Some atricles that prove my point! There are LOTS MORE!
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Published on Wednesday, June 4, 2003 by the Washington Post
Middle Class Tax Share Set to Rise
Studies Say Burden Of Rich to Decline
by Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
Three successive tax cuts pushed by President Bush will leave middle-income taxpayers paying a greater share of all federal taxes by the end of the decade, according to new analyses of the Bush administration's tax policies.
As critics of the tax cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003 have noted, the very wealthiest Americans -- those earning $337,000 or more per year -- will be the greatest beneficiaries of the changes in the nation's tax laws. And, as administration officials have argued, low-income taxpayers will also enjoy a disproportionately lighter tax burden.
Conservatives and liberals alike agree that Bush's tax policies have shifted more of the tax burden to the middle class.
The result is that a broad swath of lower-middle, middle- and upper-middle-income people, as well as some rich Americans, will carry a greater share of the federal tax burden after the laws passed in the past three years are fully implemented. While taxes are scheduled to decline for all income groups, those earning more than $28,000 but less than $337,000 will end up paying a greater share of the taxes than they did before the changes.
The findings, by two groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's tax policies, add a new wrinkle to the increasingly contentious debate over the fairness of Bush's tax policies and which income groups would benefit most.
Liberal groups have argued that the Bush administration is penalizing the poor while rewarding the rich. In part to answer those critics, Republicans have targeted the poor with expanded tax refund checks for families with children, a new 10 percent tax bracket and a larger earned-income credit for married couples who are poor.
The result may be a surprise to both sides: By the end of the decade, the middle class will be picking up a greater share of the government's tab.
"It's hard to get a lot of progressivity at the very top," said R. Glenn Hubbard, the architect of Bush's most recent tax cut proposal and a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. By slashing taxes on dividends, capital gains and inheritances, the cuts ensure that tax burdens will no longer rise consistently with income, as they would with a perfectly "progressive" system. "But," Hubbard added, "we've very much retained progressivity overall because so much money was dumped into the bottom rates."
The two studies focused on separate issues. Citizens for Tax Justice examined the percentage changes in total federal taxes that would be paid by different income groups through 2010. The Tax Policy Center, jointly run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, looked at the share of federal taxes that would remain for the various groups once those changes are fully phased in. But the studies reached similar conclusions.
Citizens for Tax Justice found that for the lowest fifth of taxpayers -- those earning below $16,000 -- federal taxes would fall 10 percent between now and 2010, while federal taxes for those in the second quintile -- earning between $16,000 to $28,000 -- would fall 12 percent. At the other end of the scale, the decline for the top 1 percent of taxpayers -- those making $337,000 and up -- would be 15 percent.
In contrast, for taxpayers earning between $45,000 and $337,000, the decline would be 7 percent, less than half the cut reaped by the very wealthy.
Citizens for Tax Justice assumed that those provisions in the tax laws scheduled to expire before 2011 would expire as scheduled, although administration officials have said they are determined to make those changes permanent.
The Tax Policy Center assumed that all proposed tax cuts would become permanent. It found that the share of federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers would drop to 22.8 percent of the total in 2011, from 24.3 percent today, while the share paid by the lowest 40 percent would fall to 2 percent, from 2.2 percent.
All others would have a slightly larger proportion of the federal tax burden in 2011 than they do today. For families earning between $22,955 and $80,903, their share of federal taxes would rise from 25.5 percent to 26.1 percent.
Both groups included all federal income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes; Citizens for Tax Justice also included excise taxes.
Treasury Department officials said the studies are skewed because they include Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which the tax cuts did not seek to reduce. Pamela F. Olson, the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, said that if Social Security taxes are included, then Social Security benefits should also be measured. "Then you would have a very progressive system," she said.
Instead, Olson pointed to the Treasury's analysis of the impact of successive tax cuts on individual income taxes only. In that analysis, all taxpayers with less than $100,000 in income are shown to be paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than they did before Bush took office. Households earning $100,000 or more are now paying 73.3 percent of federal income taxes, up from 70 percent.
Figuring out whether tax policy benefits the wealthy or the poor is a hotly disputed subject. Liberals favor a progressive tax system in which households pay higher tax rates and a higher share of their total income as they climb up the income ladder. By that measure, the Bush tax cuts have made the tax code less progressive. By 2011, the poorest taxpayers' after-tax income will have risen only 0.3 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center, while household income for the richest 1 percent of taxpayers will have jumped 8.6 percent.
Conservatives say the better measure is which group winds up paying a greater proportion of the tax burden after the tax cut. The rich may get the largest dollar benefit from the tax cuts, but the top 20 percent of households will still be paying 71.5 percent of all federal taxes in 2011.
Conservatives and liberals alike agree that Bush's tax policies have shifted more of the tax burden to the middle class. Kevin Hassett, a conservative economist with the American Enterprise Institute, said it "makes complete sense" that this would happen as a result of Bush's polices.
Changes such as the elimination of the estate tax and the reduction of the stock-dividend tax disproportionately benefit the wealthiest 1 percent, who have the largest amount of assets and capital. Those at the other end of the income spectrum benefit disproportionately from targeted tax cuts such as the child tax credit.
With the biggest gains going to the wealthiest and to low-income taxpayers, those in the middle inevitably get a higher tax burden because they don't qualify for the targeted tax breaks that go to the poor or the investment-related tax breaks that go to the wealthy. "The middle class is predominantly labor income," Hassett said.
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America
Bush signs bankruptcy law: another cruel blow in a one-sided class war
By Patrick Martin
23 April 2005
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President Bush signed into law April 20 the second major piece of domestic legislation enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress in 2005: a massive restructuring of federal bankruptcy laws which punishes middle-class debtors and awards increased payouts of as much as $1 billion a year to their creditors, mainly banks and credit card issuers.
The 500-page bill was largely written by the financial interests, who have spent $40 million and eight years lobbying Congress for a measure to make it more difficult for individuals to escape debt repayment. The law imposes a two-stage means test on bankrupt debtors that will reduce the number permitted to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7, which provides for liquidation of most debts, and force more debtors to file under Chapter 13, which requires significant repayment.
Debtors who have sufficient discretionary income to make some repayment—as defined by the new law—and whose incomes are above the median for their state will be required to file under Chapter 13. Last year, over 1.1 million filed under Chapter 7, while some 450,000 filed under Chapter 13. Under the new law, which will take effect in six months, anywhere from 30,000 to 200,000 debtors will be shifted from the more lenient to the more restrictive regime.
Bankruptcy judges, who now have considerable discretion in fashioning or waiving repayment plans, will be required to follow much more restrictive guidelines. Hundreds of judges and law professors expressed their opposition to these provisions, but their experience was ignored.
Bush’s brief statement before signing the bill at the White House was the usual mixture of moralizing and hypocrisy. “America is a nation of personal responsibility, where people are expected to meet their obligations,” he declared. “If someone does not pay his or her debts, the rest of society ends up paying them.”
Actually, the burden of unpaid debts falls on the creditors, who frequently contribute to bankruptcies in the first place by pushing misleading credit card offers on the poor, the elderly, young people and others not in a position to make repayment. In many cases, the exorbitant fees and rates charged for high-interest credit cards are a major reason why people become overwhelmed by debt. Nowhere in the new law are they held accountable. The credit card industry succeeded in defeating a proposed amendment that would have required them to tell customers how much more expensive it is, in terms of interest charges, to make only minimum payments.
As for “personal responsibility,” the huge rise in bankruptcies in recent years is due far less to reckless spending than to inadequate or nonexistent health insurance coverage. The majority of the 1.6 million personal bankruptcies last year were caused by unpaid medical bills. They were the result of an acute crisis of the health care system in the United States, which manifests itself in personal tragedies, both medical and financial, for millions of people.
Talk about taking personal responsibility and paying one’s debts is particularly hollow coming from a president who has never taken responsibility for the disastrous outcome of his own policies, both domestic and foreign. (No Bush administration official has been fired for the lies used to justify the war in Iraq, the failure to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or the transformation of record federal budget surpluses into record federal deficits.)
The first two major pieces of domestic legislation in Bush’s second term to be enacted by the Republican Congress—with considerable Democratic support—were the bill limiting class-action lawsuits and the new bankruptcy law. Next up is legislation to limit the right of patients to sue doctors and hospitals for damages in cases of medical malpractice, a bill long desired by the American Medical Association and the insurance industry.
All these bills have one thing in common. They are brazen acts of favoritism towards the most privileged layers in American society at the expense of working people. In the case of the bankruptcy law, the class character was underscored by a legislative coincidence. The House of Representatives gave final passage to the bankruptcy bill on April 15. The day before, the House passed a bill for the permanent repeal of the estate tax.
The estate tax is paid on only 3 percent of inheritances, those worth $7 million or more. Under the law enacted by the Bush administration in 2001, this tax was to gradually decline to zero by 2010, then be restored in 2011. The restoration was a bookkeeping device to reduce the projected cost of the Bush tax cuts. The new bill eliminates the restoration, making the estate tax repeal permanent.
The juxtaposition of the two bills is instructive. On April 14, the House voted to provide a windfall to the super-rich costing $290 billion over the first decade, and nearly $1 trillion the second decade. The next day it voted to put the squeeze on the most vulnerable middle-income families—households that are, for the most part, already reeling from a major medical crisis, divorce, or loss of a job—to boost the profits of the banks and credit card issuers.
The House vote on the bankruptcy law was 302 to 126. Not a single Republican voted against the bill. Nearly 40 percent of the Democrats voted for it. The difference is worth underlining. The Republicans proceed in lockstep, as disciplined, ruthless, unashamed advocates of the financial oligarchy. The Democrats are divided and impotent, split not so much over the substance of the bill, as over the fear that the party’s increasingly shabby pretense to represent the interests of working people will be completely shattered.
So naked is the class warfare being practiced by the Bush administration and Congress that even sections of the bourgeois political establishment are beginning to grow nervous. The Washington Post published a front-page article April 21 headlined “Economic Worries Aren’t Resonating on Hill.” The article pointed to the difficult conditions facing working people, hit by falling wages and skyrocketing gasoline prices. “Yet,” the newspaper noted, “the only economic bills signed into law this year have tilted against the little guy: Legislation that restricts class-action lawsuits, and a major rewrite of the nation’s bankruptcy laws, signed yesterday, that will make it harder for debt-ridden Americans to wipe out their obligations.”
The Post continued: “The disconnect between pocketbook concerns of ordinary Americans and the preoccupations of their politicians has helped send President Bush’s approval ratings on the economy down, while breeding discontent with Congress. The problem has yet to grow into a political wave that could sweep significant numbers of lawmakers from power next year, but both parties face risks if they fail to pivot their attention to economic issues.”
It is noteworthy that the impact of the bankruptcy law will be greatest in poorer states in the South and West. The 10 states with the highest bankruptcy filing rates are Utah, Tennessee, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Idaho, in that order, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. All 10 states voted for Bush in both 2000 and 2004. These states are also heavily Republican in their congressional delegations: 16-4 in the Senate, 44-28 in the House.
In other words, the legislation will punish millions of lower- and middle-income families who voted in significant numbers for the very congressmen and senators who passed the bill, as well as the president who signed it. What concerns the Post—a fervent defender of the war in Iraq—is that Bush’s policies are so brazen they are destabilizing the already limited and fragile social base of his administration. At the same time, the Democrats’ response is so craven, the net effect is to undermine the entire two-party system, creating the conditions for political upheavals.
Offshoring American Jobs:
An Economic Catastrophe in the Making?
The real war underway right now isn't being fought with terrorists. It's being waged by the wealthy on the middle class and poor.
PL Editorial
August, 2003
There's a tremendous, and rapidly growing, gap in the distribution of wealth in American society. While there will always be some gap in any meritocratic society, most of the current yawning chasm isn't due to differences in merit between the ultrawealthy and the middle class and poor. Rather, it's due to an ever-increasing imbalance of political and economic power, which has dramatically shifted since the mid-70s to favor the wealthy. Secondarily, it's due to the capture of almost the entirety of the mass media by the ultrawealthy, and its transformation in their hands into an incredibly effective instrument of propaganda on their own behalf.
PL Editorial,
August, 2003
What's Wrong With This Idea?: "We'll Create Good American Jobs by Offshoring Them All "
This is what Americans were told some time ago when good manufacturing jobs were offshored (largely courtesy of the National Association of Manufacturers).
We were told that we were entering a new economy that had nothing to do with manufacturing. The offshoring was part of the "maturation of our economy." And so we were handed a promissory note that read as follows:
"Dear American: We don't like unions or high-paying union jobs, so we're sending manufacturing jobs offshore. We're not going to support the communities that this will disastrously impact when all those jobs are lost. We're going to do little or nothing to retrain the individuals who have lost those jobs due to offshoring. But don't worry. The stock market will do better, and trickle-down theory tells us that someday, somehow, good jobs, different jobs, will come back to America.
"Signed,
Mr. Nobody"
What happened? Well, those jobs didn't come back, and they weren't replaced with anything. Mr. Nobody got off scott free for the economic carnage that he wrought. Of course, that was predictable. No one is offshoring jobs here, and "Mr. Nobody" runs the government. To this day, many of those areas of America that were involved in manufacturing remain blighted. And if that doesn't make you mad, it should. No matter what you do for a living, chances are you'd be earning more now if it hadn't happened. We'll explain that point more fully in a moment.
For the millions of unemployed or underemployed, and for the many millions more who are fearful for their jobs, improvements in the performance of the stock market mean nothing at all, unless that improvement also entails an increase in jobs and job security. And even stock market profitability can't be sustained without consumer demand. ("Consumer" currently meaning, in large part, "an individual who is unemployed, underemployed, or fearful of losing his or her job".) Job creation in the service sector of the economy, much trumpeted by the Bush administration, is no solution either. In fact, these jobs are a problem: they pay badly, and offer little in the way of benefits. In short, they amount to a way of creating greater numbers of underemployed. Even these lousy jobs aren't exactly pouring in. In July, 2005, 207,000 jobs were created, virtually all of them in the service sector. The better part of them were in sales. (Ever done commission sales? Sometimes you have a paycheck. Sometimes you don't.) But 150,000 new jobs are needed each month just to keep pace with the increased needs resulting from immigration and new workers entering the workforce. And it's anticipated that even this hyper-modest level of growth can't be sustained. (You can keep up with the latest developments at this url: http://www.americanprogress.org .)
Bush Economic Policies are Directly Responsible
Of course, it's not much of a secret that the American economy has been a catastrophe for the entire course of the Bush administration. What does seem to be an open secret is the fact that economic policies embraced by Bush, and not coincidentally endorsed by transnational corporations (= Wall Street), have exacerbated the poor performance, and have the potential to transform it into an economic meltdown over time, "recovery" or not.
As we just noted, the economy has nowhere to go when consumers have no money to spend. Consumers have no money to spend when they're unemployed, and are much less likely to spend when they're underemployed or fear for their jobs. This kind of scenario sets the stage for a deflationary economy, in which consumers with less to spend reduce demand, which reduces prices, which reduces profit margins, which results in layoffs, which results in even greater fears of job loss.
Bush was privileged and spoiled as a child, and is even more privileged and spoiled as an adult. Is it any wonder that a man who has never worked a day of his life as an employee has acted as president exclusively on behalf of the economic interests of those already so wealthy that more is gross surfeit?
Bad? You bet. But the Worst is Yet to Come.
The year and a half prior to 9/11 saw the loss of 1.6 million American jobs. The six months following 9/11 saw the loss of an additional 2.5 million American jobs. Obviously, Americans are right in believing they have a lot to fear; but the truth is that they have far more to fear than they have yet realized. That's because millions and millions and millions more American jobs are going to be lost in the decade ahead, particularly better-paying jobs. How many more millions? A good question. Incredibly, the government isn't even keeping track of the jobs already being lost (a state of affairs that must be intentional). But one estimate is that one-third of all US jobs are offshorable, and many of these are the kind of jobs that underpin the American middle-class, upon which the entire economy depends.
How Did We Get Here?
Certainly not by accident. Most of this job loss is due to the process euphemistically known as "globalization", and globalization is no blind force of history or economics. You've heard of NAFTA and the WTO? That's the stuff. And the FTAA Bush so strongly endorses is more of the same — but much worse.
Globalization has deep historical roots. The process has been aggressively fostered by the wealthy for years through the corporate corruption of governments all over the world, including that of the US, and through the corruption of international institutions like the World Bank and the IMF which, in effect, utilize a vicious version of economic blackmail on behalf of large corporations with no loyalty to any nation. While globalization is a complex phenomenon with many aspects, one of the simplest to understand is this: when American-based companies are subsidized for shipping American jobs overseas, they will. Indeed, the only jobs that aren't likely to be so exported are those tied directly to local economies — mostly the badly paying service jobs we mentioned earlier. This situation is wonderful, certainly, for those already wealthy (since the mid-70s the only real winners in the globalizing economy), but the process of job exporting can only crush the middle class, because there will always be immense pools of cheap labor overseas.
The Fantasies of Wall Street
Absurdly, Americans are being urged to "retrain" or acquire "additional skills" in the face of the trend to send jobs offshore — as if the vast majority of jobs they might retrain for couldn't just as easily be sent offshore, too, no matter what "additional skills" they might acquire. Too, the exporting of any job from any sector increases pressure on all the remaining sectors, because it increases the labor supply and drives down wages for everybody. Worst of all, the offshoring trend is accelerating, and is almost certain to accelerate even faster in the future; and if this occurs it will make for tremendous economic turbulence, which will make it difficult to even guess what to retrain for. No, what Wall Street really means is this: "Americans should retrain themselves, at their own expense, of course, for less skilled jobs for lower pay and fewer benefits."
As we noted above, some have claimed that the savings corporations realize by offshoring jobs are ultimately returned to investors and are thereby eventually pumped back into the economy; but this is simply another version of long discredited trickle-down economics. How much in the way of goods can, say, a Bill Gates possibly buy? We've already seen in the clearest possible terms that that the process doesn't automatically entail domestic job creation, and globalization weakens labor unions, by far the most effective force (indeed, very nearly the only one) for promoting wage increases. Since jobs that are offshored are gone for good, the very likely fate of a person who has lost a manufacturing or IT job is to eventually get a lower-paid job after a long period of unemployment — and that represents a permanent or semi-permanent loss of income. And other troubling questions remain: whose economy, and which investors profit? When the products that are purchased are increasingly overseas imports, who ends up with most of the that profit? Today, incredibly, the US has piled up more debt with China than any other country in the world. Moreover, even today, most US stock is held by those already wealthy. The truth is that of the total gain in marketable wealth from 1983 to 1998, more than half went to the richest 1 percent, and they don't buy much in the way of goods (rather, they tend to place that money in the stock market, thereby creating economic bubbles of the kind we saw in 2001). Of course, even if it were true, trickle-down theory doesn't address the massive problems of environmental degradation, the loss of national sovereignty, and the assaults on democracy also engendered by globalization.
The Reality on Main Street
The upshot of all of this is that you can run, but you can't hide.
The corporate cure for accelerating unemployment due to globalization and offshoring is so much snake oil, nothing more than a very deliberate effort to obscure the deadly seriousness of the problem. Neither retraining nor re-education are, or even conceivably could be, the answer for most Americans; and trade imbalances and job loss and career destabilization and environmental and community destruction vitiate whatever little benefit might be derived from globalization for working Americans. The "wall" that most politicians are telling us we can't build around the American employment market is the dike that must be built if we are to retain quality jobs. Or, to change metaphors, it's the compression bandage that should have been applied years ago when we began hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs.
What Can Be Done?
For better or for worse, this is one issue that, in the short term, can best be addressed by political action and/or massively increased unionization.
The transnationals, who have been anticipating this response for some time, are screaming (as they always scream) that regulation and unionization aren't the answer (again, they suggest retraining). But aside from economic logic, history also makes it clear that they're the only possible answers.
Why Does Wall Street Hate Americans?
For half of the existence of America, slavery, the ownership of another human being for purposes of economic exploitation, was legal. Why? Because the slaveowners were addicted to cheap labor. Even child labor was legal in the United States until the agitation of Progressives (especially that of Mother Jones) finally forced businessmen to eliminate the practice in 1938. How could child labor have remained legal for so long? Because businessmen were addicted to cheap labor. And all of this is to say nothing of the horrific conditions of employment that Upton Sinclair wrote of, or the incredibly long working weeks and low wages that were endemic until Americans organized, unionized, and legislative reforms were passed over the vociferous objections and treacherous backroom maneuvering of businessmen. Indeed, it was in large part unionization and regulatory legislative reform, and emphatically not trickle-down, that set the stage for a prosperous post World War II middle class.
Now, we have globalization and the offshoring of jobs. The addiction is no less gripping, and is vastly more far-reaching; and this is why the need for reform legislation hasn't been so urgent since the 1930s. The sooner we curtail this latest addiction, the better the chances of effective control.
The alternative, which will very probably be the outright destruction of the American middle class, would have truly catastrophic consequences for the American economy; and since the US economy is the workhorse of the international economy, the consequences would unquestionably be global, affecting virtually all of humanity. Some have said there's no going "back". The truth, however, is the world can't go "forward" with policies desired almost exclusively by the CEOs of self-interested transnational corporations. If there is to be globalization at all, it must look radically different from anything currently on the table, and it must proceed at a far slower pace.
What steps, then, to take?
* First, we suggest that you further educate yourself regarding the nature of globalization. The most indispensable reading here is David Korten's When Corporations Rule the World. You might also consider subscribing to the Nader-founded Multinational Monitor, which will keep you abreast of more current developments. So will Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. A book that focuses a little more narrowly on jobs and on how offshoring came about is America: What Went Wrong? by Donald Barlett and James Steele. Conservatives take note (and everyone else, too): Chapter 11 of NAFTA is an end-run around the US constitution. So is Chapter 10 of CAFTA. Get the details.
* The US should return to steeply progressive income taxes. When the ultrawealthy have nothing to gain from the process of globalization, the process will soon slow. This would also set the stage for desperately needed, and effective, trickle-up economics. When you put more money in the hands of working Americans, that money finds its way into the economy quickly.
* American voters should be very, very wary of voting Republican. While the Democratic track record on globalization is poor, it is nevertheless enormously better than the dismal record of the Republicans. (Most continue to aggressively promote globalization.)
* Work to oppose Bush trade policies. There has never been a president more pro-globalization and pro-offshoring. Even with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, CAFTA was very nearly defeated because of pressure from American voters. For all of his patriotic posturing, this is the most virulently anti-American president in US history, if by "America" we mean working Americans.
* H-1B and L1 visa programs have been responsible for the loss of more than a million American jobs to overseas workers, even as American IT workers search for work. It's time to eliminate provisions for job shortages that don't exist (and never did). The Bush immigration plan is also, in effect, a job giveaway program.
* Incredibly, US taxpayers are still funding numerous Federal programs that provide incentives for US corporations to relocate their jobs offshore by way of providing loans, subsidies, credits, or loan guarantees. All such funding and all such incentives must cease immediately. Funding and incentives to keep jobs in the US should take their place. Penalties for offshoring should receive study. Fines or taxes levied on job-exporting corporations could be devoted to extending unemployment compensation benefits, funding for small business creation by the unemployed, and so forth.
* US funding of the World Bank (which brokers many deals that result in job exporting) and the IMF should be tapered off and eventually eliminated. Both institutions should be scrapped and alternative institutions created from scratch.
* The FTAA, the newly approved CAFTA, and other globalization-promoting accords must be scuttled. Organizations promoting globalization, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, should receive greater media scrutiny, and their position, and its dismal implications for US employment, should be exposed.
* Corporations exporting the largest number of jobs should be identified and boycotted.
* Americans must cure themselves of their addiction to television and newspaper news. Very nearly all of the mass media are very much in favor of globalization, and, although they're careful to hide it well, are rabidly opposed to unionization. Instead, we suggest that you consider subscribing to one of the news sources mentioned in our political field guide.
* Oppose further media consolidation. The implications of globalization aren't being adequately reported. Support media diversification (PBS and NPR are doing by far the best job among the mass media, but are still under-reporting most globalization-related issues). The Media Access Project is doing good work in the area of diversification.
* Since the corporate media are flatly opposed to the interests of ordinary Americans on this issue, it's up to working people to get the word out. Share this editorial with your friends and family.
* If your workplace is unionized, consider joining. If it's not unionized, consider organizing one. Work to remove all barriers to union organizing.
* Write the media and write your representatives regarding your concerns about globalization and offshoring. Here are the basic tools:
Write your congressperson here: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Write your senator here: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Determine who's telling your representatives to vote against working Americans here: http://www.opensecrets.org . Don't spend your money with those companies.
* Support organizations working to get corporate money out of government. The standard bearer for years has been Common Cause: http://www.commoncause.org/ Organizations working for publicly funded elections also merit your support.
* Corporate capitalism is in urgent need of fundamental reforms. Watch this page for a review of Marjorie Kelly's devastating critique "The Divine Right of Capital." The biggest, best-kept political and economic secret today is the fact that other forms of capitalism are possible, have been immensely successful, and some give working people a much fairer shake. (See our section on economics for details of Mondragon capitalism. There's a link below.)
* Some web links dealing with the offshoring of jobs are as follows:
http://www.washtech.org/wt/ (high tech jobs are being particularly hard hit by offshoring practices - and that affects everyone, no matter what they do for a living)
http://www.hireamericancitizens.org
* Local economic self-sufficiency should be maximized instead of global economic dependency. Numerous practices for greening the global economy can be found in our economics field guide.
.S. Poor, Uninsured Increase
Los Angeles Times Web site | 26.08.2004 13:42
The U.S. Census Bureau just released its annual report which revealed that the numbers of poor and uninsured people in the U.S. is steadily increasing. Median income is remaining the same while expenses are rising. This report is usually issued in September but Democrats are accusing the Bush administration of pushing it up so it's less of a factor in the election.
Los Angeles Times Web site, 12:01 PM PDT, August 26, 2004
Ranks of Poor, Uninsured Rose in 2003
By Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Median income remained essentially unchanged last year at $43,318 per household, the Census Bureau reported today, but 1.3 million more people lived under the poverty line.
The poverty rate rose another four-tenths of a percentage point to 12.5% — one out of every eight Americans — and the number of people without health insurance grew by 1.4 million to 45 million, propelled by a decline in the number of people with private health insurance.
The unchanged level of median income suggests, barely two months before President Bush faces reelection, that the middle class is holding its own. But the increasing rates of poverty and absence of health insurance suggested that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.
The report, and the timing of its release, immediately drew political attention. Democrats saw in it evidence of the failure of Bush’s policies. Republicans said it did not reflect the full impact of Bush’s economic program.
The report is generally released in September, and Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign suggested that publication was moved up to push its findings away from election day.
"Hmmm. We wonder if these moves have anything to do with the fact that George Bush is running for reelection," Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said in a campaign memorandum. "Remember, the last time that the annual census figures were released in August was in 1992 to hide bad news in an election year."
Median income — half of American households make more and half make less — actually fell slightly, from $43,381 to $43,318. It reached its all-time high of $44,922 in 1999 and has fallen slightly since.
The South lost 1.5% of its income (after adjustment for inflation) in 2003; the other regions held their own.
Income rose slightly for married couple households, for Asian Americans and for households headed by people 55 and older. It declined most sharply for single parent households, white families and households headed by younger persons (particularly ages 15 to 24).
Statistical measures of income inequality showed no change in 2003. But the poorest 20% of the country had 1.9% less income in 2003 than the year before, and the richest 20% had 1.1% more — not counting the impact of Bush’s tax cuts.
The poverty rate of 12.5% has risen four-tenths of a point in each of the last three years, although the recent recession ended in 2001. It was last this high in 1998. It is still historically low; except for the period since 1998, it has not been this low since 1979.
Bush seemed most vulnerable politically on the health insurance data.
Never have so many Americans lacked insurance, and only expanding government programs — Medicare and Medicaid — kept the level from growing more. With employers dropping coverage in the face of soaring costs, the number of Americans with private insurance declined for the third straight year to 198 million.
In a written statement, Kerry said the numbers "underscore the fundamental choice at stake in this election for the American people: Four more years of an administration that puts the narrow interest of the few ahead of the interests of most Americans, or new leadership that will serve as a champion for the middle class and those struggling to join it.
"Today confirms the failure of President Bush’s policies for all Americans," Kerry said. "Under George Bush’s watch, America’s families are falling further behind."
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Bush recognized "the challenges faced by those who lack health insurance and remains committed to ensuring that every American looking for a job is able to find one and to expanding access to affordable healthcare for all Americans."
He said that because the study includes only data from 2003, it did not reflect the full impact of the tax overhaul that has been a Bush economic centerpiece or the increase in jobs over the past 11 months.
URL for Census Bureau Report (PDF, damn them!): http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-082604poverty_furl,1,2229756.framedurl?coll=la-home-headlines
Homepage:: http:////www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-082604poverty_furl,1,2229756.framedurl?coll=la-home-headlines
