At the time of the French Revolution, approximately 40% of France's citizens were living in poverty. While there were many reasons and many of different financial stations that led to the demise of the monarchy, one has to imagine that poverty-stricken forty percent fought with a lot more desperation than those of a higher financial status. Many parents, one supposes, are capable of just about any atrocity when unable to feed their children and lacking any social safety net.
Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz noted this week in a piece for The New York Times that the biggest impediment to our economic recovery from The Great Recession is income inequality. (Aside: Wouldn't it be nice if just once we had a Presidential administration that would actually listen to people like Dr. Stiglitz who actually give a shit about people like us?) Dr. Stiglitz outlines the causes and offers solutions, but alas offers no concrete proposals for how we cure the greed of America's upper financial crust, or make our political leaders less subservient to them.
At a time when one in six Americans lives in poverty, when one in five had trouble finding enough money to pay for food...one has to wonder how long America's poor and soon to be poor are going to stand in front of the restaurant window, with their hungry children in tow, and stare in at our financial elite as they dine on filet mignon before the rocks come crashing through that restaurant window.
In the land of Milk and Honey, when milk and honey is the promise for fair labor, not delivering milk and honey for fair labor is eventually going to haunt you.
One wonders if our wealthy friends and our political leaders realize that...
Peace,
emaycee
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I've been waiting to comment because I've been debating whether to do this as an extended comment on my blog or comment here, and since no one reads my blog, here is better.
ReplyDeleteI saw a movie at Sundance called Inequality for All. It was a documentary based on a book by Robert Reich. What struck me about this blog, just days after seeing that, was that Clinton did listen to a guy like Stiglitz. The movie showed speeches by both Clinton and Reich, when they were both in office. They spoke of income inequality and investing in people.
I guess what I have to wonder is whether this is a problem that no one will listen to them or that the whole system is fucked. I lean toward the latter. I just don't know that Capitalism doesn't require greed due to human nature.
However, I must admit that Clinton had Reich as his Labor Sec., while also having Larry Summers somewhere in there. So maybe the problem is corporatist Democrats. Then again, can we have something different in the current system?
I don't know, but I hope you see my dilemma. Income inequality is a problem. But I don't know that listening to Stiglitz-like folk can solve the problem, when I think Reich probably wasn't too far off. Maybe we need the right person listening. Or maybe we need a whole new mechanism to listen with.
A few points...
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, Clinton did have the best economy for the poor and the middle class in my adult lifetime (I understand the economy of the sixties was also quite good for those on the lower end of the economic spectrum, but I was eleven when the sixties ended and much more concerned with the Giants winning the World Series--only had another forty years or so of waiting for that one!). Clinton must have listened somewhat to those who are more in our court.
Also, I wonder how much influence Reich could have had being Labor Secretary--I'm not an expert on the inner workings of Presidential administations, but I'd think he'd have to spend most of his time dealing with the problems of labor, which pretty much meant he was on the defensive, just trying to keep the plight of workers from getting worse in our anti-worker environment.
Finally, Clinton also became embroiled in a sex scandal of his own making and had to spend a lot of political capital just to keep himself in office. I've never thought he was a Liberal with a capital L, so I don't know if he would have been all that interested in pushing the envelope anyway, but the Lewinsky affair certainly killed any chance that he might have.