God and Country
by PHIL JONES
There is a difference between prosperity and greed. Prosperity is broadly shared. Greed concentrates wealth into the hands of the few who grasp the fastest and the hardest. Prosperity adds no sorrow. Greed creates sorrow, injustice and imbalance on every hand. Prosperity goes hand-in-hand with freedom, justice and peace. Greed goes hand-in-hand with cruelty, oppression and unrest.
The very word “greed” has been used admiringly in the United States of America ever since the 1980s, as if greed were suddenly a virtue, rather than a vice. An event that happened early in the Obama administration illustrates just how thoroughly this new, revisionist view of greed took hold in our culture. A corrupt investor was busted by the government, and the federal spokesman noted that, “This shows that greed is not always good.” As if we all thought it was. Google the phrase “greed is not always good,” and look at the stunning number of people who have uttered this phrase, in various contexts, over the past few years. It testifies to the fact that for many years, greed stood unchallenged in our culture as a virtue! In the words of the bard, “Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
The beating heart of the greed that has captured and threatens to ruin America is called “supply-side” or “trickle down” economics. Ronald Reagan swept into power in 1980, promising a new avenue to prosperity. The idea was to cut taxes on the rich people. They would then invest the money to create jobs, and tax revenues would actually increase. And everybody would be better off, because, as they are fond of saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
Part of this theory turns out to have been true. Up to a point, cutting taxes on the rich does increase tax revenues, and some job creation does result. But that only works for so long. By 2001, that was no longer true. The Bush tax cuts added hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit, according to a study by the GAO, conducted about mid-way through Bush’s tenure in office. A similar study conducted in late 2010 showed that continuing the Bush tax cuts would add about $150 billion to the deficit each year, while reducing the unemployment rate by only about one tenth of one percent.
It is unquestionably true in nature that a rising tide lifts all boats. In fact, it lifts all boats equally. But have all boats been lifted by the “rising tide” of supply-side economics?
In 1980, the top five percent of American income earners averaged about $250,000 per year, while the median wage was $33,000. An 8-to-1 ratio. By the end of the Reagan-Bush era in 1992, the top five percent were averaging about $550,000, while the median wage had slid to $31,000. A 17-to-1 ratio. Massive numbers of people had already been forced into poverty and homelessness.
The trend continued mercilessly through the Clinton and Bush II years, and still continues today. The top one percent of Americans currently earns more than the bottom 50 percent combined. Out of every dollar earned in America today, 22 cents goes to the top one percent. In short, “Wealth and income have been shifted to the very top strata of our society in a way that we’ve never seen in history,” in the words of conservative economist David Stockman. Index after index shows America as a nation in decline. One more stunning fact: the United States now has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world.
So it turns out that supply-side economics is nothing but a con game. We gave money to the rich people in exchange for a promise that we would all prosper together. They broke that promise.
In reality, all that happens when you give money to rich people is they get a lot richer. Duh. They invest some of that money in job creation, sure, but they also invest in stock market speculation, hence the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble. All you have to do is look at the unemployment rate to see what great little job creators the rich people have turned out to be.
Oh, and there is one other vital thing that rich people invest their additional money in: political influence. They have pretty much bought a controlling interest in the federal government over the last 30 years.
The American people have been suckered.
