Our Myopia Around the Mighty

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality



Our Myopia Around the Mighty
July 10, 2010 ⋅

Over half of America has already felt the Great Recession, personally and profoundly. Yet life at our economy’s summit remains ever so sweet. That’s a bitter reality we really ought to start confronting.

By Sam Pizzigati


The ranks of the hurting — in Great Recession America — may be far broader than almost any of us have up until now supposed.

News reports and mainstream commentators have, by and large, been defining the hurting by one simple stat, the number of Americans who get counted every month as officially unemployed, a figure now hovering around 10 percent.

But the Great Recession, notes a new study from the Pew Research Center, may be hurting five times more American families than that 10 percent suggests. Over half of America’s working-age adults — 55 percent — have either gone jobless or lost wages and full-time hours since the recession started.

Retailpay surveyMeanwhile, at America’s economic summit, life in Corporate America’s executive suites continues to slide smoothly along. Power suits are coming and going and stuffing — their pockets.

We can see this lucrative to-and-fro even at distinctly second-tier corporations. The latest case in point: the hiring of a new CEO at Armstrong World Industries, the floor and ceiling tile maker based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/our-myopia-around-the-mighty/

[Cary]

1. The solution:

1. Progressive taxation;

2. Legislation tilting the scales more toward unions; and,

3. Increased government spending until such time as we enter into a sustainable recovery.

From the 40s until the 80s we grew because people's incomes grew and allowed consumers (the goose that laid the golden egg) to consume goods and services we produced.

Ronald Reagan presided over a miserable time when we shifted from wage growth to a period where our 401(k)s and other accounts grew in a period of what we now call "the dot com bubble." We felt rich so we consumed, and grew. After that bubble burst we were okay because we had the equity in our homes and we consumed, and we know where that led.

We don't have any more of these bubbles. We have been here before. Our great-grandfathers and grandfathers knew what to do. They compressed income levels with progressive taxation and by strengthening labor's hand. They did these things and only built us into the greatest and most powerful nation that the world has ever known.

Do "conservatives" have a victory like this to point to? Hell no they don't. They have the Great Republican Depression I and now the Great Republican Depression II, and yet their bullshit appears to have some momentum.

Today's "conservatives" will never admit to this, but they disrespect our great-grandfathers and grandfathers with their stupidity, and right now we're stupid enough to allow "conservatives" to have momentum.

Yeah, I'm pissed.

<spits>