Submitted by Charlie McCormick
It seems that the United States government regularly touts innovation as the remedy to America’s steady decline over the last decade, but as an entity they are rarely ever innovative.
President Obama’s new job program, while potentially offering some relief, appears to be based on efforts by Franklin Roosevelt, it’s The New Deal 2.0 – just not as good.
The difference is that Roosevelt, at the time, was innovative. He was also much more eloquent, inspiring, and dwarfs Obama’s highly regarded rhetorical skills. Roosevelt, in 1933, declared war on the Great Depression, and the same passion is needed to halt America’s decline today.
While President Obama’s efforts to reverse the economy’s decline are not innovative, they are better than the bailout that meant profits for a few and nothing for most. The past mistakes of Bush and Obama still do not justify Republican efforts to block disaster relief and job creation efforts by attaching it to budget cuts.
American debt has been growing for decades, and people are hurting now. Cutting government waste needs to be a priority, but not on the backs of unemployed, under-paid, and disaster stricken Americans.
The past ten years have seen the top 1% of Americans increase their hold on American income from approximately 18% in 1998 to 25% of all income in 2010 – and these are conservative estimates. In terms of general wealth, the top 1% of the population controls 36% to 40% of America’s wealth.
The top 1% is a convenient number to understand, but the reality is that America has suffered, is suffering, and will suffer because of what was done by the top 0.1%.
Money is power, and those who can buy access to power get preferential treatment, have laws passed favoring their political and financial position, and fund the billions spent on political campaigns. In 2010, for mid-term elections, that number was approximately 4 billion dollars. The 4,000,000,000 spent on political campaigns was not inclusive of lobbying efforts, where for example General Electric spent 40 million dollars in 2010.
Total lobbying expenditures, based only on legally reported lobbying, was 3.5 billion in 2010.
President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned the American people about a growing military industrial complex, and surprisingly no one heeded the general’s warning. We are now engaged in two wars, Afghanistan which is the longest war in American history, and the Iraq war which will be the second.
Warnings on America’s financial peril have also been given by respected leaders. Alan Greenspan, appointed by Reagan and continually reappointed over 18 years to head the Federal Reserve, stated in 2005 that the growing economic disparity in America was a direct threat to democracy.
“As I’ve often said,” the Fed chair told the congressional Joint Economic Committee, “this is not the type of thing which a democratic society—a capitalist democratic society—can really accept without addressing.” Greenspan also reported to the Senate Banking Committee that the inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, amounts to a “very disturbing trend.”
Bleeding middle class America, bleeding the unemployed, the under-employed, and those hit by disaster is not an option for fixing America.
Fix America for all Americans, not .01%, or go rot in hell.
Additional Reading:
Bloomberg News: Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Secret Loans