Saturday, January 8, 2011

If We are Recreating the Conditions of the Great Depression, Why is There no Jumping Out of Windows?


Obviously I don't want anyone jumping out the window. The question is only symbolic, but it's one we should be asking ourselves.

My parents lived through the Depression and anytime I discussed it, especially with my mother, I would always hear how the wealthy people, who had lost their fortunes, were jumping out of windows. They had gambled and lost and had no idea how to get their fortunes back.

There is no argument that the latest economic crisis was caused by the wealthy. The poor didn't gamble on Wall Street, nor was the middle class playing with the economic lives of so many.

But instead of jumping out of windows, the wealthy came to us and said that they were too big to fail. So we patted them on the back and gave them our money, with the reassuring words of "there, there now. It will be alright". Because we believed that everyone was suffering and sharing the burden of the collapse.

There was an understanding that the wealthy would step back. That corporations would suspend bonuses to their executives. That they would sell their private jets and art collections. That they would cancel lavish vacations and retreats. But that never happened.

Instead they used our money to reward themselves for their failure. Not a tear fell into the Perrier. Not a second of remorse. Not a window even opened a crack.

And as we watched our deficit and debt escalate because of it, we were constantly being told that so many things we took for granted may be lost. Things like healthcare, education and old age security.

And instead of adjusting Canada Pension so that many of our seniors can get out of poverty, Jim Flaherty is going to privatize it, giving the wealthy even more of our money to gamble with.

And as they gamble away not only our future but the futures of our children and grandchildren, Stephen Harper is determined to give the wealthy even more of our money.

More corporate tax cuts. UNFUNDED tax cuts. They are not being paid out of a surplus of money because they have done so much to improve our lot. WE will have to BORROW the money to give to THEM.

Will someone please tell me that this is a bad dream and I will wake up and be reassured that there are adults holding the public purse. Adults with math skills. Adults who give a damn about us.

I read a bit of a posting on the Heritage Foundation website, something I do occasionally. Visit neocon websites to try and figure out how they could possibly be so wrong. And in an attempt to justify taxcuts, they mention the roaring 20's.
The tax cuts of the 1920s: Tax rates were slashed dramatically during the 1920s, dropping from over 70 percent to less than 25 percent. What happened? Personal income tax revenues increased substantially during the 1920s, despite the reduction in rates. Revenues rose from $719 million in 1921 to $1164 million in 1928, an increase of more than 61 percent.

According to then-Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon: The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.
The logic is that if taxes are too high, people will simply find more ways to avoid paying them. The author also fails to mention that incomes between 1921 and 1928 for the upper echelon, were abnormally high.

But even if we give them that. If we lower taxes more people will pay them. The exact opposite is happening today. The wealthy, despite our generosity, continue to find ways to avoid paying taxes. It's what they do. It's the game they play.

We've learned recently that executive salaries are soaring, while the middle class has stagnated and more and more of the working class have joined the ranks of the working poor.

So who is shouldering the burden?

The Religious Right who is providing much of the oxygen for the Harper government, constantly suggest that homosexuality is destroying the moral fabric of our country and risking "the family".

But the "sin" that threatens us the most is not homosexuality (which is only a sin because they say so). It's GREED. Greed that has become so raw, it's now pornographic. You feel like you should be looking away.

Maybe published photos of corporate executives should come with the customary black band over their eyes now, so they can't be identified.

And what I would like to know is, if our money has given the wealthy a soft place to land, who's holding our safety net?

12 comments:

  1. We don't have a safety net, Emily. Not one of any sort at all. So nobody has to hold it. Oh, sure, Harpo can say the elderly have pensions, but CPP and OAP aren't livable pensions. Ask one of those corporate executives, or Members of Parliament, to live on CPP even with the supplement. It isn't a safety net, it's a punishment. "Here's your allowance for this month, Granny, and don't go looking for more, because you won't get it."

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  2. Not even a window crack ha hah ahahha

    snip snip: But this eminently sensible, cost-effective public solution has been resisted by some on the right, who argue that the mandatory CPP deprives Canadians of the choice not to invest in their retirement.

    This is reminiscent of arguments by the American right against public health care, on the grounds that some risk-lovers prefer to be without health insurance.

    Of course, those making such arguments are usually well-off financially, with little risk in their own lives.

    Still, they fiercely defend the right of the poor to experience the risky pleasures of life without a safety net.

    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/898690--mcquaig-public-better-than-private-on-pensions
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  3. Soon after 9/11, Mr. Silverstein (Building 7 owner) reached a settlement; his insurers agreed to pay out $4.55 billion, which was not as much as Silverstein sought.

    Silverstein ran into dispute with his insurers over whether the 9/11 attacks constituted one or two occurrences on Building 7.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein

    ______________________________________________________

    Building 7

    Tony Szamboti is a mechanical engineer and signer of the petition at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group of more than 1,350 professionals calling for a new independent investigation into the destruction of Building 7 and the twin towers.

    http://ae911truth.org/
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  4. Repost: …as one Conservative Christian said recently "we cannot foodbank our way out of poverty."

    http://pushedleft.blogspot.com/2011/01/if-we-want-to-recover-we-need-to-focus.html

    We need government intervention to protect all citizens, because it's the right thing to do.

    The neoconservative principle of everyone being free to make as much money as possible and then everyone will be taken care of through the trickling down…
    may be the biggest fraud since the pyramid scheme.

    Canadian and American society has had it's classes, and most of the wealthy got that way through hard work, or inheritance from someone else, who worked hard to get rich. There were exceptions, but for the most part you could trace names back to an invention or the improvement of an invention.
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  5. In his column lampooning the executive-compensation study, Kelly McParland insists “the money doesn’t come from your pocket or mine.”

    It most certainly does if we are shareholders. More importantly, thanks to the vagaries of Canadian tax laws, when executives exercise their generous stock options, taxpayers are on the hook.

    The average lost tax revenue for each of the 100 top paid CEOs in Canada amounted to $467,000. That’s a heck of a lot more galling than the sundry restaurant receipts of some scandal-plagued assistant deputy minister, but it seems the fans of big business can’t get worked up about it.

    Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/05/counterpoint-rewarding-failure-at-the-top/#ixzz1ABaSJiS9
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  6. Thoughts on the rampant greed of the rich: Robber bee behavior is rare “if colonies are equal in strength and healthy and undisturbed (by pests or beekeepers),” she said.

    “If colonies are stressed, crowded, diseased or fighting pests, the other bees - -as well as other pests -- sense this ‘weakness’ or ‘opportunity’ and go for it. It’s survival of the strongest. Mother Nature isn’t always nice.”

    http://news.ucanr.org/newsstorymain.cfm?story=1147



    "America is now a land of socialism for the rich -- and brutal capitalism for the poor."
    ~ Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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  7. There are more filthy rich folks now than at any other moment in history and they’re leveraging their astounding wealth to make sure they get filthier at the expense of the rest of us. For about three decades after the Second World War, however halfheartedly, most countries in the Western world shared a consensus to reduce the most blatant inequalities within society.

    But a spectacularly successful conservative counter-revolution has reversed this brief spurt of decency, making many countries, not least the ABC gang – America, Britain and Canada – more unequal than they’ve been since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/gerald-caplan/some-pigs-are-more-equal-than-others/article1833462/
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  8. snip snip: Canada could really use an inheritance tax. Almost 40 years ago, Ottawa quietly cancelled Canada's estate tax.

    http://www.rabble.ca/columnists/2010/10/tax-cuts-wealthy-increase-inequality

    U of T economist John Bossons calculated that ending the tax amounted to a windfall of about $12 billion ($62 billion in today's dollars) for Canada's wealthiest families.
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  9. In other words, all of the income and wealth gains for middle Americans from the “golden years” between 1945 and 1975 have now been wiped out. Or more accurately, have now been transferred to the very rich. The top 1% holds 34% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50% holds just 2.5%. The bottom 40% owns absolutely nothing.

    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/14-1

    In these and a thousand other ways, the rich have conspired with the government they largely control to shift more and still more of the nation’s wealth away from the working and middle classes, to themselves. It amounts to the most insidious class warfare and the most rapacious looting of public and private resources in the history of the world.
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  10. Even Mayor Rob Ford promises to outsource city cleaning services to contractors who pay poverty wages. And he claims to be “standing up for the little guy.”

    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/905536--corporate-greed-is-eroding-foundations-of-a-just-society

    There is clearly something wrong with this picture. For generations, people have come to this country to find a better life for themselves and their families. They have helped build a prosperous nation, where most people had access to a decent job and reasonable income.

    Governments created laws that struck a balance between the power of corporations and the rights of working people. Most of us were able to find respect for our skills and knowledge, and to be paid accordingly.

    In recent years, however, much has changed. The immense greed that fed the global financial markets has seeped into the core values of Canadian business.
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  11. The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
    Elizabeth Warren, Amelia Warren Tyagi

    … the two-parent middle-class working family is on the brink of financial disaster. The number of families declaring bankruptcy or receiving a foreclosure against their house has shot up dramatically.

    - contrary to popular myth, families aren't in trouble because they're squandering their second income on luxuries. On the contrary, both incomes are almost entirely committed to necessities, such as home and car payments, health insurance and children's education costs.

    - When an unforeseen event such as serious illness, job loss or divorce occurs, families have no discretionary income to fall back on.

    - The authors recommend a number of useful societal solutions to get families out of this trap, such as legally prohibiting credit card companies from charging grossly unfair interest rates and exposing banks that employ a loan-to-own strategy that steers minority customers to higher mortgage rates with an eye to future foreclosures.

    - Warren and Tyagi point out that families buy homes they cannot afford in order to live in a neighborhood with better schools (this is for the US). Their proposed solution, however-to institute a public school voucher system with wider choice-is less carefully thought out. Overall, however, this is a needed examination of an emerging social problem.

    Review book for free:
    http://books.google.ca/books?id=_IFTf-_9fSsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=two+income+trap&source=bl&ots=ssHJGxqt_M&sig=JJoG8PsIISfFjiMndKp29oKjXoo&hl=en&ei=vJP6TIPmMcm6nAeDxonICg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=two%20income%20trap&f=false


    or watch video:
    Elizabeth Warren - The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GHg3GAeQ1Y
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  12. The game CEO’s can’t believe they get away with.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfosSjWLMEE


    Bill Maher - New Rules - Greed
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-oPdoT0H1A


    Consider the sheer magnitude of a billion.

    If you were lucky enough to have $1 billion in $1,000 bills, stacking them would require 10,000 piles of 100 each.
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