAME PRINCIPLES AS HUGO CHAVEZ' BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!

60 million Americans living on less than $7 a day
US income figures show staggering rise in social inequality

The slide into poverty—
an increasing likelihood for workers in Detroit’s suburbs

“A nine-figure fortune won’t get you much mention these days”
Forbes publishes list of 400 richest Americans

The very rich in America:
“The kind of money you cannot comprehend”

Federal Reserve report documents widening inequality in US

Bush reassures American ruling class
Tax cuts to continue, social programs to be slashed in wake of Hurricane Katrina

60 million Americans living on less than $7 a day
US income figures show staggering rise in social inequality

By Jerry White
12 December 2006

A recent analysis of Internal Revenue Service tax data sheds further light on the enormous gap that has grown between America’s wealthy elite and the masses of working people over the last quarter of a century. The examination of IRS figures was conducted by the New York Times and reported in its November 27 article, “’04 Income in U.S. Was Below 2000 Level” by David Cay Johnston.

The article begins by noting that total US income in 2004—the latest year for which tax information is available—was $7.044 trillion, down from more than $7.143 trillion in 2000. The decline was attributed to two factors: the stagnation of median household income—which fell by 3 percent, or about $1,600, between 2000 and 2004—and the fact that the earnings of the richest Americans have not yet caught up with the peak reached before the Internet bubble on Wall Street burst in 2000.

Incomes in 2004 rose by an average 6.8 percent but the vast bulk of the increase went to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans—living in some 130,500 households with an average income of $4.9 million—who saw their incomes rise by 27.5 percent over the course of one year. During the same period the income of the poorest one-fifth of the population—some 60 million people—rose by only 1.8 percent.

The sharp rise in income for the wealthiest Americans—due in large measure to the Bush administration’s cuts in capital gains taxes, corporate profit rates not seen in nearly 40 years and the recovery of the stock market—has led to a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich. According to a separate study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans took in 9.5 percent of all pretax income, or about $679 billion in 2004, excluding unreported income.

Referring to this elite group, the New York Times article notes, “those very top households, which include about 300,000 Americans, reported significantly more pretax income combined than the poorest 120 million Americans earned in 2004, the data show. This is a sharp change from 1979, the oldest year examined by the I.R.S, when the thin slice at the top received about one-third of the total income of the big group at the bottom.”

This staggering fact reveals a great deal about the economic and political processes that have unfolded over the last quarter century. While the portion of national income controlled by America’s corporate and financial elite declined in the aftermath of the Great Depression and stabilized during the postwar period, over the last 25 years a massive social transformation has occurred and the share of the national income now controlled by America’s social oligarchy is at the highest levels since 1929.

The Times article goes on to note, “Over all, average incomes rose 27 percent in real terms over the quarter-century from 1979 through 2004. But the gains were narrowly concentrated at the top and offset by losses for the bottom 60 percent of Americans, those making less than $38,761 in 2004.” It continues, “The bottom 60 percent of Americans, on average, made less than 95 cents in 2004 for each dollar they reported in 1979, the analysis of IRS data showed. The next best-off group, the fifth of Americans on the 60th to 80th rungs of the income ladder, averaged 2 cents more income in 2004 for each dollar they earned in 1979.

“Only those in the top 5 percent had significant gains,” the newspaper notes. The average income of those on the 95th to 99th rungs of the income ladder rose by 53 percent, almost twice the average rate. The largest gains, however, went to those at the very heights of American society. “A third of the entire national increase in reported income went to the top 1 percent—and more than half of that went to the top tenth of 1 percent, whose average incomes soared so much that for each dollar, adjusted for inflation, that they had in 1979 they had $3.48 in 2004,” the Times article says.

The last 25 years has seen an enormous transfer of wealth from working people into the hands of America’s economic elite. With the full backing of both the Democrats and Republicans, corporate America responded to the decline of its competitive position in the 1970s by launching an unrelenting attack on the jobs and living standards of the working class that continues to this day. The enrichment of those at the top has come at the direct expense of the vast majority of the working population in America, whose share of national wealth has plummeted.

At the other pole of society is an increasingly impoverished working class, including some 25 percent of all workers who labor for poverty wages. The Times article notes that the bottom fifth of all taxpayers earned below $11,166 and their average reported income was only $5,743 each. Because the IRS includes a single individual or a married couple in its definition of a “taxpayer” the poorest 26 million taxpayers account for the equivalent nearly 48 million adults and about 12 million dependent children. According to the Times analysis, this means the poorest 60 million Americans have reported incomes of less than $7 a day!

The official poverty line in 2004 was $27 a day for a single adult below retirement age and $42 a day for a household with one child—although the real cost of attaining basic necessities is far higher. The Times article notes that the IRS income data does not include the value of government benefits like food stamps, earned-income tax credits and subsidized medical care. But the social programs for the poor—including federal welfare assistance—have largely been wiped out or curtailed and what programs do remain are not sufficient to lift families out of poverty.

It is often noted that 3 billion of the world’s poorest people live on less than $2 a day. In the US, where the cost of living is far higher, $7 a day is only enough to guarantee a life of destitution. The fact that 60 million people live in such dire poverty—and tens of millions more could face the same fate if they lost their jobs or confronted some other financial catastrophe—is a damning indictment of American capitalism and the free market model it touts around the world.

The levels of social stratification and inequality in the US are incompatible with genuine democracy. Political life in America is completely subordinated to the needs of a financial aristocracy whose pursuit of ever greater levels of personal wealth constantly collides with the social needs and democratic rights of the broad masses of people in the US and internationally. The needs of this elite—for further wars of conquest, tax cuts, the elimination of social programs and a drastic reduction of living standards—cannot be imposed, in the final analysis, without recourse to authoritarian means.

The social transformation that has occurred over the last 25 years has coincided with a shift to the right by both big business parties and in particular the abandonment of any program of social reforms by the Democratic Party, whose leading personal, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and leading presidential contender Senator Hillary Clinton, are themselves multimillionaires. Insulated from the majority of the people and unwilling and unable to respond to their needs and concerns, the leading members of the incoming Democratic majority in Congress have already made it clear that they will not roll back the Bush-era tax cuts that have helped bring unimaginable wealth to their real constituents

The slide into poverty—
an increasing likelihood for workers in Detroit’s suburbs

By Carol Divjak
6 November 2006

The Dow Jones may be hitting 12,000 and the US government and corporations may be proclaiming this period a golden age of prosperity and profit, but people living in the formerly comfortable Michigan counties of Oakland and Macomb would beg to differ.

Homeless shelter director Monica Duncan termed a new phenomenon of the crisis “gray hair syndrome.” She told Jerome White, Socialist Equality Party candidate in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District, that the recent growth of poverty here has given rise to the shocking development of older workers who have worked their entire lives in the auto industry now losing their homes and being forced to apply for temporary charity from institutions like the one she heads.

These trends in the 12th Congressional District are indicative of the dramatic changing of the region’s demographics. Hardship and homelessness now reach broadly across the spectrums of age and ethnicity. The northern suburbs of Detroit, dominated for decades by the auto industries, are reeling under the impact of the mass layoffs of workers by Ford, GM and parts-maker Delphi. The area is being quietly pauperized. This is one of the reasons White chose to run in this district—to expose the brutal reality that the drive for profit is exacting on the working class in this region.

In Macomb County alone more than 27,000 factory jobs—or 22 percent of the manufacturing workforce—have been wiped out since 2000. The number of people officially living in poverty in the county jumped from 44,000 in 2000 to 71,000 in 2005. Overall, Michigan has the second highest unemployment rate in the country—second only to hurricane-devastated Mississippi.

One of the most tragic aspects of the growing poverty is the number of home foreclosures, now at an all-time high. In the first eight months of last year lenders filed for foreclosure on 21,076 homes in the Michigan region, while in the same period this year the number jumped to 50,863. Nearly 7 percent of all mortgage payments in Michigan were overdue by the second quarter of this year. In other words, over 19,000 additional families were in some stage of default. Only Mississippi and Louisiana have higher delinquency rates

And those numbers are just the beginning because so many homeowners have already leveraged as much debt as possible on their sole source of equity, their home. These homeowners will be extremely vulnerable to delinquency in the coming months. The number of second mortgages and home-equity loans—financial instruments originally intended to allow homeowners to do repairs or additions—are huge and growing. Workers are being forced to resort to these extreme measures to meet costs for everything from college tuition to grocery and utility bills.

Twenty-four percent of all homes in Oakland County have a second loan on them while their property value has only risen 16 percent, while in Macomb County 21 percent have second home loans while their median value has only gone up by 11 percent.

By every measure, thousands and thousands of workers are sinking ever deeper in debt just to survive. Even if a worker laid off from the auto industry is fortunate enough to find a job quickly, chances are the rate of pay will be substantially lower, with minimal benefits. Statewide statistics record that about 60 percent of the homeless are working.

Monica Duncan is the executive director of the South Oakland Shelter in Royal Oak and she spoke at length to SEP candidate Jerome White about the distress being faced by ever increasing numbers of workers.

The gray hair syndrome, Duncan said, refers to the growing numbers of workers laid off after “20 years or more,” those whose skills were tied to the auto industry, but who have no or little college education. “Then,” Duncan explained, the worker “gets laid off due to downsizing or the boom and bust of the auto industry. He may have some money in a 401(k) retirement plan but he can’t find another job with a comparable income. All of a sudden from $18 an hour he’s forced to take an $8 an hour job. He still has to make car payments and mortgage payments. Then the juggling starts. He skips paying some of his bills hoping things might get better, then the savings start to dwindle as he pulls something from here to pay something from there.”

“You may have managerial experience,” she continued, “but you’re told you have to start as a cashier for $8 an hour at a department store. You start to have a whole different perception of yourself, thinking that you don’t have any value and you say to yourself, ‘This is not where I saw myself being at 55.’

“In Royal Oak, we’ve seen some workers over 40 who were forced to move back with their parents after losing a job. But when their parents have to sell their house and go to a nursing home or to an assisted living facility, they can’t afford the housing costs anymore and end up needing shelter.

Ms. Duncan also spoke about the growing numbers of working poor who become homeless. “Many get a job at $8.50 an hour at a factory,” she said, “but they get laid off on the 89th day because it is cheaper for the company to hire someone else than to pay medical and other benefits.

“These workers would like to avoid inner-city areas in Detroit and Pontiac, but they can’t afford the rents in Oak Park, Ferndale or Royal Oak. There is no low-cost housing being built for the working poor. So what happens are long-term stays in hotels, paying $149 a week with no kitchen, no laundry—or they ‘couch surf’ at the homes of their families and friends, or end up in the streets.”

“In the last two years we’ve seen a peak,” Duncan said. “We have a growing number of working poor and people who have suffered a job loss that led to substance abuse problems and mental illness. We are seeing more families too—not just one-parent families but families with both spouses. We are seeing far more men than women and, contrary to perception, most of those we serve are white men, between the ages of 35 to 45, not African Americans.”

Duncan explained that within six months a worker can easily go from living in a home to being in the streets. Solid Ground, a homeless shelter located in Roseville, another northern Detroit suburb in the 12th CD, is being expanded to meet growing demand. The shelter will allow families to be housed together instead of being split up according to sex within a facility. Frank Tenkel, the vice president of the shelter, told White, “We have between 1,200 and 1,500 people in Macomb that are homeless, including 300-400 children. The government’s priorities are wrong. Instead of assisting those in need of help, they are spending billions on an unjustified war, while people are going hungry and living in their cars.”

A worker at the shelter, Helen Kulbacki, added, “We recently got a call for help from a mother with a 21-year-old mentally-impaired daughter who had been sleeping on a hill behind a nearby Meijer’s store, where apparently there are several other homeless people living.

“We see a lot of low-income families with children coming here. Our food pantry empties out quickly. One family, with four children, was living in a car and they asked me for food. I had to give them things like dry cereal, graham crackers and pop-up drinks because I knew they had no where to cook.”

The homeless population in Oakland County is steadily increasing according to figures obtained by Kathy Williams from Oakland County Housing Council. In January 2005 there were 1,293 homeless, up from 1,100 the previous year. The average age was nine years because of the large number of children. Statewide statistics record that about 60 percent of the homeless are working.

“We have found that these figures actually underestimate the real situation,” she said. “They don’t count the number of people doubling up in other people’s homes, but just the number recorded by emergency shelters, food kitchens and police departments. With the economy worsening we expect the numbers to be higher in our survey in January 2007.”

White and the Socialist Equality Party are calling for a series of emergency measures to meet this crisis, including the following:

* A moratorium on foreclosures and evictions for all workers who have been laid off. Lenders must suspend their collection of debts from unemployed workers and the government must provide emergency financial assistance so that no one loses a home because he or she has lost a job.

* Limit housing costs to no more than 20 percent of a worker’s income.

* Repeal the bankruptcy law signed by the Bush administration in 2005 and drafted by lobbyists for the credit card companies and other financial interests. This law has punished tens of millions of Americans who have been forced to accumulate a huge debt burden because their wages have stagnated or declined, while the cost of living has continuously increased.

* Launch a crash program to construct tens of thousands of new low-cost and high-quality housing units to end homelessness and guarantee safe, affordable, decent shelter for all.

* Shift the tax burden for public services from small homeowners to the corporations and the wealthy—those who are most able to pay. The Reagan- and Bush-era tax cuts for the rich must be repealed and the state and local government policies overturned that provide ever-greater tax breaks and subsidies to big business.

These emergency measures must be combined with a far-reaching reorganization of the home building and lending industries in order to take profit out of housing. Like healthcare, education and economic security, such an essential requirement as the provision of decent shelter for working people and their families cannot be left to the vagaries of the capitalist market and the interests of the wealthy investors, real estate moguls and giant home builders

“A nine-figure fortune won’t get you much mention these days”
Forbes publishes list of 400 richest Americans

By Tom Mackaman
16 October 2006

For the first time in the history of its compilation, the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans includes only individuals who hold a net worth estimated at over one billion dollars.

That personal wealth valued at one billion dollars has become rather humdrum in the US stands testament to the staggering accumulation of riches in the hands of the few. As Forbes itself put it, “a nine-figure fortune won’t get you much mention these days, at least not here.”

The total combined wealth of the 400 richest Americans now stands at $1.25 trillion. This figure has expanded by $120 billion in only one year.

The figure $1.25 trillion is practically unfathomable. But to give some indication of its magnitude, consider that if it were divvied up among the entire US population of 300 million, every man, woman and child could be cut checks of well over $4,000. Or contemplate that the net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans now far surpasses the value of the entire Canadian economy, as measured by GDP, and is nearly twice the GDP of Australia. Perhaps most strikingly, the personal wealth of the Forbes 400 now stands at over 10 percent of the total American GDP.

Where is all this money coming from? For each individual, Forbes specifies a “source” for their enormous wealth. Analysis demonstrates that although the US is generating obscene levels of personal wealth, few of the oligarchs owe their fortune to productive sectors of the economy.

In the entire Forbes 400 list, only 19 members are to be found in the category of “manufacturing.” The richest of these—Eli Broad, who with $5.8 billion is number 42 on the list—in fact earned his fortune in real estate development and life insurance. Eight in the category are inheritors of fortunes that were first built up decades earlier or even in the nineteenth century. One specialized in the manufacture of “leisure craft.” Another, H. Ty Warner—at $4.5 billion number 52 on the list—manufactured the “Beanie Baby” toy. Two, Mitchell and Steven Rales—worth $2.6 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively—are in fact industrial raiders responsible for buying up and closing down factories. Their original fortune, inherited from their father, was in real estate.

Seven billionaires are located in Forbes’ “agricultural” category, but six of these seven are members of the MacMillan family—inheritors of the Cargill agricultural processing empire, which dates to the nineteenth century. Only two billionaires’ fortunes are derived from the “transportation” and “distribution” categories, and only one is to be found under “mining/lumber”—and this individual made his fortune in overseas mineral exploration.

Meanwhile, 52 billionaires fall in the category of “finance,” and 46 more owe their financial empires to “investments.” Among the latter group is America’s second wealthiest man, Warren Buffett, whose net worth is estimated at $46 billion. Thirty-three oligarchs acquired their wealth from real estate, one of the most rapid growing categories according to Forbes. “Entertainment” has also made 33 Americans billionaires.

“Retailing” accounts for 19, 8 of whom have collectively gained more than $80 billion in wealth from Wal-Mart—including five members of one family, the Waltons. The vague “service” group includes 42 billionaire members who have profited from such shady-sounding ventures as “outsourcing” and “lawsuits.” Five are to be found in the “gambling/leisure” category, among them America’s third wealthiest man, Stephen Adelson, whose casino-derived wealth is valued at $20.5 billion.

Only four individuals make the list for “Software”—a group that includes, however, 4 of the richest 15 individuals. They are Bill Gates (who with $53 billion from Microsoft remains the world’s richest man), Larry Ellison ($19.5 billion, Oracle) Paul Allen ($16 billion, Microsoft), Steven Ballmer ($13.6 billion, Microsoft).

Thirty-four individuals owe their billions to “technology” according to Forbes. Sergey Brin and Larry Page each have over $14 billion for the development of Google. Pierre Omidyar is valued at $7.7 billion for his ownership of E-Bay. David Filo of Yahoo! stands further down, at $2.5 billion. These moguls of the computer world either made their fortunes in the Clinton years during the wild overcapitalization of the “dot com” bubble, or through the monopolization of computer technology and services, or both.

Thirty billionaires have acquired their wealth from “oil/gas.” These oligarchs, 16 of whom reside in Texas, play a powerful role behind the Bush administration. In the first years of Bush’s administration, representatives of the major oil companies essentially authored US energy policy through Vice President Dick Cheney’s so-called Energy Task Force. Among the topics oil executives discussed, well prior to the US invasion of Iraq, was their Russian and French rivals’ interests in Iraqi oil production. (See: Did Big Oil participate in planning invasion of Iraq?) “Surging” oil prices, according to Forbes, have paved the way for a number of the barons of Big Oil to enter the Forbes 400 for the first time.

In short, the Forbes 400 list paints a portrait not only of staggering wealth, but of wealth derived from financial wheeling and dealing, rampant speculation, highly overcapitalized computer ventures, and oil. This stands in stark contrast to the promethean period of American capitalism, when despite their brutality, the “robber barons” and industrialists of old—such as Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Edison, Wagoner, Ford, and so on—were associated with the building up of the real productive capacity of the nation as a whole through the construction of industrial empires.

Yet it is no paradox that the US should create more and more billionaires even as industrial production declines precipitously, the balance of payments deficit and federal government indebtedness set new records, and the symptoms of looming economic crises are everywhere to be seen. The ruling elite’s ravenous appetite for wealth is itself a manifestation of the long-term decline of American capitalism.

The Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans have gained their money precisely through this decline—the chopping up and selling off of industry, rampant stock market, real estate, and monetary speculation, and more broadly through the class-war governmental policies carried out by both the Democrats and Republicans against the working masses.

The stratospheric moneymaking among the billionaires has its flip-side in the gutting of industry, the looting and bankrupting of government programs, and the impoverishment of the middles and lower classes. Just as the assets of the oligarchy mushroom, so the working masses sink further into debt. In 2005, the savings rate for American consumers spent the entire year in the red—that is, the total of all American consumer spending surpassed saving—for the first time since 1932 and 1933, the very trough of the Great Depression.

The Forbes 400 list was published for the first time in 1982 in the second year of the Reagan administration, and at the beginning of what has turned out to be a two-and-one-half decade long orgy of wealth accumulation. The differences between the 1982 and 2006 lists are therefore worth considering.

The wealthiest individual in 1982, shipbuilding tycoon Daniel Ludwig, had personal wealth estimated at $2 billion, which adjusted for inflation would be valued at just over $4 billion today. That would not even place the late Mr. Ludwig in today’s top 60 richest Americans. While in 2006 being a billionaire is prerequisite to appearing on the Forbes 400, in 1982, there were “only” 12 billionaires. And while 10 of those 12 would scarcely have made today’s list—having had wealth valued at $1 billion or just above—the list in 1982 actually included numerous members with $100 million or less.

Some individuals who have appeared on both lists have seen their fortunes skyrocket. Kirk Kekorian was worth $133 million in 1982. Today, he is worth $9 billion—a nearly 70-fold increase in wealth derived from “investments/casinos”. Among his new “investments” is General Motors, which he is threatening to demolish. Warren Buffett has seen his wealth increase by nearly 200-fold since 1982, when he was worth as estimated $250 million.

Disappearing from today’s list, but prominent in 1982, are a number of family names indelibly associated with the period with the earlier period of American capitalism: Ford, Du Pont, Whitney, Duke, and Harriman, to name a few. Also missing are fortunes associated with the production of particular commodities, such as “bakeries,” “oranges,” “liquor,” “grain,” “wines,” “Ford Motor Co.,” and “timber.”

In first publishing its list in 1982, Forbes—a magazine that seeks to articulate the interests of the wealthy elite—lamented that many of its subjects did not cooperate with the rich-list investigation. “During the Age of the Moguls,” the magazine wrote in 1982, “roughly from the Civil War to the Great Depression, the very rich came out of the closet and visibly enjoyed their wealth. But now, by and large, they have gone underground with it.” To Forbes, the wealthy elite feared being exposed from “political paranoia ... by politicians hunting more tax dollars to spend,” a problem peculiar to the previous “40 years of such malign myth-making.” In other words, Forbes hoped to turn the clock back to before the period of social reform associated with the New Deal and the Great Society, to an age when obscene wealth could be flaunted and workers were exploited to the hilt.

Needless to say, no such climate of fear exists today. Today’s super-rich—who have generated wealth far beyond what could have been imagined in 1982—proudly flaunt their riches for all to see. (See “The very rich in America: ‘The kind of money you cannot comprehend’”)

And far from billionaires hiding from tax-hunting politicians, the Democrats vie with Republicans over who can cut taxes the most, “hold the line on spending,” and create the most “business-friendly environment.” They likewise faithfully execute the foreign policy diktats of the wealthy elite, who, as a class, deem the subjugation of the rest of the world to American corporate interests as a matter of life and death.

The very rich in America:
“The kind of money you cannot comprehend”

By David Walsh
19 April 2006

“Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote in a 1926 story, “They are different from you and me.” But even Fitzgerald could not have imagined how different “from you and me” the very rich would become in America eight decades later.

The sums that the very wealthy have at their disposal in the US are almost unimaginable: Oil executive Lee Raymond receiving some $400 million in a retirement package; the 2005 compensation of bank chairman Richard Fairbank totaling some $280 million; Omid Korestani, head of Google’s global sales, exercising stock options providing him with $288 million last year.

The accumulation is brazen. What once would have been considered a somewhat discreditable fact of social life, the proliferation of billionaires, is now hailed as a sign of America’s success. The demise of the Soviet Union and the supposed absence of any alternative to capitalism, the putrefaction of the AFL-CIO trade unions, the ignominious collapse of American liberalism and the lack to this point of broad-based, organized political opposition to the ruling elite and its two parties have rendered the American financial aristocracy “dizzy with success.” These people have lost their heads.

In the face of public outrage over oil company profits and soaring gasoline prices, Exxon arrogantly defended Raymond’s hundreds of millions, arguing that they were rewarding the executive’s “outstanding leadership of the business, continued strengthening of our worldwide competitive position, and continuing progress toward achieving long-range strategic goals.” The company added that it considered Raymond’s compensation package “appropriately positioned.”

In a study published in October 2005, three accounting professors reported that negative, even occasionally scathing press coverage, “does not substantively change corporate behaviour with regard to pay packages.” The American establishment is all but impervious to the sentiments of the broad masses of the population. In response to a recent report detailing the immense and growing social gap, a spokesman for New York state’s Business Council told a reporter that the incomes earned by his state’s rich were “something that everybody who cares about New York should be pleased about.”

An insulated world of immense wealth exists as never before, at least in modern US history. The number of Americans with assets of $1 million or more reached 7.5 million in 2004, according to a survey conducted by the Spectrem Group. Beyond that, however, are those who possess “Ultra High Net Worth” (a mellifluous term invented by Merrill Lynch circa 2001): individuals in households with $5 million or more in net worth. In a country of 300 million people, the UHNW form a very small percentage of the population, but a not insignificant number in absolute terms. Economic, political and cultural life in America is to an enormous extent organized for their benefit.

This is not simply obscene or unjust, it is socially irrational and immensely destructive. How is it possible to allocate resources, repair and renew the infrastructure, carry out any type of long-term economic planning, cure any social ills, when the official guiding principle is the ability of an oligarchic elite to accumulate ever-greater personal wealth? The gravitational pull of such wealth asserts itself in every aspect of life.

The New York Times reported last year on a relatively new phenomenon, magazines oriented entirely toward the very wealthy. Absolute Publishing, the Times noted, had just started up a publication called Absolute, “for distribution to New Yorkers with an estimated annual household income of at least $500,000.”

The editor of Absolute, Ernest J, Renzulli, is aiming for an audience of only 60,000 New York residents. He found his target readership “by winnowing databases of the most affluent New York ZIP codes with people who have bought houses for more than $2 million and people who have registered cars, boats or planes that cost more than $75,000.”

“It’s a small number,” the Times quoted Mr. Renzulli as saying. “But this is not a magazine that’s about mass reach. It’s about reaching the tip of the pyramid.”

The Times take note of Michael Silverstein, an executive with the Boston Consulting Group and co-author of Trading Up: The New American Luxury. Silverstein estimates that by 2010 Americans will spend $1 trillion on luxury goods. The Times continues: “In an ever more fragmented media world, the rich are becoming their own niche. They may be diverse connoisseurs of fashion, yachting or jewelry, but they share one important trait: a seemingly bottomless supply of disposable income.”

It must indeed be a predicament to be saddled with tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, or more—how is one to spend such sums? Those “awash in cash” (the Times’ phrase) must rack their brains and devote hours to the problem. How could one ever rest? Would not a person require a certain degree of inventiveness to come up with ways of spending such a fortune?

Judging by the results in published reports—no, not particularly. By and large, the fabulously wealthy have derived their fortunes from inheritance, the stock market, the real estate bubble, fortunate investments in technology or, perhaps, American militarism: in short, from semi-automatic economic and social processes associated with the lowering of living standards for millions in the US and the super-exploitation of masses of people in impoverished countries in other parts of the world. They are not startling or outstanding in any fashion, except perhaps in the depth of their greed and shortsightedness.

So we learn that Microsoft’s Paul Allen owns a $250-million, 414-foot “gigayacht,” with seven decks, two helicopter landing pads, a swimming pool, a basketball court, an infirmary, a garage for Land Rovers, a movie theater, a concert space for 260 and a recording studio. Not to be outdone, Larry Ellison of software giant Oracle had his giant yacht built 452 feet long. Ellison’s vessel has five stories, 82 rooms, “a wine cellar the size of most beach bungalows, a dozen yacht-length tenders, and a generator capable of providing enough electricity for a small town in Idaho or Maine... Final cost: $377 million.” (Associated Press)

The wealthy elite are also purchasing their own widebody airplanes, reports Business Week—Airbus A340s and Boeing 777s, which list for over $100 million—as “airborne penthouses.” Customized outfitting may add $25 to $30 million to the cost.

The “supercar” business is also thriving. Ocean Drive, one of the new magazines aimed at the affluent, carries a piece on Michael Fux, whose Sleep Innovations manufactures Memory Foam products. Fux has collected some 50 luxury cars. He recently took possession of a $2 million Ferrari FXX, one of only 20 in the world.

USA Today, in a piece describing the new “super-rich supercar fanatics” who collect Ferraris and Maseratis and Bugattis, cites the comments of one auto broker in southern California, “There’s a whole new breed of collector that has emerged in the last three-four years. Almost all make the kind of money you cannot comprehend.”

Yet great unease persists in these circles. A yacht broker told Associated Press that “a sea change in attitude among America’s superrich” has taken place in the wake of September 11. “Clients are telling me, ‘Hey, I could have been in the Twin Towers. That could have been me jumping out a window.’ The thinking among wealthy people now is, you can die anytime. Nobody can protect you. So you might as well spend your money now and enjoy it.”

Likewise, in its analysis of the trends driving the purchase of jumbo jets by wealthy individuals, Business Week notes: “Because of increased concern over security, especially post-September 11, some businesspeople now use their aircraft as a base of operations on overseas business trips. Rather than going to a hotel or office after landing, they just stay onboard... “

The term “conspicuous consumption,” coined by Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), hardly does justice to the current situation. There is a considerable element of recklessness, even desperation, in the obsessive spending. Throwing money to the wind hardly speaks to a sense of historic optimism or confidence among the elite in its own future or the general health of the American social order.

At the height of US global economic hegemony, in the 1950s, corporate directors were expected to lead rather sedate lives, modestly tending to the nation’s economy. Of course they lined their pockets, but they were not expected to live like pharaohs.

In 1957, Fortune magazine reported that some 250 or so individuals in the US were worth $50 million or more. The wealthiest of them, oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, stood all alone in the $700 million to $1 billion category. The equivalent of $50 million today—some $350 million—would not place an individual anywhere near the richest 400 people in the US, according to Forbes’s 2005 list (which begins at $900 million). Getty would find himself somewhere between 31st and 42nd on the list.

The roll call of the wealthiest Americans a half-century ago included famous names—Rockefeller, Harriman, Mellon, duPont, Astor, Whitney and Ford, along with a quartet associated with General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., Charles F. Kettering, John L. Pratt and Charles S. Mott. These were all ruthless capitalists, but their fortunes were based, directly or indirectly, on the growth of the productive forces.

Today, the list of the super-rich reveals an extraordinary growth of parasitism. One indication is Forbes’ listing of the “400,” which includes an extraordinary number of people whose wealth, according to the publication, is derived from “Investments,” “Hedge Funds,” “Leveraged buyouts,” “Real estate,” “Fashion,” etc. The “captains of industry” of old are few and far between.

A perusal of publications such as Ocean Drive, or Gotham, or Los Angeles Confidential sheds some light on the current tastes and opinions of these very rich.

Real estate expert Steven Gaines told Gotham in a recent interview, “where you choose to live [in New York City] defines you more than in any other city. There’s a right side and a wrong side of the tracks in every city; but in New York, what floor you live on, which direction your apartment faces, whether you move one block in either direction, says a tremendous amount about who you are and your personal sense of adventure.”

Asked about co-op boards rejecting celebrities, Gaines replied, “I haven’t heard of any juicy rejections lately. Celebrity rejections are very 90s; they don’t really happen anymore. People are very impressed by money; that’s all it takes now. Also—and this is the most important thing—they’re not building any more [co-ops]. We don’t need any more because people don’t really care who their neighbors are. [Most people] figure that if a guy can afford a $12 million apartment in the Time Warner building, he’s cool enough to live next door.”

This theme—money is absolutely everything—recurs again and again in studies of the contemporary American elite.

The Times reporter, Katharine Q. Seelye, in her piece on magazines for the affluent, described the publications in these words: “Most of the magazines rely on a similar formula: extravagantly lush photography on heavy paper stock, flattering feature articles on prominent local personalities and snapshots of those personalities hobnobbing with each other... The magazines also make it easy for readers to buy what they see on the page, whether it appears in an advertisement or an article—and it is often difficult to tell the difference, as the magazines have elevated commercial product placement to an art form.”

The magazines appear at first glance to be nothing but expensive advertisements for clothes, watches, condos and automobiles—hundreds of pages of them (Los Angeles Confidential runs to 350 pages, Ocean Drive an astonishing 530!). The table of contents, gossip columns and articles, such as they are, do little to distinguish themselves. They humbly give way to the full-color photos of handbags and bracelets and motorcars.

Such a magazine is merely a scaffolding for the marketing of highly expensive products. It is a relatively convenient means of making known to a specific clientele what is available for them to purchase this month. And this is not something that those involved would be ashamed to admit. No, we have moved far beyond that.

Gotham appears to specialize in real estate gossip, appropriate in Manhattan, which has been ruined by the Trumps and their ilk. Tales of apartment and co-op buying and selling are recounted with relish, with the sort of sensual zest that others might take in relating stories of sexual improprieties. In a recent issue, one piece excitedly recounts that “the penthouse apartment of the late philanthropist Enid Haupt has sold—at least three times. The nine-room duplex at 740 Park Avenue, with two principal bedrooms and three-and-a-half baths, has an accepted offer for its asking price of $27.5 million, with two backup bids—in case the famously persnickety co-op board decides to reject the winning bidder.”

In another column, we learn that “Out in the Hamptons [on Long Island], entrepreneur Linda Wachner is listing her seaside estate [a summer house] for a sky-high $62.5 million, the highest price ever asked for a Southampton Village home. The ocean- and bay-front Southampton estate on Meadow Lane features a 16-room, two-story shingled traditional mansion measuring nearly 10,000 square feet with 10 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, several public rooms, a wine cellar, and staff quarters. The property includes several hundred feet of beachfront, a rose garden, a putting green, a pool with spa, and a tennis court with a pavilion. ‘I think it’s an exciting property,’ Wachner told the New York Post. ‘We’ve had a lot of fun here.’”

Unique Homes reports that the Stanhope, on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, is currently being renovated into 26 luxury residences. “The space is divided into half-floor residences of approximately 4,000 square feet (starting at $10 million) and full-floor residences measuring 8,000-plus square feet ($30.5 million and up).” The old Plaza Hotel is also being transformed by a developer into private residences, 182 of them. The one- to five-bedroom units will be priced between $2.5 million and $33 million-plus.

The wealthy pockets of south Florida are targeted in Ocean Drive. The size of a small telephone book, the magazine seems desperate to please and impress. It takes the most ridiculously self-serious attitude toward trivial people and circumstances. Page after page of attractive but glum models dominate the publication, a cornucopia of expensive consumerism.

Stiff competition between real estate projects is very much in evidence here. Three operations, Donald Trump’s “Trump Hollywood” (i.e., Hollywood, Florida), St. Regis Resort & Residences, Bal Harbour and Icon Brickell, with “breathtaking views of Biscayne Bay,” have included their own elaborate, pull-out brochures in the magazine.

The St. Regis is especially noteworthy for its quite conscious effort to evoke an imaginary aristocratic past. It employs butlers. Here is the advertisement for that service, a disgusting passage over which some wretched soul expended a great deal of effort:

“The St. Regis Butlers are adept at executing your requests while anticipating your every need with consummate style. Every preference is committed to memory. Dinner for two on the beach at seven-thirty? Shirt collars heavily starched? A car to retrieve your business partner from the airport tomorrow morning? It’s a pleasure. Your St. Regis Butler, always on call, is your household manager, your link to St. Regis services and your master of conveniences. All embrace the authority to go to any lengths to ensure you the utmost in comfort, down to the most particular request.” A butler...or an indentured servant, a serf, a slave?

One could go on, but the outlines are clear. A type of aristocracy rules America, which has more than one feature in common with the ancien régime that presided over pre-revolutionary France. This vast accumulation of wealth at one pole of society is incompatible, in the long run, with even the trappings of democracy. The super-rich own everything in the US, including the political parties and the political process. They allow the population to vote at this point, more or less. But for how long? As resistance to the policies of the elite mounts and the two-party monopoly threatens to crumble, why should the riffraff be permitted a say in such important affairs as elections?

Federal Reserve report documents widening inequality in US

By Joe Kay and Naomi Spencer
2 March 2006

The Federal Reserve released its “Survey of Consumer Finance” on February 23, a report that measures changes in income and other financial measures and is produced every three years. Together with a number of reports that have emerged recently, the Federal Reserve data gives a partial portrait of the state of social relations in the United States—characterized by growing social inequality and increased financial hardship for most Americans.

Aggregate figures such as those published in the Federal Reserve report can be misleading, and can often distort as much as reveal economic trends. However, it is worth picking apart the data in some detail in order to uncover the reality behind the numbers.

The report includes two basic measures of economic well-being for US families: before-tax income and net worth. Both of these indicators are calculated using mean and median averages, and the report includes a breakdown of these figures by income percentile. The mean is the total income divided by the total number of US families, while the median is the point at which half of households make more and half make less.

According to the report, the mean family before-tax income in 2004 fell to $70,700, from $72,364 in 2001, after taking into account inflation. The median family income, on the other hand, rose only 1.6 percent over the three-year period, to $43,200. By contrast, federal figures from 1995 through 1998 indicate that mean family incomes rose by 12.3 percent. In the pre-recession period from 1998 to 2001, mean incomes rose another 17.3 percent.

The difference between the median and the mean figures for income ($43,200 as compared to $70,700) reflects the concentration of income in the hands of the top income-earners. If the distribution of income above the median were similar to the distribution below the median (as in a normal or bell curve), then one would expect the mean and median calculations to be roughly equal. However, while the median figure indicates that half of US families have a before-tax income of less than $43,200, the large earnings by a relatively small section at the very top are enough to pull up the mean substantially.

When analyzed across different sections of the population, the data present a deeper understanding of certain social dynamics in the US. For most sections of the population, both mean and median before-tax incomes remained relatively flat from 2001 to 2004—a product of the general stagnation or decline of wages. The decline in the mean figure is largely a consequence of the decline in pre-tax incomes for the top 10 percent of the population by income. Mean family income for this layer fell substantially, from $322,400 to $302,100, while median income rose from $180,600 to $184,800. The decline in mean income for the top 10 percent came after a sharp rise during the previous periods—from $215,800 in 1995, to $254,500 in 1998, to $322,400 in 2001.

The report attributed the decline to a fall in investment income, which goes largely to the wealthy. The drop in the stock market began in mid-2001, so 2001 incomes still reflect the elevated levels that preceded the fall—including the cashing-in of executive stock options and the like prior to the market’s collapse.

While pre-tax income has likely been increasing for the top layer over the past two years—a fact that cannot be divined from the Fed’s figures—by 2004 the investment incomes of the wealthy had still not come back to their 2001 peaks. A slight relative decline in the most wealthy sections of the population could bring the mean income of the top 10 percent down, while a general rise in the top bracket as a whole would cause the median income figure to rise. (The distribution of the top bracket here is becoming slightly more like a normal distribution, in which mean and median would be identical, although of course the distribution is still heavily skewed.)

Even with this decline, the top bracket still earns substantially more now than it did in 1998, while the same cannot be said for those at the bottom income levels. The bottom 20 percent of the population saw their mean income go from $8,200 in 1995, to $9,200 in 1998, to $10,700 in 2001, up to only $10,800 by 2004.

The stagnation of incomes for most Americans comes with a decline in real wages. The report notes that the absence of any income growth is largely due to a decline in median wages of 6.2 percent from 2001 to 2004. The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that between 2003 and 2005, only wage earners in the 95th percentile and higher saw any gains in real pay. If family income has not declined in the same way as real wages, this is due to an increase in hours worked to counterbalance falling pay.

The income figures by themselves, however, do not adequately measure the real dynamics of the past period. A closer look at the data on family net worth, which measures total assets against total liabilities, is more revealing. Net worth is in many ways a more accurate measure of the financial stability of US families, since it takes into account such things as debt burdens and increased expenditures.

Here we find a much different story. The median family net worth for the entire population rose by only 1.5 percent from 2001 to 2004. This small rise, however, itself masks the different experiences of the rich and poor. The median net worth, measured in 2004 dollars for families in the lowest quintile by income (the 20 percent of US families with the lowest income), went from $7,400 in 1995, to $6,800 in 1998, to $8,400 in 2001, to $7,500 in 2004. Families in the second quintile saw median net worth go from $41,300, to $38,400, to $39,600, to $34,300.

That is, median family net worth generally stagnated or declined for the bottom 40 percent of the population throughout the period. The drop in the second quintile in particular is astonishing—over 17 percent from 1995 to 2004, and over 13 percent from 2001 to 2004.

For a substantial section of the population, median net worth is negative; that is, their debts outweigh their assets. The mean net worth for the bottom 25 percent of the population as measured by net worth (rather than income, as in the figures above) in 2004 was -$1,400, down from $0 in 2001, and closer to the figure of -$2,100 in 1998.

On the other hand, median family net worth for the top 10 percent rose steadily throughout the period, from $436,900 in 1995, to $524,400 in 1998, to $887,900 in 2001, to $924,100 in 2004. The mean net worth for this group was substantially higher, rising from $1.3 million in 1995, to $1.8 million in 1998, to $2.4 million in 2001, to $2.5 million in 2004. For both mean and median figures, the top 10 percent of US families saw a growth of over 100 percent in family net worth since 1995.

Here we have an interesting disjuncture. Both median and mean net worth for the top 10 percent of the population rose from 2001 to 2004, while mean pre-tax income fell. In other words, the richest 10 percent are earning less income on average, but their overall wealth is actually increasing. What explains this dynamic? It is, at least in part, a consequence of the sharp cut in taxes for the very wealthy, legislated in 2001. In spite of a decline in pre-tax income for some sections of the rich, they were able to increase their wealth because they took more of their income home than ever before.

The Federal Reserve report does not give after-tax income figures in this report. However, Internal Revenue Service data from last year showed that after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent of the population rose 8.5 percent from 2002 to 2003, while the after-tax income for the bottom 50 percent declined by 1.1 percent over the same period.

The other factor is the rise in property values. An increase in property values has helped push up net worth for the wealthy, who do not face the same sorts of debt problems as lower-income families. If there has been any rise in property values for less wealthy families, it has been balanced by a growth of debt financing.

As a whole, median household debt rose by more than a third over the three-year period, to $55,300. In 2001, families devoted an average of 12.9 percent of their incomes on debt service; by 2004, debt spending accounted for 14.4 percent of income The largest component of the increase in debt relative to assets came from debt secured by real estate, according to the Federal Reserve report, and the fraction of families that were late on payments for 60 days or more has risen sharply. Certainly, it is not the wealthy that are late on their mortgage payments.

The prevalence of interest-only loans, adjustable-rate mortgages and inflated home prices that propped up consumer spending and economic growth for the past five years are now expected by most economists to bear down on low-income mortgage-holders as interest rates rise and the housing market slows. In other words, the factors which to some extent fueled the economy during the past period—loose lending practices and consumer debt—now place millions of Americans in evermore precarious situations, even as the economy is supposedly in recovery.

The decline in income of the most wealthy sections of the population, which came with the stock market fall, helps explain the frenzy with which the American ruling class has been pursuing a policy of attacking jobs and social programs. American businesses have been slashing wages, outsourcing positions, and cutting, reneging, and defrauding pension funds. Tax cuts for the rich have been pushed through, and huge fortunes have been amassed; at the same time, programs serving average Americans have been cut, leaving struggling families with less protection from bankruptcy, foreclosure and homelessness.

All these measures have been attempts to counteract any fall in living standards of the American oligarchy through a ruthless redistribution of wealth up the economic ladder. Judging from the figures in this report, the ruling class appears to have succeeded thus far, but it has done so at the expense of an enormous growth in social tensions within the United States.

Bush reassures American ruling class
Tax cuts to continue, social programs to be slashed in wake of Hurricane Katrina

By the Editorial Board
19 September 2005

The day after his speech from New Orleans pledging that the government “will do what it takes, will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives,” President Bush hastened to reassure the American ruling elite on Friday that whatever spending is required, it will not hurt the pocket books of the wealthy. Bush vowed that spending on the hurricane-devastated region would come from cuts in other parts of the federal budget.

“You bet it’s going to cost money,” Bush said. “But I’m confident we can handle it. It’s going to mean that we’re going to have to cut unnecessary spending.” Administration officials said that the spending would not require new taxes, nor would it mean a shift in the administration’s policy of pushing to make its tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.

The administration has not given specific proposals for cuts, but according to the New York Times on Saturday, “An administration official said the White House and Congress will look for specific spending cuts, starting with about $20 billion in savings identified in the president’s 2006 budget. Still more could come from changes to entitlement programs to slow their growth.”

The Times points out that some of the proposals for cuts in the 2006 budget include programs needed for rebuilding devastated areas and aiding evacuees. These include $60 billion from Medicaid over the next ten years, as well as cuts to the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for maintaining public infrastructure such as the levees surrounding New Orleans.

Besides Medicaid, the other two major entitlement programs—Social Security and Medicare—may also be slated for the chopping block. Lawmakers have suggested that the Medicare prescription drug benefit may be delayed, while the administration may use the hurricane to try to push through its plans for a partial privatization of Social Security.

On Friday, the government announced that basic Medicare premiums will jump 13 percent next year. The administration had previously proposed cutting funding for the food stamp programs, eliminating 200,000 to 300,000 beneficiaries, and has sharply slashed the budget of the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which subsidizes public housing for the poor.

In pledging to balance any new spending with cuts elsewhere, Bush was responding to pressure from within his own party and from his corporate backers, who have been increasingly vocal in their concern over projections that the bill for the reconstruction effort could reach $200 billion. While worried about the effect of this massive and unexpected allocation of resources, the administration is determined to make the most of it.

The real thinking behind Bush’s statements was expressed by Douglas J. Besharov, a researcher at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, who has been in discussions with the White House in recent days. Besharov told the Washington Post, “If there is a silver lining in this tragedy it is that it is creating an atmosphere to try new approaches to ending long-term poverty.”

In other words, the tragedy will provide an opportunity for the government to continue a policy of shifting away from entitlement programs and toward programs long championed by think tanks such as the AEI and the Heritage Foundation: tax incentives for corporations and school vouchers that can be used at private schools.

On the same day as he made his pledge on spending cuts, Bush declared at a prayer service, “As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.”

That Bush could make such a statement without serious challenge, even as he pledges cuts in social programs and continued tax cuts for the rich, is a testament to the complete bankruptcy of the media and official political opposition in the Democratic Party.

In fact, the proposals that Bush has announced will lead to an increase in social inequality. Most of the estimated $200 billion price tag will be spent in the form of no-bid construction projects to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure required to get the main centers of business in New Orleans running again. Much of this money will find its way into the corporate coffers and the pockets of executives and investors.

What these profit-seekers and speculators pull in as a result of the hurricane will be vastly greater than the amount of money going to individuals who have been most affected by the hurricane. The actual measures that are being proposed beyond immediate aid—job-training accounts and the distribution of a small amount of federal land for home construction—are mainly warmed-over ideas that collectively amount to token gestures for those whose lives have been devastated, who have lost their jobs, homes, assets and everything they once owned.

Aside from the utterly cynical and absurd aspect of Bush’s statement about clearing away inequality, it is nevertheless significant that Bush has felt compelled to acknowledge inequality as a problem in the United States. In attempting to present his reactionary agenda as a program to attack poverty and inequality, Bush is providing an indication of the fear within the government over the impact of Hurricane Katrina on mass consciousness. The hurricane has revealed in graphic and tragic form certain truths about the nature of American society, truths that threaten to provoke a social explosion.

As always, the Bush administration is receiving crucial support from the Democrats, whose response to Bush’s remarks has been characterized by a characteristic cowardice and complicity. The general reaction to Bush’s policy proposals has been positive, and there have been no serious criticisms of the basic thrust of the president’s speech.

No major Democratic Party official has sought to expose the hypocrisy of the administration’s statements or called for rescinding the administration’s tax cuts, which were passed with the support of many House and Senate Democrats—including Senator Mary Landrieu and former Senator John Breaux, both of Louisiana. The combined cost of the tax cuts is estimated at $2 trillion over 10 years, enough to pay for the hurricane damage figure many times over.

No Democrat has called for an end to the war in Iraq and the redistribution of military funding to pay for reconstruction and for social programs to benefit all Americans. In discussing the cuts to be made in the government’s budget, no one has raised the question of the enormous military expenditures of about $500 billion a year.

An opinion piece that appeared in Saturday’s Washington Post, written by Donna Brazile, Democratic policy advisor and former campaign manager for Al Gore, expresses the truly craven attitude of the Democratic establishment. Under the headline “I Will Rebuild with You, Mr. President,” Brazile heaped praise on Bush for his speech Thursday night, declaring, “[A]fter watching him speak from the heart, I could not have been prouder for the president and the plan he outlined to empower those who lost everything and to rebuild the Gulf Coast.”

The response of the Democrats underscores their support for the basic orientation of the administration. Reflecting the transformation in the attitude of the American ruling elite over the past several decades, no Democrat supports anything like the social programs and public works projects that they once backed as a means of containing class tensions.

What would a real policy directed at social inequality look like? It would require first of all a complete restructuring of the tax code, including not only a repeal of the recent tax cuts for the rich, but a massive increase in taxes on accumulated wealth, along with sharp reductions in taxes for working people. Revenue from the wealthy elite would be used to fund social programs and decent-paying jobs to those who have seen their jobs destroyed by the hurricane, as well as those who were unemployed before the hurricane struck.

The federal minimum wage, which has remained stagnant for eight years and which, in real terms, is at its lowest level in decades, would be sharply increased. This would be bound up with a vast extension of social programs, to provide quality living standards and medical care for everyone.

Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can seriously tackle the growing social inequality because that would require the repudiation of the policy which created that inequality: the deliberately funneling of society’s resources from the working class into the pockets of a small and obscenely wealthy minority.

Measures such as cutting spending on social infrastructure and social programs, promoting privatization and deregulation, and tax cuts for the wealthy led to the conditions of neglect, poverty and ill-preparedness that made the hurricane so devastating. Far from rethinking this policy or altering it in any way, the Bush administration is pledging to continue and deepen it.

The Bankers 9/11
10-8-8
The US - now world - financial crisis
has given nations a golden opportunity,
 but will they seize it,
asks Eric Walberg

 Weapons of Mass Destruction Found
(An Address to the Dead)
by Michael Tsarion
.........The Evangelist preaches Masonic (Atonist) doctrines,
but you buy into it because you want "Daddy" so badly
and because you have sold your own sanity for security.
You are a safe in numbers.
You are a "believer" on your way to the "promised land."
Or so you think.
Actually, you operate on the "slave-think" level
and do your master's bidding unawares.
You have grown accustomed to your prison and your
servitude to death and lies.
The biggest threat in your world is Truth.
As long as you have a few cushions for your cell,
so to speak, some salt in your gruel,
and as long as you are permitted an opinion or two
within the political den created by your masters,
you are okay with a mediocre lifestyle and the regimented
predictability of your conformist and artificial existence.
You have convinced your screaming soul that it is safer
and better to just conform and be a repressed,
toxic, thoughtless, frustrated, and programmed orc marching
to the drum-beat of your imperious marshals......

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