As The Cookie Crumbles (WWH, 9/16/11): Blow Jobs.

Good mornin', good hippie folks, and all the Whos on Whoville

Poverty in the USofA = $22,113 for family of four. Forty-six million two hundred thousand Americans--are poor even by our own niggardly standards. That's 2.6 million more than two years ago. There are 16.4 million children living in poverty in this country. I tried to remember today when the last time I'd heard ThePrez utter the word, and couldn't.

Unemployment is epidemic. There are more than SIX unemployed workers for EVERY job opening. FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE applied at last summer's MCDonald's "jobs fair." They hired at about the same rate that Harvard accepted incoming freshmen: around 6 percent. And there hasn't been anything like this degree of wealth inequality since the Gilded Age.

Like most statistics, I suppose these numbers only really matter if you are one of those enumerated. A piece on Alternet the other day (linked in the accompanying text) highlights the problems with reporting such information along with the inadequacy of the framing of standard replies:

‎"The real numbers—like that the wealthiest 300,000 Americans received as much income as the bottom 150 million—sound too crazy to be true. As a result, proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy are so often dismissed as wild-eyed populist rhetoric—“soaking the rich”—rather than legitimate, reasonable policy prescriptions."

As usual, after a clear enunciation of the problem, the solution proposed by the author is: "YOU have to stop them":

"(Though they) would have you believe the (mal) distribution of wealth is a naturally occurring phenomenon, state investment and regulation plays an essential role in the structure of the economy. If we want a more equal playing field, we can have it—but we need to start now."

But of course, that's just the point: Start WHERE? These are federal tax laws "we" have to change. There is ONLY ONE way to ensure a more level playing field, and that is through legislation designed and intended to LEVEL that field; legislation to UNDO all the special favors, tax breaks, considerations, and deals that Gummint makes to ensure a "favorable business climate."

Understandably, the people who benefit MOST from the current inequities obviously do NOT have any desire to LOSE their advantages, and they OWN the process--BOTH so-called "parties," every voting machine, every candidate, every medium--by which any such changes would have to be implemented: the legislatures and legislators, and the regulators, along with the CorpoRat/SCUM "Press." So they've "fixed" things in their favor.

But the smelly throngs will clamor, so the other night the Prez belatedly but enthusiastically began flogging his new "jobs" act. Rotsa Ruck, sez I! Even if it passes, its immediate 'benefits' to workers in the form of tax reductions, will be deducted from their long-term well-being in the form of a damaged, reduced, perennially embattled Social Security fund. It's more of the WRONG solutions, and in any case, too-little-too-late, again.

So to me the recommendations of the Alternet writer have the quality of incantations against looming spirits. If you think St. Barry's got the stones (to say NOTHING of the desire) to face down THAT much concentrated wealth and power, I got a couple of LOVELY skyscrapers--a LITTLE damaged--in Lower Manhattan I'd love to show ya...

Til then, ask not for whom the cookie crumbles, hippies. It tolls for thee...

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