Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

Other than Paul Krugman, generally when I read an article by an economist my eyes glaze over after a paragraph or two and I scan down to the bottom to get the highlights and move on to other reading.  This piece by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz for Vanity Fair--and it's great reference to our governement:  of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%--was not one of those dreary articles, and even better, has got me to thinking about the state of economic well-being for those of us who make up the poor, the working class, and the middle class.

It isn't pretty.

State legislatures are more interested in helping business than in helping us--South Carolina joined Michigan (fucking republicans), Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida in cutting the number of weeks one can collect unemployment ostensibly believing that cutting payroll taxes for businesses would create jobs.  Har-de-har-har.  One idiot actually said they had to cut it because some numb nut business owner had people turning down his job offers because they could make more on unemployment.  One supposes it never occured to the pinheads in the South Carolina legislature that the pay rates being offered were the problem.  Needless to say, the feelings of their constituents don't matter, as noted here in Michigan where republicans pushed through their $1.8 billion tax cuts for businesses despite Michigan residents being overwhelmingly against it.

Thanks to the republicans being in the White House for 20 of the last 30 years the Supreme Court is now made up of the best justices corporate money could buy--Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy--and they somehow seem to have misinterpreted the Constitution as being a document that protects the powerful and not the powerless.  It's not bad enough that corporations can now buy our elections, they can pretty much now cheat, swindle, and maim their clientele with impunity.

Guess what?  CEO pay now exceeds the levels it had reached before the Great Recession.  Guess what else?  Though I'm sure this won't surprise most people, ours doesn't.  How long, do you suppose, is it before ordinary people say enough is enough and begin to demand their fair share--by any means necessary?  My guess is not much longer.

Bad news from the No, Shit Sherlock Files:  it seems a new study proclaims what anyone who has ever worked a minimum wage job already knows...you can't survive financially on minimum wage.  Which is especially unfortunate because we seem to be moving in the direction of minimum wage jobs for the vast majority of us.  Back to the future anyone?

All of you with health insurance you received through your job raise your hands...not so fast there, Mrs. Jackson!  Work for a small business that provides health insurance?  All it takes is one debilitating illness of a co-worker and voila!  Health insurance rates rise to prohibitive levels (intentionally) and your company soon finds it can no longer afford the premiums, and next thing you know, no health insurance for you and your family.  And the problem with Obamacare--other than it doesn't go far enough--was what, exactly?

The class divide keeps growing--this is another of those "No, you've got to be shitting me!" pieces, but while we struggle to put food on our tables, Saks Fifth Avenue is doubling down on the rich.  And why shouldn't they?  Every time we turn around the republicans are giving away our future to put more money in those who already have enough's pockets.  And all those claims of how broke we are to justify cuts to education and healthcare and the poor?  Complete and total bullshit.  But it sells newspapers and T.V. news advertising and income inequality (which will be the downfall of this nation) does not.

The point is not to be Donnie Downer--most of us realize how shitty the economy and our own personal finances are these days.  The point is to remember--and get the Democratic Party off its ass to promote--that these problems, these issues, this unfairness, this inequality, was created by republicans who are absolutely no different than the boneheads they were from 2000-2008.  The only difference is now they realize how short-lived their reign can be and are striving to take as much away from us as they can before they are out of power.

Heaven help us if we don't fight back with everything we have.

Peace,
emaycee