Too Rich, Too Poor, Too Bad (Esther Cepeda)

...let's start by agreeing that someone

can own a DVD player and

still go hungry at night.

Denver Post
By Esther J. Cepeda
September 11, 2011

Joblessness, the general economic malaise and a never-ending stream of depressing statistics — the number of people in poverty, the millions of dollars that corporate CEOs are being paid in bonuses or severance — have made 2011 the year when it became OK to hate both the rich and the poor.

Look at comment boards on news websites or social media networks: Accompanying reports predicting we're in for a long slog of continued economic doldrums are heated barbs personifying both the wealthy and the impoverished as greedy, entitled forces of evil that are ruining America.

It's not surprising, really — when people feel vulnerable, the natural response is to lash out.

"There have been other times when there were huge gulfs between the rich and the poor, such as during the Gilded Age, but I think the disparity between rich and poor now may be even worse," said Phil DeVol, a consultant with aha! Process Inc., a publishing and training company that educates organizations such as schools and municipalities about poverty and class issues.

"The rhetoric out there is probably worse than I've ever seen it, and there is a lack of reasonable middle-ground conversations. So when the talk-radio folks and the cable-TV programs and the institutes who churn out information create narratives, it creates extreme mental models."

Extreme, indeed. Though the national conversation has finally "pivoted" to job-creation efforts, it was only a few weeks ago that Warren Buffett​ was wagging his finger at "coddled" millionaires and billionaires to pay more taxes. And Congress will soon be back on its government-shrinking crusade, pointing to the undeserving poor — who need government-subsidized health care or food assistance but dare have access to an Xbox or air conditioning — as examples of how government largesse has run amok.

In July, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, put out a white paper — "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What Is Poverty in the United States Today?" — ostensibly aimed at ensuring that "exaggeration and misinformation" don't hamper the development of well-targeted, effective programs to reduce poverty.

"The actual standard of living among America's poor is far higher than the public imagines and . . . in fact, most of the persons whom the government defines as 'in poverty' are not poor in any ordinary sense of the term," the report reads. "The home of the typical poor family was not overcrowded and was in good repair. In fact, the typical poor American had more living space than the average European."

Do not believe, the report warns us, that the worst-case-poverty scenarios presented in the media reflect the average poor person's experience. Most poor people aren't destitute; they're better off than you'd think. Plus, those overblown official U.S. poverty numbers make us look bad geopolitically — the Chinese government uses these "misleading" Census Bureau poverty reports to condemn the U.S. government for human rights violations.

Give the authors credit for including in their analysis the fact that new poverty resulting from the Great Recession will be largely due to working-class families losing their jobs. Obviously, they wouldn't necessarily "dispose of their normal household conveniences in those circumstances." So if you've been out of work for two years and still have a roof over your head, and an air-conditioning unit, maybe you're not such a drag on society.

But implying that people who are not homeless, or close to it, are undeserving of support and certainly undeserving of sympathy is a sure recipe for bad policy.

As DeVol told me, figuring out how public and private entities will work together to help the poor in our new age of austerity will have to center on "coming together across class lines, developing working relationships with mutual respect, and making decisions about our future, together."

For that we need to drop the easy stereotypes and extend understanding across income brackets. Not all rich people are selfish robber barons any more than all poor people are a bottomless drain on society. But that's a tall order, so let's start by agreeing that someone can own a DVD player and still go hungry at night.

Bernie Sanders: Deficit Reduction Requires Shared Sacrifice

OpEdNews.com
by Senator Bernie Sanders
March 14, 2011

The rich are getting richer. The middle class and poor are getting poorer. What is the Republican solution to the deficit crisis? More tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Savage cuts in programs that are desperately needed by working families.

There is another approach, which is why I've just introduced legislation imposing a surtax on those households earning a million dollars or more and the elimination of tax loopholes which the big oil companies take advantage of.

Everyone agrees that this country has a major deficit crisis, but few discuss how we got there. When George W. Bush inherited the White House from Bill Clinton we had a significant surplus. Now we have a $1.5 trillion deficit. How did that happen?

First, against my vote, Bush and Congress launched a war in Iraq. By the time we take care of our last veteran that war will end up costing us some $3 trillion. When the war drums were beating do you recall any of our Republican friends wanting to know how that unnecessary war was going to be paid for? I don't.

Second, Republicans for years have pushed for huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people. I didn't hear them ask how that was going to be paid for.

Third, under President Bush and a Republican-run House, Congress passed a $400 billion-plus Medicare prescription drug program. Written by the insurance companies and the drug companies, it barred the government from negotiating better prices. It drove up drug costs, padded pharmaceutical company profits and added to the deficit.

Fourth, again over my objection, Congress voted for a massive bailout of Wall Street. I didn't hear too many people talking about how we would pay for that $700 billion to bail out Wall Street. I didn't hear them worrying that it would drive up the deficit. Wall Street, having destroyed the economy through their reckless and illegal behavior, needed a welfare check and Congress provided it. End of story.

Those are some of the reasons we now have a deficit crisis, reasons Republicans don't talk much about when they provide soaring rhetoric about the dangers of large deficits.

The corporate media have been very lax in describing the devastating and unprecedented pain that the Republican House passed budget bill, HR 1, would bring about for low and moderate income families. Let me briefly mention just a very few of their cuts.

The Republicans want to decimate the Head Start Program. Every working family in America knows how hard it is today to find affordable childcare or early childhood education. At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, the Republican solution is to slash Head Start by 20 percent, throw 218,000 children off the program and lay off 55,000 Head Start instructors.

The cost of college education today is so high that many young people are giving up their dream of going to college, while many others are graduating deeply in debt. The Republican solution? Make a bad situation much worse by slashing Pell grants by $5.7 billion and reducing or eliminating Pell grants for 9.4 million low-income college students.

Social Security is another target. We get calls in my office every week from senior citizens, people with disabilities, widows who are having a hard time getting a timely response to their Social Security claims. It takes much too long to process the paperwork today. What is the Republican solution? They want to slash the Social Security Administration, the people who administer Social Security, by $1.7 billion. That means half a million Americans who are legally entitled to Social Security benefits will have to wait significantly longer to receive them. (Become a citizen member of the Defending Social Security Caucus)

When it comes to health care, we have 50 million Americans with no insurance today, and 45,000 Americans die each year because they don't get to a doctor in time. Last year, as part of health care reform, I worked very hard to expand community health centers so that more and more low-and moderate-income people could walk into a doctor's office, get health care, dental care, low-cost prescription drugs, mental health counseling. What is the Republican response to the health care crisis? They want to drastically cut-back funding for community health centers and deny primary health care to 11 million Americans.

For the poorest of the poor in our country, the Community Services Block Grants provide the infrastructure, the mechanism to get out emergency help for food, heat, housing and other very basic necessities of life. With homelessness and poverty increasing, the Republicans want to slash $405 million from the Community Services Block Grant Program.

In cold weather states like Vermont, where the weather can get to 20 below zero, home heating assistance is critically important. In fact it is a life and death issue. At a time when home heating oil costs are soaring, the Republicans want to cut $400 million from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

After decades of progress cleaning up our air and water, and preventing much illness, the Republicans want to slash the EPA by 30 percent and undercut enforcement of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

Republicans also want to cut the WIC program, which provides supplemental nutrition for women, infants, and children. They want to cut that by $750 million.

Everybody understands we have problems with education right now, including large dropout rates. At a time when states are laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers, Republicans want to cut $5 billion from the Department of Education.

On and on and on it goes.

In my view, we do need to boldly address our deficit crisis, but we need to do it in a way that is fair -- that is not on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the children and the poor. In other words, we need shared sacrifice. The wealthiest people in this country, who are now doing phenomenally well, are also going to have to help us with deficit reduction. That is why I introduced legislation which would place a 5.4 percent emergency surtax on income over $1 million. The revenue would go into an Emergency Deficit Reduction Fund. Just doing that - asking millionaires to pay a little bit more in taxes after all the huge tax breaks they have received -- will bring in up to $50 billion a year.

I think that is a good idea, but it is not just me. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll recently asked the American people about the best ways to go forward on deficit reduction? Eighty-one percent of the American people believe it is totally acceptable or mostly acceptable to impose a surtax on millionaires to reduce the deficit. My legislation also would eliminate tax loopholes that enable the big oil companies from avoiding their fair share of taxes.

The American people get it. They understand that we cannot move toward deficit reduction just by cutting programs that working families, the middle class, and low-income people desperately need. They understand that serious, responsible deficit reduction requires shared sacrifice. They know that at a time when the top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent, that when the effective tax rate for the rich is now lower than at any time in recent history, that it is absurd not to ask the wealthiest people in this country to provide additional revenue to help us lower the deficit.

The federal budget is not just a bunch of big numbers. It is the document that speaks to the values of our country, our national priorities and our hopes for the future. At a time when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, it is a moral abomination to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, while cutting programs for the most vulnerable people in our society -- the children, the elderly, the sick and the hungry. The Republican budget proposal must be defeated.

Welcome to the Banana Republic: The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies

earned an average of 42 times as much

as the average worker in 1980,

but 531 times as much in 2001.

By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times
11/6/10

In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie.

But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

That’s the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans. Both parties agree on extending tax cuts on the first $250,000 of incomes, even for billionaires. Republicans would also cut taxes above that.

The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings.

At a time of 9.6 percent unemployment, wouldn’t it make more sense to finance a jobs program? For example, the money could be used to avoid laying off teachers and undermining American schools.

Likewise, an obvious priority in the worst economic downturn in 70 years should be to extend unemployment insurance benefits, some of which will be curtailed soon unless Congress renews them. Or there’s the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps train and support workers who have lost their jobs because of foreign trade. It will no longer apply to service workers after Jan. 1, unless Congress intervenes.

So we face a choice. Is our economic priority the jobless, or is it zillionaires? Banana Republic Continued

Nicholas Kristof Blog