This piece ran in today's NY Times:
Life in the Bottom 80 Percent
Economic growth isn't what it used to be. In 2004, the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent. But for the fifth straight year, median household income was basically flat, at $44,389 in 2004, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That's the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.
Economic growth was also no elixir for the 800,000 additional workers who found themselves without health insurance in 2004. Were it not for increased coverage by military insurance and Medicaid, the ranks of the uninsured - now 45.8 million - would be even larger. And 1.1 million more people fell into poverty in 2004, bringing the ranks of poor Americans to 37 million.
When President Bush talks about the economy, he invariably boasts about good economic growth. But he doesn't acknowledge what is apparent from the census figures: as the very rich get even richer, their gains can mask the stagnation and deterioration at less lofty income levels.
For most of us it's been so bad for so long that we no longer remember what `good times' look like. Since the government likes to deal in averages the actual figures are camouflaged by those who are raking it in by the truckload.
Highest per capita income in the nation; Connecticut. Connecticut's largest employer - Stop & Shop, what's wrong with this picture?
This week's census report showed that income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. And additional census data obtained by the Economic Policy Institute show that only the top 5 percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling.
Income inequality is an economic and social ill, but the administration and the Congressional majority don't seem to recognize that. When Congress returns from its monthlong summer vacation next week, two of the leadership's top priorities include renewing the push to repeal the estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest of families, and extending the tax cuts for investment income, which flow largely to the richest Americans.
At the other end of the spectrum, lawmakers have stubbornly refused to raise the minimum wage: $5.15 an hour since 1997. They will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs that ameliorate income inequality, like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Ashamed? Publicly drawn and quartered wouldn't scratch the surface of their complicity in this disaster in the making. I'm predicting that the price of gasoline and home heating fuel will eclipse the current minimum wage sometime this winter.
Fall is a mere twenty-one days away. For those of us living in the frigid Northeast, the heating season begins now.
Try to wrap your head around this. Private enterprise, in this case the energy industry, exists to make profits for its shareowners, consumer beware...and that's the law.
Like wages, there's been almost zero growth in both refining capacity or in power generation for over twenty years. Why? Shortages drive up prices and higher prices yield larger returns for shareowners.
It is NOT in these privately held, for profit enterprises `interest' to be over capacity in anything, it cuts into profitability...which as we are seeing today is downright deadly as well as foolish.
Come wintertime the folks on the gulf coast won't be the only ones that find themselves stranded and starving. It will be the `unnatural' disaster of depressed wages and soaring prices across the board that will compound the ripples begun by Hurricane Katrina.
Everything in our society moves and the cost to move it is added into the sales price. It's been widely publicized that `we' (the eighty percent as identified above) are stretched to the limit, we are incapable of saving even one percent of our income.
When the cost of living triples, as it will in the near future, it won't even be a choice between heat and eat. The choice will be to eat whatever you can chase down and kill with a stick, heating your home with whatever will burn, canceling your electric and phone service and trying to find a job that you can walk to.
Eighty percent is a very significant number good citizen. Make no mistake about it, the coming crisis is artificial. It's not about caring for society, it's about profits and social Darwinism. If you can't pay you're gonna die!
Never will there be a stronger case to discontinue the practice of the private ownership of the avenues of commerce. Millions will die unnecessarily all because of corporate greed.
Commerce exists to serve society, not just the people that own it...think about that.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner