Linda Beale at ataxingmatter notes and demolishes the amazing and imaginary confluence of thought as advanced by a possibly-only-suitable-for-fish-wrap major newspaper on how to reduce the deficit and plunge the US middle class back into indentured servitude at the same time. Beale says it better and more comprehensively than I can.
Obama doesn't seem willing to fight any fight. He quits before he starts, disgusting liberals who understand that a democracy cannot survive based on the kind of "free market capitalism" espoused by the oligarchs who benefit from it. So there is already talk of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which have nothing at all to do with jobs, entrepreneurship, innovation, or growth of the US economy and everything imaginable to do with elitism, power, and hording of productivity gains for the G.W. Bush fan club of have-mores.
So it is perhaps not so surprising that the WaPo is already declaring that a "consensus is forming on what steps to take in cutting the deficit." Story by Lori Montgomery, WaPo, Nov. 22, 2010. Ms. Montgomery takes the pundits and neo-con/neo-lib descriptions as god's truth as she describes "a surprising consensus" around "the sacrifices necessary to achieve those goals [of less debt and smaller government]" being "Big cuts at the Pentagon. Higher taxes, including those on home ownership and health care. Smaller Social Security checks and higher Medicare premiums." Once again, the neo-con faction has used its corporate-owned media to hone its message that there is no choice (false note of sadness) but to cut those deficit-causing "entitlements" like Social Security and Medicare.
Please read all of Beale's post. She provides a comprehensive and true analysis of the issues and an invaluable list of the Bowles-Simpson Committee members' a priori tax and economic predilections that resulted in (surprise!) recommendations to gut the middle class and the elderly.
hat tip, rjs.
I hope we are nowhere near this exigency yet, but I catch myself wondering: if the government, which devises and then enforces the laws, and also regulatory agencies either within or peripheral to government, have been captured to the service of non-citizen interests, then what can be done?
Americans' collective efforts produce great wealth and power, but the fraction of this returned to them as income is modest and household income has not grown in step with productivity, but has been flat for 30 years.
Promises made to workers in the form of pensions and other investments has been pissed away by those caretaking them, or eroded by increased pressures on the household pocketbook. It seems to me that if the promise-merchants cannot appropriate these investments, they are content to evaporate them -- in any event, avoid returning them to the owners if possible.
One's labour cannot be saved up and used when needed or wanted, but must be exercised (whether paid or not) on a daily basis, or else be wasted. Till now, a pension was a good way to defer part of one's pay to a time when work became impossible. But these "promises" to Americans have been widely extinguished, and others are under attack, while citizens' promises to creditors are still being enforced. Whatever you call it, however soft the walls of such a container, the result is a species of peonage.
So, what are citizens to do?
Noni
Posted by: Noni Mausa | 11/24/2010 at 07:59 PM