“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” (Mahatma Ghandi)
“If you don’t want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying you want a country based on Christian values. Because you don’t.” (Comedian John Fugelsang, sometimes mistakenly attributed to former President Jimmy Carter)
“A bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich people by telling the poor people that other poor people are the reason they’re poor.” (NOLA.com comment, Oct. 14, 2015)
By guest columnist Earthmother
Not being an economist, there is much I do not understand about macro-economics. But as an observer, I have some questions that I hope some of you who do understand economic structure can help me comprehend.
(Disclaimer: I am not an ascetic and have not followed Jesus’ teaching to sell all that I have and give the proceeds to the poor. We’ve worked hard, have a nice home and nice things, way more than we need. I try to remember that money is not the root of evil—the love of money is. In most ways I’m no different from any other middle class American.)
I get the thinking behind the desire of the “one percenters/oligarchs” (or whatever we choose to call the wealthy ultra conservatives) for a poor educational system for the masses while their own children attend outstanding non-public schools. This creates a latter day feudal, Dark Ages situation where people who are kept ignorant and uneducated are easier to control, and provide an unending source of cheap labor. With no critical thinking skills, the disadvantaged vote as they are told by overlord politicians and the hate media….never realizing that they themselves are members of “The Other” that the hatemongers are telling them are the reason their lives are difficult. (Here’s a sad little rabbit trail—to a suggestion that a woman speak to her school board member, she replied in fear, “Am I allowed to speak to elected people? Will I get fired from my job or punished?”)
Several journeys to Third World type countries make one highly sensitive to socio-political trends that could result in similar conditions in this great country of ours. Here’s a brief, firsthand glimpse of what a nation looks like when the wealthy can afford all the luxuries the world offers while the majority of the population cannot afford the basic necessities of life.
With a minimal tax base and small government, there are few government services, and those are often corrupt. Many streets are littered with garbage; people live in housing sometimes made of scraps, cardboard and tin—with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Children and adults, dressed in rags, beg for food or change, eat from garbage dumps, and root through trash for anything of use. People who get sick or injured often die because they are unable to afford basic healthcare; there is no government “safety net.”
People of all ages walk for a day to see a missionary doctor in a schoolhouse, then walk for a day back home. People bathe in and drink from polluted streams of water; they are infested with parasites, and die from infections that could be prevented with over-the-counter medicines but which are out of their reach.
When you’ve bought food for toddlers abandoned to the streets because the parents cannot afford to feed them, worked in an orphanage and talked to children who were rescued as army personnel and fun-loving civilians rid neighborhoods of “vermin” street children, you cherish you own kids more and pray such things could never happen at home. (Google “street children shot” if you think this is melodramatic.) Women have babies they can’t afford to feed, in patriarchal societies where women have few rights and no access to birth control and family planning services, and are beaten if they say no. Men abandon their families en masse either to work far away or just to avoid their responsibility. Women have little education or job skills to be able to support themselves and their children. Even scarce jobs in skilled labor areas such as welding and construction pay paltry wages, leading to illegal immigration.
Louisiana already looks much like a Third World country in many ways. The litter problem is a startling similarity. We have cities with neighborhoods with lovely homes, world class restaurants and attractions, sprawling university campuses that turn out graduates who go on to lucrative careers in prestigious fields.
But we are also a national leader in several less attractive quality-of-life areas: poverty, chronic disease, AIDS and STDs, violent crime and income inequality, and we remain near-last in education and literacy, health care accessibility and outcomes, life expectancy and economic parity. There is a possible correlation between Louisiana’s high poverty rate and poor education, etc., and the fact that we also have the highest percentage of the population incarcerated in the U.S., which has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, gives us the dubious distinction of being the prison capital of the entire world.
Add an unfair, regressive tax system, wages kept low so that people at the top can take home more, a criminal justice system that appears designed to perpetuate poverty, uncaring and/or ineffective leaders, all agenda-driven and backed by a sophisticated and effective propaganda machine, and we have a Third World-style society in the making.
So finally to my questions: Since the one-percenters already have more money than they can spend in several lifetimes, and the servant class is already sufficient in number to care for them, how does it benefit them to impoverish large numbers of people and create a huge underclass? With no money to buy things, the poor can’t purchase the goods and services to keep the wealthy wealthy.
Why inflict the unpleasant sights of abject poverty on their families? (Seeing these things is very disturbing if one has a heart at all.) Often the “let them eat cake” people don’t notice the poor and disadvantaged in our midst. No one has explained that people who are hungry, poorly nourished with non-nutritious foods, and chronically ill, are not good students or employees.
If not motivated by altruism, what about the purely pragmatic idea that throwing a bone to the underclass keeps the upper class safe in their homes and safe from people who have little and want to take theirs in order to survive. If you read local and national news it should come as no surprise that we already have a huge problem resulting from the struggle between the Haves and the Have-Nots.
Does denial of healthcare services to the less advantaged provide more and better care for the wealthy? Does paying a living wage and allowing employees to work enough hours to qualify for benefits and earn enough to pay the rent and buy food somehow diminish the rich? Why destroy traditional corporate pension plans and also attempt to cut Social Security benefits, so that retirees fall into poverty and lose their dignity?
How does it make sense to deny birth control and family planning services to poor women, then penalize them for getting pregnant by curtailing pre-natal care and seeking to withhold nutrition assistance to mothers and children? Why continue to insist that cost-free abstinence-only is all that’s needed to prevent pregnancy, when it’s proven to be rather unrealistic? Has anyone reasoned that when women are abstinent, theoretically their male significant others are, too? Just ask Sen. Bill Cassidy’s teen daughter if it works, and ask never-married spokeswoman-in-chief Bristol Palin how that abstinence thing is working out for her and her growing family.
Why do smart people ignore the failure of Friedman Chicago School economics, wherever it’s been implemented, worldwide? (Hint: read Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine.)
It would be naïve not to acknowledge the fact that every dollar (or euro, kroner, peso, lempira, or whatever) not given up by the wealthy in the form of reasonable taxes or fair wages and benefits for employees is another dollar in their bank account. Employers’ base pay rates on the value they place on work, and employers certainly have that right. What does it say about one’s attitude about the inherent value of people who perform menial task—those who clean their toilets, secure their property, and cook and serve their food? When is more than enough enough? And why is it desirable and moral to deny everyone else a reasonable standard of living?
Seriously, what is the rationale for the rich wanting to keep other people down? How does it benefit them? How does it enhance their lives, or take anything from them if other people have sufficient resources to live on? I was taught that the U.S. classless society was different from other countries where aristocrats controlled the peasants. Was that teaching wrong or just invalidated by human nature?
When did the term “common good” become socialist/un-American/anti-capitalist? When did it become alright to take funds from needy children, the poor, the sick, the disabled, and give those tax dollars to the rich in the form of corporate welfare, including sports franchises and motorsports tracks owned by mega-millionaires? Why do free market capitalists thinks it’s their right to demand government handouts to grow their wealth instead of investing their own money?
Awaiting enlightenment from folks wiser and more educated than I.
Louisiana Voice 
I will leave it to “AsYouLikeIt” to delve into the economic principles and theories explaining this sad state of affairs and simply say I have had those exact same questions for decades. However, I am much more concerned about the lack of acknowledgement of them, much less attempts to answer them, today than ever before. We have our collective heads in the sand and I fear we will reach a tipping point from which recovery will be arduous, if not impossible.
I do find the fact Bernie Sanders has such an appeal encouraging because it shows there are a significant number of people who question these exact things and are looking for a leader of like mind..
“…the economic principles and theories explaining this sad state of affairs…”
Paupers don’t pay taxes. With a broader fiscal policy space there are more jobs and fewer paupers. Debt ceilings interfere with that by restricting fiscal policy space.
One of the other problems results from what is termed “economic rents”. This is the reason that capitalist predation ends up as “privatization schemes”.
Another is underpayment of labor to such an extent that labor becomes unable to buy the goods produced by industry, i.e., serfdom.
Both are covered here –
http://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/the-paradox-of-financialized-industrialization/
Hats off to earthmother for having an excellent grasp of the situation. Mammon has an insatiable apetite. The solution is to stop feeding it.
Exactly my concern, Mr, Winham – we appear to be hurtling toward becoming a society most of us will not recognize. It has been said many times over the past seven years that Louisiana people vote against their own best interest, but this is a nation-wide phenomenon.
A very conservative, minimally-educated, low paid millennial said he votes R all the way because that is the party of the rich, he plans to be rich, and wants the advantages for the rich to be there when he has money. Asked how he planned to make so much money on a small salary, while supporting a family, he appeared perplexed. And then the light went off in his head.
Earthmother,
The person you reference here is an exemplar of the problem: people voting against their own self interest. I am glad you were able to get through to this person, but how can we reach the unenlightened masses? This is such a complex situation.
Our secondary schools and universities do a creditable job of teaching technical expertise, but with regard to exposure to moral principles, they are a wasteland. Technicians teach how to make a living, and we need that. But we need instruction on how to make life worth living. We can receive a good education with a few less technical courses. We can achieve a good life with more courses concerned with exposing students to good moral principles.
I agree with so much you have written here, Earth Mother. After pondering these same questions, I have concluded that when American society is well past the tipping point of becoming a Third World nation (as Louisiana pretty much already is), then those in power will finally acknowledge these issues, but in the meantime, they hope to kill off as many boomers as possible through poverty & restriction of access to affordable healthcare & enslave the subsequent generations more & more with inescapable debt & limited opportunities to change the status quo.
this was my father’s theory, when I asked him a few years ago, “what is the point of putting so many people so deep in debt” his reply was, “that’s how you make slaves.” He was 97 at the time.
And let us be clear about this because the people Earthmother is talking about are not “the government” which is who these people want us to believe they are. I have said for numerous years that “Big business (aka the ultra wealthy conservatives many whose names we do not know) will enslave us more rapidly, more completely, and far faster than big government ever could.” There was a time when most Americans knew who the 1%ers were, the Rockefeller’s, the Kennedy’s, the Bush’s, the Astor’s, the Carnegie’s etc.etc. but the ranks have swollen so large that we do not have a clue any more. That makes them seem as some enormous monolithic block, obscure, impenetrable and overpowering.
10.13.15 NY TIMES Op-Ed The Republicans’ Incompetence Caucus – David Brooks
A comment on the above op-ed mirrors your thoughts:
ALEC, Grover Norquist, the Koch brothers, the NRA, Big oil, big pharma, are just some of the puppet masters that have caused the “slow degradation over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals.” Not one of these people or institutions were elected to represent the people of America, and yet they govern our nation. Seems the Republicans forgot that the government is for the people, by the people, of the people.
du chicot – Pull up the Forbes list of billionaires. That is a good starting point to see who the 1% are.
Love your post Earthmother and love the last quote even more.
Earthmother,
You have articulated so eloquently thoughts I have previously pondered. The actions of the 1% appear counterintuitive. It’s to no one’s advantage to destroy the middle and working classes. It makes no sense. I truly fear for the future of the country if this situation continues unabated. I appreciate your insight.
Thank you for articulating these thoughts so well. I have many of the same questions and concerns, but when I try to bring them up for discussion with my peers, all they want to talk about is the Kardashians and LSU football.
Try to talk about the crushing income inequality and how that links to the growing crime rate in this state and country, and you’d be met with an awkward silence. Mention people making minimum wage and working 3 jobs to feed and clothe their children, and someone will scorn you for being a “liberal.” I’m afraid to “like” a post about saving Planned Parenthood on Facebook because I’ll be inundated with harsh comments attacking my morality. Bring up my growing concern about how lax campaign finance laws are allowing corporations and billionaires to govern our country, and I’m met with blank stares. And, God forbid I should agree that something must be done about gun control – sheesh! I can’t imagine how my growing fear of getting gunned down in a mall, school, movie theater, or even the Home Depot parking lot (by a concealed weapon carrying vigilante shooting at a shoplifter) would interfere with a Southerner’s right to own an entire arsenal of assault rifles.????
I feel like we are hurtling down in a slippery-slope of insanity, and people are not bright enough, too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses, or too apathetic (or all three) to see how damaging many of these Republican-led policies have been/will be to our state and country. Not letting the Dems off the hook, but in La., there are so few of them in office anymore that it’s hard to blame the current state of our State on them.
Perhaps Earthmother should pre-empt the LSU-FL game for a “come to Jesus” talk with his flock to ask her questions? Maybe we should crowd-fund a commercial during the Super Bowl? Wasted money, I’m sure. I think we’re way past believing that most people actually care enough to listen to rational thought.
P.S. I was totally appalled during the mid-term elections when a FB friend posted that her 8-yr-old son was “cheering for the Republican winners as the election returns were coming in.” They were encouraging this behavior. An 8-yr-old has absolutely no grasp of political concepts, ideologies, consequences, etc. He was just cheering for his perceived “team.” He wanted his team to win without regard for the fact that the winners of an election have political agendas, promises to campaign donors to keep, extremist constituents to please – and most of all that their policies will touch the lives of millions of people over the course of their tenure.
This is not an LSU game, people! These are real elections with real consequences. Encouraging your 8-yr-old to cheer for politicians simply because they are affiliate with a certain party is beyond ridiculous.
I was even more appalled at a recent dinner when a friend asked me if she should vote for Dardenne for Gov. I said, “sure, anybody but Vitter.” But then, I asked her if she would consider voting for Edwards. She said “isn’t he a Democrat?” – like I had asked her if she would sit on a public toilet seat. I asked her if she had viewed any of the archived videos of him in action at the Legislature, or if she knew he was a strong advocate for teachers, state workers, retirees, veterans, children with special needs, low-wage workers, and low-income families. She said no, but she wouldn’t consider voting for him because he didn’t have that “R” behind his name. I asked her what was it about the Republican ideology that made her so adamant about voting for a certain party. Her reply – “the Democrats are all Obama-supporters.” Okaaaaayyyy. Next question – “What has Obama done while in office that has made you so against him?” Answer – Obamacare,.” Just for fun, I asked her what she didn’t like about the Affordable Care Act. Her reply – “he’s making employers provide healthcare to workers.” I said, I’m pretty sure they are still paying an employee premium, so it’s not quite a give-away. I asked her if she had employer-sponsored healthcare, and wasn’t it nice to be able go to the doctor when she was sick. “Well, yes, of course.” And yet, she didn’t see the irony of that.
I gave up and asked what has been happening on the Kardashians lately.
The struggle is real.
I’ve had the same discussion with family members. They don’t want to vote for John Bel Edwards because he is a democrat and they associate him with Obama. That is the only “dirt” Vitter could find on him for his attack ads. Vitter won’t participate in debates or take questions from the media. I listened to many legislative sessions in which John Bel Edwards did not back down to the Jindal administration. He is very impressive! If he were to switch to the Republican Party, I believe he would have a land slide victory.
John Bel Edwards is by far the best hope for Louisiana!
Thanks, Earthmother! Keep up the good fight.
@Stephen Winham
I’ll have to remark that I, like earthmother, am not an economist. That fact is one of the reasons I provide links to economic sites that have explanations
of the causes of our economic woes, plus the fact that they are already well discussed on these sites without my having to waste time in repeating
discourse. They’re great resources that I hope will be used extensively. However, I have given to economics a large part on my reading lists along with the subject of gpvernment to the extent that I feel confident in commenting on various aspects of both.
“…I am much more concerned about the lack of acknowledgement of them…”
One of the major problems with this is that we are being constantly inundated with ‘junk economics’ and myths of ‘free markets’ being promulgated and
propagandized thru so-called ‘conservative media’ and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who has a local chapter in every parish and county seat in the country and which has an extraordinary influence on the business community in those locations. One way of diminishing the impact of these organizations is to ask every mom and pop business owner exactly what will become of his business when the kleptocrats pauparize the majority of his customers by sending jobs overseas and idling and underpaying labor?!
A lot of the so called complexity within neoliberal economics is brought about by the intentional obliquity with which it’s discussed so that the purveyors may appear as the high priests of an esoteric knowledgebase. In such manner they may easily speak to one thing while they do another. One way to pierce the veil of this complexity is to apply it in light of a primitive society to see how it operates. Can you imagine how long one of the plains Indian chiefs would have lasted if, after a period without sufficient game and buffalo herds began arriving in the area, he proclaimed that a significant number of the hunters were forthwith ‘unemployed’? There is no such thing as a ‘shortage’ of jobs/employment in primitive cultures. They will turn their hands to available resources based upon need.
Money has two major utilitarian features – as a medium of exchange and as a unit of account. I’ll speak to the medium of exchange here. As a medium of
exchange, money has it’s greatest economic effects the broader and deeper it’s circulation throughout the economy. In fact, the more hands it touches the
greater it’s economic effects. When it’s circulation is redirected from productive sectors of the economy (goods) to non-productive sectors such as the financial sector, which produces nothing, it’s utility is greatly diminished. Yet, due to the ‘magic of compounding interest’ the financial sector makes
greater and greater claims upon the resources of the productive sectors, which is the reason for progressive taxation, to prevent the accumulation of
economic rents or as John Maynard Keynes would have it, to effect the ‘euthanasia of the rentiers’. When money’s circulation is greatly decreased to
certain sectors, as when labor is idled, again, it’s utility is greatly diminished. Demand falls, tax revenues fall and the economy/society suffers. I could go on but the resources are readily available should anyone apply themselves via the sites I’ve mentioned. For further discussion in this area search for ‘economic rents’ on those sites.
Marx wrote that labor is the source of all wealth. That statement is, on it’s face, prima facia, without any doubt and I say this with the uttermost redundancy intended. Any common fool can see that if all the multi-millionaires and billionaires sit down on the job for two weeks, hardly anyone will notice, but if all common and skilled labor sits down for two weeks shortages begin appearing, things you need will not be available, garbage piles up in the streets. A billionaire whose financial worth is estimated at $37 billion will make 37,ooo millionaires if such is redistributed. I do not believe that a billionaire, nor any one man in history can possibly have contributed to society sufficiently to be worthy of that amount of wealth in any society that has ever existed on the face of the earth. So how did he get his money in such amounts, which by the way, essentially goes nowhere towards real production except where it can be used to extract even more wealth???
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=&as_epq=junk+economics&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fmichael-hudson.com%2F&as_occt=&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=not+filtered+by+license
Oops, I’m ranting. But ’tis all madness, because the ideologies which are being promulgated are at the same time destroying the markets upon which many,
but not all, of these fortunes have been built. In this country and Europe at least, China’s another story.
@earthmother
“…Louisiana people vote against their own best interest, but this is a nation-wide phenomenon.”
I’ve thought long and hard about this. What you will discover is that the two major reasons that get the attention and allegiance of those that are
actually being harmed is taxes and inflation. This is what’s driving their coherence to the conservative movement and the loss of constituents to the
democratic party and the loss of constituents is what’s driving the democratic party ideologically to the right along with the influence of the usual suspects. Constituents are told that their taxes will be lessened when in truth the tax base is being shifted from the 1% onto them, the least able to pay.
They’re also being frightened by constant ‘warnings’ (post WWI Germany/Zimbabwe as examples) about the possibility of inflation which is being blamed on government fiscal profligacy. This gives conservatives (economic neo-liberals) the political freedom to demand ceilings on Federal deficits which harms them further by limiting the circulation of money, thus economic opportunity and which also fits hand-in-glove with the conservative strategy to ‘defund the left’ as most benficiaries of government social programs are democrats. The stagflation of the 70’s and early 80’s is still within recent memory, so serves to give some evidence to this govt. deficit ideology of rising prices. The trouble with that is that the inflation of that period was actually driven by oligarchical control (OPEC) of resources, oil. This inflated pricing on everything energy and transportation related, so thus fed throughout the economy. It wasn’t excess government spending, it was energy price inflation (supply driven) whose ‘bubble’ popped about ’82 just in time for Reagan to then increase government spending and bring about the ‘conservative miracle’ (aka trickle-down economics) of tax reduction. The tax reduction plan was actually a copy of a John Kennedy’s tax reduction plan, so the Republicans didn’t even originate it. Conservatives will tell you these tax reductions were the reason for the economic recovery but it was the simultaneous increased government spending that did it. This isn’t to say that the Vietnam war, govt. spending and monetary policy had no impact on inflation at all. It’s just that energy price inflation was the primary driver. As evidence against the validity of these conservative ideologies please note that we still have many of the social programs that existed then as well as greatly expanded defense spending of thirteen years duration in addition to an extraordinary hand-out to the financial sector and historically low Fed Funds interest rate yet we’re still below an intended Fed inflation target of 2%. But what is inflating bubble-wise is the stock market caused by easy money in the financial sector. The lesser haves have been injured for so long and to such an extant by these two factors that they are highly suggestive to any promise of relief. Point made?
All of these arguments and discussions have been made and far better than I can make them at http://neweconomicperspectives.org/ or one of the sites on their blogroll. If you want more verbal ammunition to fight against this insanity, please use these resources. Please. Find out who James K. Galbraith, Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton (Bernie’s pick for Senate minority economic adviser), Warren Mosler and Michael Hudson are. Find out what they’re saying and at the same time who their antecedents are and what they said. They make economics sensible for the average person Then you’ll be able to laugh at the mutterings of the usual pompous conservative AH and cause him to stop in his tracks. Why? Because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He’s just repeating the last known politically successful meme. If they insist on making themselves fools, give them that opportunity.
Excellent post, earthmother. During the debate, Vitter repeated he does not favor raising the minimum wage. He said he believes in faith, family, education, and hard work. How can he say he favors families and hard work, when working families cannot earn a living wage by holding down two and sometimes three jobs? How does Vitter reconcile his lack of compassion for the least among us with his Christian faith?
One thought that often comes to my mind is that people without access to basic health care who walk among us could possibly be suffering from undetected infectious diseases that could spread throughout the population. If only out of self interest, we should all support basic health care for everyone. Even the wealthy in their gated communities and guarded apartment buildings have servants and must come out of their enclaves sometimes and mingle with ordinary people to conduct business, shop, and eat at restaurants. Unless the rich plan to completely segregate themselves and mingle only with their peers, they should surely be concerned.
The answer is simple, they all lost their minds. It’s a world gone mad. But the game is on and who has time for all this? Football is far more important.