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I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at
$5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican
move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the minimum
wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the dark of
night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the minimum
wage, quietly killing it.
Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting
richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers -- this is
Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts.
According to the current issue of Mother Jones:
One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income.
Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any
one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent -- 37 million Americans -- are
officially poor.
Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000
and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are saved
$42,700.
In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, compared those who point out such
statistics as the one above to Adolph Hitler (surely he meant Stalin?).
Bush has diverted $750 million to "healthy marriages" by shifting
funds from social services, mostly childcare.
Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities
by 50 percent.
A series of related stats -- starting with the news that two out of three
new jobs are in the suburbs -- shows how the poor are further disadvantaged
in the job hunt by lack of public or private transportation.
Meanwhile, for those who have been following the collapse of the pension system,
please note a series in The Wall Street Journal by Ellen Schultz taking a hard
look at executive pension obligations:
"Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension
obligations in the United States, an average of 8 percent (of large companies).
Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches
$100 million."
"These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish
them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial findings."
"As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions
of regular retirees -- which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years
-- can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives."
"Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid until years from
now, drag down the earnings today. And they do so in a way that's disproportionate
to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated assets."
It seems to me that we've seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist
system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism
-- it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger
as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like The Wall
Street Journal's editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting that any
form of regulation is bad. But for whom?
It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair -- "justice
for all" seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged
the "lottery of life" in this country in ways we don't even know about
yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules are worse.
The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an inside track
over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won't see the full
consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years, but it is starting
to affect us already.
Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre
happenings.
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