Op-Ed- Safety Nets for the Rich - Bob Herbert - NYT »
Posted By deathray 1 month ago in Political Opinion
The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday’ s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ ve allowed our country to fall into.
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deathray
Hm...summarizing a life...Investment banker, sailor, unintentional gourmet cook. Ex US Naval officer, also Foreign Service. Split my time between NYC and Miami Beach ...
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deathray1 month ago
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i won't post any quotes from the article at the top of this comment thread, as i usually do, as i believe that it's important to read the entire thing.
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as for my own take on this, herbert shows how the income redistribution of the last 30+ years, particularly from 2001 - 2007, has favored the very wealthy here in the us.
the squeeze put on the middle class and the abandonment of the poor in this country is a losing proposition for the nation at large, even as it's an ethical problem for fellow americans.
much of this is due to tax policy, and should show that the trickle down economics prevalent in the last 30 years has gone off the deep end and is a failure as policy goes.-
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berkeley1 month ago
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what puzzles me is how the rich and their congressional stooges can ignore the social consequences of their collective actions. can they even imagine "collective actions"?
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what kind of world do they want to leave for their children? does that question ever enter their little heads?
how much is enough? -
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Goppy1 month ago
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The 30 years time frame mirrors the reinvention of the Republican Party ... the so-called 'Republican Revolution' ... was a re-envisioning ... of Ideology in which the party became enamored of celebrating the richest Americans.
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Curiously, this re-envisioning has been accompanied by all manner of "Entitlement Programs" - which is quite odd. And yet ... the past 30 years has seen an endless struggle by Right Wing Politicians to 'smooth the way' for the super-wealthy ... to clear away any impediments to them growing their wealth in an exponential manner.
I also find it interesting how Fundamentalist Evangelicals have piggy-backed onto this Ideology. TV Evangelists like Joel Osteen - ... although he's not alone ... - now preach that to be rich is a sign you've been blessed by God.
And that we should all strive to be wealthy.
It's clearly a religio/political movement that is ... to my way of thinking ... on the wrong track.
The Super Wealthy don't need Welfare.
And employing a vision of wealth as a way to spiritual enlightenment is patently ludicrous.
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cowboygrandpa1 month ago
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FTA:
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"The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.”
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
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I have an idea of how to put them back to work !!!
Get rid of the system that allows the shipping of work overseas while rewarding the companies that do it !!!
If you do business outside of America-meaning ya took your work and shipped overseas, go with it. We don't need or want ya !!!!
We have people here who will work and kick your tail. We don't need no stinkin' Americans in Name only here !!!! And yes that is a slap in the face of those who claim some Republicans are RINO's. When they favor things that will help all of America, not just the elite idiots who think money is all that matters !!!!! -
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cowboygrandpa1 month ago
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FTA:
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"Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses — billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues to suffer, in this downturn."
Yep, Keep supporting those who will put ya in a grave for their profit !!! Have ya learned nothing from history ????
These people are nothing short of lunatics who could care less about other people. Do ya ever wonder how much money from wall street is invested in the Military Industrial Complex ??
Any wonder we continue to wage war without real reasons except for blood money ??? -
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Charlson1 month ago
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The poor and middle class of the republican party, if they exist, who continue to vote against their best interests for the interests of the rich are so misguided and ignorant that their condition is almost hopeless. Their best bet lies with the democrats to pass a health care bill with a public option but are either too stupid or too hard headed to understand. They are too interested in abortions, gay rights and marxism to understand how snookered they are by the extreme right.
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Radiofreeeuropa1 month ago
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I seriously doubt those carrying the misspelled signs against socialism have a clue about what it actually is, (A good chunk are on social security and medicare). If any of them ever cracked a book by Marx, other than to carve it out to hide a gun in of course...I'd be amazed.
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Natureboy1 month ago
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Those of the working class who place their hope in either party of the duopoly are poor students of history, Charlson.
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"They are too interested in abortions, gay rights and marxism to understand how snookered they are by the extreme right."
Here you have something. In order to get working people whipped up about supporting a political agenda that is inimical to their class interests, you need religion or something like it. And both parties have something like it. Call it the Jeezuz Nazis versus the Wheatgerm and Granola Faithful. Strip that culture war away, and you can see that both parties are supporting a corporatist agenda against the interests of the working people.
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Leftist1 month ago
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President Obama will not succeed in his vision to remake America unless he succeeds in breaking the back of the business interests in this country and eliminating the profane profits that are embedded in almost all sectors of private life. The people simply cannot continue to pay these enormous profits to the greedy "elite". Businesses with high profit margins, certainly anything above 3% (which is all the masses can get on a three-year CD, if they have any money at all) have to be taxed at what the greedy Repugs would call confiscatory rates, of something above 75%. Same applies to all those CEO's and their million dollar houses and Mercedes Benzes, who can afford to pay 90% of their income in taxes. That still won't deal with the wealth disparity, but only addresses the income disparity. Dealing with the wealth disparity will take a little longer as we will have to wait until these selfish fat cats start dying off, so a high inheritance tax on their assets will level the playing field for the next generation. There is no reason why, in America, the few should have the benefit of inherited wealth, while everyone else is struggling. The country is in such critical shape, due to the inequities of capitalism, that drastic action is required to redistribute fairly the little wealth and income that has been left untouched by the exploiters of this country.
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dgoodii1 month ago
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The very basis for the Socialist and Authoritarian governments of the World, all profits must be used to help those who won't or choose not to do things for themselves. No matter what economic system you choose someone or government profits. Collective profit and distribution for no input or productiveness ends badly as well, all are poor with no wealth to rebuild when the rulers are removed.
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High taxes at death only fatten the government spending levels. Why don't you ask all the Democrat families in the Northeast that were barons and business owners at the turn of last century to fork over there trust funds. Has to be one of the most un-American statements I have heard in awhile, if your family earns it why should the country or someone else decide how to use it? Kind of defeats your goal of growing wealth for the people, if you just take it in the end, so much for taking care of those you love and care for your entire life.
How about every single person pays for the services they receive from the US government? Choose a base that all receive to live on and then 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 or 100% of the rest is taxed by all the levels of GOVERNMENT where you live. While your at it choose what vehicles, houses, toilets, and size of properties each citizen may have.
Personal responsibility and achievement mean nothing to you do they? No one has a chance to prosper if not helped by that special force, some outside entity, government intervention and regulation. Never thought that those same forces might actually be holding us all back?
By the way there is an infinite amount of wealth to be created, its dynamic not stagnate.
You also include almost every single business in your greedy category, companies like Walmart are go to go then right? -
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deathray1 month ago
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i'm not sure why rthgtakaroland hits and runs on topics like this. is it personal? does it deviate from his ideology? doe he realize that the economy is systemically worse than it was a mere ten years ago?
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really, this is where drops should require at least some explanation better than 'you are a stupid lib hussein worshipper' or some such fracking dreck. -
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reallypsst1 month ago
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The average american is so caught up in washintons circle jerk that they are blinded to the point of being pawns of their own stupidity,while we are debating the bs issues politicians are lining their pockets with our money from corrupt dealings,everything in this world has a dollar value attached to it and we should be watching in what direction that dollar is heading to,politicians have only one goal and that is to be rich !
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Beau78901 month ago
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This is a great op-ed, deathray. (I'd have posted it this morning had I been able to log into my account.)
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As you say, the entire piece is relevant, but what really hit the mark for me is this excerpt:
"We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from causing yet another economic meltdown.
"We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people” are obliged to see that they don’t — even if that means bankrupting the national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What sense does that make?
"If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist. Break it up."
I'm not sure whether antitrust laws actually apply to huge institutions like Goldman Sachs that control such a large part of the nation's money. I do know that the mergers and acquisitions craze of the past 30 years has not helped matters in terms of concentrating far too much economic power in the hands of a few. But breaking up companies that become "too large to fail," or preventing them from getting that powerful in the first place, seems to me to be essential to fixing our economy.
Many have been trained to label such an idea as "socialism" or "fascism." But that labelling the idea of disallowing concentration of power and fear of falling down a "slippery slope" into totalitarian government control avoids the goal of applying the appropriate solutions to problems for which they're best suited. The fact is that allowing a larger number of smaller companies to coexist does more to create healthier competition than deregulating to give business free rein that ultimately ends in larger companies swallowing smaller ones.
Larger companies simply don't get that way by offering better products and services; they do it by lowering their own operating costs, borrowing more in order to buy competitors out, and expanding their market reach--none of which helps consumers or offers more choice.
I only wish more people would look at all situations without thinking about scary labels that prevent them from utilizing all of the tools available.-
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deathray1 month ago
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you mean, like dogoodii up above?
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i don not really like to cast aspersions, but what dg left out of his diatribe was "people who CAN'T do for themselves"
not everyone can be self sufficient all the time; i had to learn to depend on others when i was really ill. fortunately, i have the wherewithal to hire people, as needed, to help me out. not everybody does. many people who trot out those labels do it for ideological reasons.
this is where the whole idea of living not only in a free society is undermined, but the Burkean notion of maintenance of the social order as a paramount requirement of conservativism.
you can try to label me with whatever epithets come in handy at the time, but it doesn't explain away the fact that people are suffering, that the idea of "wealth redistribution" is something the right has been exploiting for 30 years, at the expense of both the poor and the middle class. -
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Natureboy1 month ago
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Free enterprise is eulogized on the false assumption that everyone benefits optimally from an unregulated commons.
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Observation and a study of history tell us that the inevitable result of an unregulated commons is what is known as "the tragedy of the commons," the sacrifice of the interests of the many to the self-interest of the greedy few. The plain truth is that in the absence of regulation, even if the ethical and the conscientious exercise self-restraint, there will always be the ethically challenged few who will pillage the commons for their own short-term benefit, their neighbors be damned. Eventually, even the conscientious realize that restraint in an unregulated commons is a losers game and they become rapacious and unprincipled as well.
So, let the commons that is commerce be controlled, or regulated, or even nationalized. If it is done well, we will all benefit. If not, it is still unlikely to be worse than the status quo, which is leading us all into disaster.
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mmrhe1 month ago
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What you're not including in your argument deathray is VALUE.
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What the Elite have done is take more of the pie for themselves leaving less for everyone else without increasing the value of the stock, company or products.
Then they completely circumvented the paradigm by going global.
I keep thinking of Ross Perot and his 'giant sucking sound' comment.
He was right! -
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miklkit1 month ago
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What life is like for Mencken's "unwashed peasants". Tax the rich according to their wealth, not their political lobbying.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM-
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Natureboy1 month ago
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We are seeing working people deprived of their livelihoods, their families put out of their homes, in record numbers. Tens of thousands of people, each year, killed by a for-profit medical system that places money above human life.
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This is war.
It is war on the working class. And the working class, thus far, is too fscking complacent and stupid and programmed to start shooting back.
But ultimately, when the moneyed few mold the laws to facilitate their theft, and use the courts and the police as their hired guns, there is no need to respect the "law," and there is no moral difference between the wealthy stealing by artifice and the poor stealing with guns in their hands.
The American rich have generally been smart enough to at least superficially respect the social contract. Wise, as the social contract disproportionately protects the haves from the have-nots, rather than the other way around. When the working class begins to perceive that the social contract has been violated, various social mores like respect for authority and private property are going to go south, quickly, and there may well be an adjustment made.
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