NYTimes OP-ED:
Mr. Paul’s Discredited Campaign
Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Now, making things worse, he has failed to convincingly repudiate racist remarks that were published under his name for years — or the enthusiastic support he is getting from racist groups.
Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who is doing particularly well in Iowa’s precaucus polls, published several newsletters in the ’80s and ’90s with names like the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Political Report. The newsletters interspersed libertarian political and investment commentary with racial bigotry, anti-Semitism and far-right paranoia.
Among other offensive statements, the newsletters said that 95 percent of Washington’s black males were criminals, and they described the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday as “Hate Whitey Day.” One 1993 article appeared under a headline lamenting the country’s “disappearing white majority.” Other articles suggested that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, praised the Louisiana racist David Duke and accused some gay men with AIDS of deliberately spreading the disease, “perhaps out of a pathological hatred.”
A direct-mail ad for the newsletters from around 1993 warned of a “coming race war in our big cities” and said there was a “federal-homosexual cover-up” to suppress the impact of AIDS.
Mr. Paul, who, beginning in 2008, has disavowed the articles and their ideas, now says that most of them were written by others and that he was unaware of their content. Even if that were the case, it suggests a stupendous level of negligence that should force a reconsideration by anyone considering entrusting him with the White House.
When the newsletters first became an issue during his Congressional campaigns in the 1990s, however, he did not deny writing some of them or knowing about them.
Mr. Paul has never given a full and detailed accounting of who wrote the newsletters and what his role was in overseeing their publication. It’s especially important that he do so immediately. Those writings have certainly not been forgotten by white supremacist and militia groups that are promoting his candidacy in Iowa and in New Hampshire.
The Times reported on Sunday that dozens of members of the white nationalist Web site Stormfront are volunteering for the Paul campaign, along with far-right militias, survivalists and anti-Zionist groups. Don Black, the Stormfront director, said his members were drawn to Mr. Paul by the newsletters and his positions against immigration and the Fed (run by Jews, Mr. Black said), even if Mr. Paul were not himself a white nationalist.
Mr. Paul, saying he still hopes to “convert” these supporters to his views, has refused to disavow them or to chase them out of his campaign. If he does not do so, he will leave a lasting stain on his candidacy, on the libertarian movement and, very possibly, on the Iowa caucuses.
10.12.11
business talk vs. busiiness sense
What Is Business Waiting For?
By JOE NOCERA
Our current government isn’t going to create jobs, so it’s up to business to do it.
_____________________________
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
There's a reason your scenario won't happen, and it has nothing to do with fear of going first. It centers on greed, but it's a little more complicated. And not surprisingly, Congressional Republicans figure into the reason business won't be "altruistic" enough to increase the American labor force.
Warren Buffett made a compelling case in yesterday's Times for raising taxes on the rich. That, of course, includes the corporate rich. He pointed out that when taxes on investments were much higher, investors still invested and corporations were big jobs producers.
So why not now? Yves Smith, writing in Salon, notes that what corporate management really wants is "a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk."
So -- in the World According to Marie -- where does corporate management get that "certainty" that profits -- and their own pay -- will increase? From Republicans in Congress. A corporation's small investment in lobbyists will yield some fabulous tax breaks. Tax cuts mean higher profits -- profits gained with very little outlay, and comparatively little risk.
Thus, not only do lower corporate taxes not create jobs, as you say, the probability of Republicans bestowing tax breaks on corporations is actually a disincentive to jobs creation. Developing, making & marketing new products is a big risk -- an unknown unknown. Lobbying Congress is a cheap corporate investment that will yield the same profits with very little effort & very little risk. Congressional Republicans are clamoring to comply.
As long as Republicans and ConservaDems rule, don't expect corporate management to put Americans to work. Congress keeps telling them there's an easier way to make a buck.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
John Farrish
Lafayette, LA
It is to laugh. Surely you jest.
The quest for immediate gratification in the form of short term profits has been institutionalized. If some company were to announce it will be foregoing short term profits for the purpose of putting people back to work, the stock value would tank, stockholders would revolt, and company officers would wave their seven figure salaries goodbye.
Anyway, this plan wouldn't work unless a large number of businesses bought into it, because one company hiring a few hundred employees isn't going to help sell stuff to people who don't have any money. And if other people aren't hiring along with the one, there won't be anybody to purchase the excess inventory that was just created.
The mistake you're making here, Mr. Nocera, is the same one supply siders have been making for a very long time: The economy is not supply driven; it's demand driven, and until people have money to spend, not one single "job creator" is ever going to spend a penny making anything. The way to put people to work is to put them to work. Jan Schakowsky, at least, gets this.
When I was working on my bachelor's degree in business administration they taught us about stakeholders. The stakeholders in a business, we were taught, used to be the company's stockholders alone, but that was no longer the case. My professors told me we lived in a much more enlightened society in which not just stockholders, but employees, customers, and the communities in which companies were located were all seen to have a legitimate stake in a company's performance, and managers were ethically bound to serve them all.
My professors lied to me. No such sense of obligation exists, not to employees, not to customers, and not to communities. Certainly not among corporate boards sitting on record piles of cash; their only sense of responsibility is to their own bank accounts. And if what has happened over the last 30 years isn't enough to convince you, then nothing ever will.
Morton Kurzweil
Margate, Florida
Germany has a safety net if universal health care, education, and unemployment income. The investment in workers in a country that has a favorable trade balance, that doesn't use cheap foreign labor to undercut consumer income or permit cash flow to safe havens and relies on the United States to spend an unsustainable level of its budget on international defense, is a great example of where we should be economically - except that our profligacy and uncontrolled "free trade" has been the cause of worldwide recession.
We do not need a smaller government. Our problem is small minds fixated upon the myth of American Christian Dominion, a belief in the manifest destiny of America to lead the world to a new social and moral
order.
That is the Tea Party agenda, a cheap knock off of nineteenth century Western empire building,
We are confused by those who insist that corporations are people with the people who are the We in "We the People". We are confused by those who suggest that morality requires a religious basis. We are confused by those who speak of human rights as they are defined by some religious extremist group.
We need to regain our secular balance if we are to have a government responsible to all the people all of the time.
Economic theories benefit those who would control an economy. Political theories in a secular democracy should respond to the needs of all.
DonB
Reno, NV
Why should we expect business to hire people they don't need?
As a businessman who is not hiring, I can only ask the above. The problem is simply lack of demand for goods and services. Period. It has been clearly documented that the American people have lost something on the order of $7.38 trillion in wealth since 2008. This is the position of the middle class, which heretofore represented 70% of the GDP:
(1) Their houses (their principal asset) are still losing value,
(2) they're not too sure they'll have the same job paying the same wages next year, and
(3) their level of debt is still very high, particularly given (1) and (2).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Obama needs to buckle down, do a little studying, then come back with his silver tongue, explain clearly what has befallen the middle class over the past 35 years (as Robert Reich has done) and sell infrastructure projects to kick this place into gear. If the repubs don't go along, nail them to the wall with facts, over and over and over again until the history has sunk in.
cbi
Pennsylvania
Joe - I ran a company for 25 years. We had good years and years not so good. We weathered 3 recessions and in all those years I only had to let one person go (out of a staff of 40) because of the economy or product demand. How did we survive? First, in bad years, none of us got raises. As the CEO, I had the very same benefits that my employees had. I received no special perks, got no golden parachute from our board and traveled in coach (150,000 miles per year on average). I set up a pension program for employees that they did not have to put a penny in, but they knew was in lieu of a slightly larger salary. In my 25 years only two employees left the company even though they had better offers. They liked what we did, how we did, and were committed to making it work.
We did put people first. Our employees and our customers. In good years we put the money back into the business, not into bonuses or hiring unneeded staff. We expanded as we saw opportunity and found that recessions created opportunities as our competitors fell by the wayside because of their extensive over-borrowing and greed during their good times.
Yes, we were a small business, but all the Fortune 500 companies in our region learned lessons from us. In fact, at a local meeting of business executives back in 2001, I sat next to the CEOs of three Fortune 500 companies. They were asking me how we kept profitable during those tough times. I said just look out the door. My 8 year old car was parked in a spot next to the three limos with drivers waiting to take these "titans of industry" back the three or four miles to their isolated headquarters. The looked at me with glazed eyes. They didn't get it. And most of the leaders of our biggest companies still don't get it.
Satisfied customers create more business. Respecting employees and creating a level playing field spawns creativity. And ultimately that creates jobs and growth, no matter how small or big the company.
G. Morris
NY and NJ
US corporations are still tied to the Jack Welch dictums:
Keep Full Time Employees to a absolute minimum,
Create a two-tier employee structure with management paid mostly in stock options,
Even our universities have embraced this short-sighted mandate with over 70% of college students now being taught by temps (adjuncts) and the dream of tenure thrown over-board. The average age of a tenured professor is now 55; they shoud be put on the endangered list. They only get to work if their courses are filled by cash-carrying students.
Productivity is high, wages are low and corporate profits are massive. And the income paradigm of our country looks like a template for a Banana Republic.
My children and their spouses work 80 hours a week while some of their friends are either unemployed or waiting tables. They are all well-educated, highly skilled and under utilized by a management class that is addicted to short-term movements in stock prices. Jack Welch's management philosophy only works in the short -term which is now behind us.
Jerry Kriss
Baltimore, MD
Many of the writers above have noted the fallacy in Mr. Nocera's suggestion---that U.S. businesses would voluntarily create jobs in the absence of any increased demand. It's the same fallacy promulgated by the supply-side economists. Our economy is demand driven, and employers won't hire until there is increased demand. That's why they'r sitting on hoards of cash.
In situations like this, the only entity that increase demand is the government. Increased government spending puts more money in people's pockets that they can spend, and demand goes up. How do we pay for that? Increasing taxes! If businesses won't spend the hoarded cash (much of it accumulated from the Bush tax cuts), then the government should. Increased capital gains taxes and taxes on corporate dividends will actually *increase* job creation by business. The higher tax gives them an incentive to put their money back into the business. While hiring workers immediately is not a good idea, plowing that money into refurbished equipment, new equipment, and improved facilities is an investment in the future that will pay off when demand returns. Companies avoid taxes then because that moneyt has turned into a business expense. This purchasing in upgrades also increases demand and stimulates the economy. With higher tax rates, hiring more employees actually will cost a business *less* in net income. The taxed profit has been turned into a business expense.
The evidence for all this is quite clear in the economic record. The economy always boomed when marginal tax rates and taxes on dividends and capital gains were higher, during the Eisenhower era and the Clinton presidency. We should be pushing for higher taxes in these areas now to boost the economy.
John F. McBride
Seattle, WA
Growing up through the Korean War and Cold War years, then Vietnam, I assumed the truth of the constant assertion of living in America: that America is superior and because it is superior everyone wants to live here.
But the decades have gone by and I was disillusioned with time. America has some superior qualities, but isn't carte blanche superior. There are other methods in the world that work as well, and in many cases that work better.
Germany's societal understanding about jobs and employment is one. The much lower cost of health care in other nations and yet equal and even superior care is another.
A truth about America is that we in some large minority, even at times a majority, prefer belief, believing what America is, to the truth.
Sadly our Republican Party in general, and the Tea Party specifically, our extreme right conservatism, refuses to accept that it can learn from others and to insist that even if an idea has been tried time and again, during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years, and failed, it will work. It has to work.
Maybe you're right Mr. Nocera, and corporations will voluntarily take on solving our employment problem. But I don't believe it. That's not happened in this nation before because our business model prefers strict capitalism and I know it. I'd have be as insane, in trusting after all this time that corporations can be trusted this first time to take this one as Republicans are in asserting that this time supply side and cutting spending in a severe contraction will work even though it never has before in the history of economics.
I'm not that crazy. Once burned, in my case, twice shy.
dickginnold
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Great article, Joe. I trained as an economist in the l950s when 'enlightened self interest' was the key word and stocks traded in the 5/10 PE range. Corporate CEOs didn't get rich. There might have been a few $1 to 2M CEOS, but most made a couple hundred thousand. To get through school for a couple years I piled pigs and poured metal for Kaiser Aluminum. I could earn $7,000 with overtime. Henry Kaiser, the CEO got about $200K, 30 times my wage. Our union was respected. Now US CEOs make 10s of millions, maybe up to 100M,, or 100s of times worker salaries,while their corporations are breaking unions, cutting benefits, laying off people, paying off Congressional represenatives and frequently losing money.
In 2008 I visited my relatives in Germany and travelled the country from Berlin to Hamburg. Amazing. Corporate boards have union reps and there is a social compact to share sacrifice, the origin of the hours reduction policy to reduce unemployment.
The country and its flourishing economy puts us to shame, full of windpower and several kinds of fast, modern transit, in its infrastructure, in the mixture of nationalities, social benefits and dignity of workers. I saw huge numbers of export containers in Hamburg, which exports 10M containers a year, mostly filled with industrial goods. During my visit, a Berlin paper had a spread on the top CEO salaries in Germany, major companies like Lufthansa, BMW. I don't believe there was a one above 1 to 3 M Euros,around 40 times the worker earnings, like we had it 60 years ago. They learned democratic capitalism, while the US was taken over by Wall Street and corporate rapists.
Jumper
South Carolina
Twenty-five years ago a young associate professor of business I knew relentlessly repeated to everyone who'd listen a key difference between Japanese managers and U.S. managers. Japanese managers could recite their market share but seldom knew their return on investment (ROI.) U.S. managers could recite their ROI but seldom knew their market share.
This same associate professor condemned the U.S. quarterly-report fixation. It was one of many indicators but it led U.S. investors to want every quarter to be better than the last. Simple algebra with exponents shows that folly.
Today, that former associate professor is Chair of the Department with no shortage of students.
An important question will be how the companies will judge the success of their efforts. Are they willing to be patient? Are workers willing to start at a lower salary? Are corporations willing to raise the pay as profits increase? Some may bring up unions. Only 6.9% of the U.S. private sector workforce is in unions.
You mention the Germans, but the Japanese also have a practice of setting aside money to keep workers on the job. The work may involve a lot of equipment and building maintenance but they are kept employed.
What's also going on in Japan and Germany is that fear is minimized in the workplace. When workplace fear is minimized, productivity increases. People pay attention to productivity and creativity rather than worrying about how to word their resume, or worrying about what they need to ask HR. They discuss coordinating efficiency or product improvement rather than discussing the latest company rumors.
In early 1914, at the height of a two year recession, Henry Ford doubled the daily wage to $5.00. He also cut the work day to eight hours. He was able to keep workers on the job and he was able to run three shifts. Car prices dropped.
Those were benefits to his corporation but those changes also had positive impact on American prosperity and standard of living in general.
By JOE NOCERA
Our current government isn’t going to create jobs, so it’s up to business to do it.
_____________________________
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
There's a reason your scenario won't happen, and it has nothing to do with fear of going first. It centers on greed, but it's a little more complicated. And not surprisingly, Congressional Republicans figure into the reason business won't be "altruistic" enough to increase the American labor force.
Warren Buffett made a compelling case in yesterday's Times for raising taxes on the rich. That, of course, includes the corporate rich. He pointed out that when taxes on investments were much higher, investors still invested and corporations were big jobs producers.
So why not now? Yves Smith, writing in Salon, notes that what corporate management really wants is "a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk."
So -- in the World According to Marie -- where does corporate management get that "certainty" that profits -- and their own pay -- will increase? From Republicans in Congress. A corporation's small investment in lobbyists will yield some fabulous tax breaks. Tax cuts mean higher profits -- profits gained with very little outlay, and comparatively little risk.
Thus, not only do lower corporate taxes not create jobs, as you say, the probability of Republicans bestowing tax breaks on corporations is actually a disincentive to jobs creation. Developing, making & marketing new products is a big risk -- an unknown unknown. Lobbying Congress is a cheap corporate investment that will yield the same profits with very little effort & very little risk. Congressional Republicans are clamoring to comply.
As long as Republicans and ConservaDems rule, don't expect corporate management to put Americans to work. Congress keeps telling them there's an easier way to make a buck.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
John Farrish
Lafayette, LA
It is to laugh. Surely you jest.
The quest for immediate gratification in the form of short term profits has been institutionalized. If some company were to announce it will be foregoing short term profits for the purpose of putting people back to work, the stock value would tank, stockholders would revolt, and company officers would wave their seven figure salaries goodbye.
Anyway, this plan wouldn't work unless a large number of businesses bought into it, because one company hiring a few hundred employees isn't going to help sell stuff to people who don't have any money. And if other people aren't hiring along with the one, there won't be anybody to purchase the excess inventory that was just created.
The mistake you're making here, Mr. Nocera, is the same one supply siders have been making for a very long time: The economy is not supply driven; it's demand driven, and until people have money to spend, not one single "job creator" is ever going to spend a penny making anything. The way to put people to work is to put them to work. Jan Schakowsky, at least, gets this.
When I was working on my bachelor's degree in business administration they taught us about stakeholders. The stakeholders in a business, we were taught, used to be the company's stockholders alone, but that was no longer the case. My professors told me we lived in a much more enlightened society in which not just stockholders, but employees, customers, and the communities in which companies were located were all seen to have a legitimate stake in a company's performance, and managers were ethically bound to serve them all.
My professors lied to me. No such sense of obligation exists, not to employees, not to customers, and not to communities. Certainly not among corporate boards sitting on record piles of cash; their only sense of responsibility is to their own bank accounts. And if what has happened over the last 30 years isn't enough to convince you, then nothing ever will.
Morton Kurzweil
Margate, Florida
Germany has a safety net if universal health care, education, and unemployment income. The investment in workers in a country that has a favorable trade balance, that doesn't use cheap foreign labor to undercut consumer income or permit cash flow to safe havens and relies on the United States to spend an unsustainable level of its budget on international defense, is a great example of where we should be economically - except that our profligacy and uncontrolled "free trade" has been the cause of worldwide recession.
We do not need a smaller government. Our problem is small minds fixated upon the myth of American Christian Dominion, a belief in the manifest destiny of America to lead the world to a new social and moral
order.
That is the Tea Party agenda, a cheap knock off of nineteenth century Western empire building,
We are confused by those who insist that corporations are people with the people who are the We in "We the People". We are confused by those who suggest that morality requires a religious basis. We are confused by those who speak of human rights as they are defined by some religious extremist group.
We need to regain our secular balance if we are to have a government responsible to all the people all of the time.
Economic theories benefit those who would control an economy. Political theories in a secular democracy should respond to the needs of all.
DonB
Reno, NV
Why should we expect business to hire people they don't need?
As a businessman who is not hiring, I can only ask the above. The problem is simply lack of demand for goods and services. Period. It has been clearly documented that the American people have lost something on the order of $7.38 trillion in wealth since 2008. This is the position of the middle class, which heretofore represented 70% of the GDP:
(1) Their houses (their principal asset) are still losing value,
(2) they're not too sure they'll have the same job paying the same wages next year, and
(3) their level of debt is still very high, particularly given (1) and (2).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Obama needs to buckle down, do a little studying, then come back with his silver tongue, explain clearly what has befallen the middle class over the past 35 years (as Robert Reich has done) and sell infrastructure projects to kick this place into gear. If the repubs don't go along, nail them to the wall with facts, over and over and over again until the history has sunk in.
cbi
Pennsylvania
Joe - I ran a company for 25 years. We had good years and years not so good. We weathered 3 recessions and in all those years I only had to let one person go (out of a staff of 40) because of the economy or product demand. How did we survive? First, in bad years, none of us got raises. As the CEO, I had the very same benefits that my employees had. I received no special perks, got no golden parachute from our board and traveled in coach (150,000 miles per year on average). I set up a pension program for employees that they did not have to put a penny in, but they knew was in lieu of a slightly larger salary. In my 25 years only two employees left the company even though they had better offers. They liked what we did, how we did, and were committed to making it work.
We did put people first. Our employees and our customers. In good years we put the money back into the business, not into bonuses or hiring unneeded staff. We expanded as we saw opportunity and found that recessions created opportunities as our competitors fell by the wayside because of their extensive over-borrowing and greed during their good times.
Yes, we were a small business, but all the Fortune 500 companies in our region learned lessons from us. In fact, at a local meeting of business executives back in 2001, I sat next to the CEOs of three Fortune 500 companies. They were asking me how we kept profitable during those tough times. I said just look out the door. My 8 year old car was parked in a spot next to the three limos with drivers waiting to take these "titans of industry" back the three or four miles to their isolated headquarters. The looked at me with glazed eyes. They didn't get it. And most of the leaders of our biggest companies still don't get it.
Satisfied customers create more business. Respecting employees and creating a level playing field spawns creativity. And ultimately that creates jobs and growth, no matter how small or big the company.
G. Morris
NY and NJ
US corporations are still tied to the Jack Welch dictums:
Keep Full Time Employees to a absolute minimum,
Create a two-tier employee structure with management paid mostly in stock options,
Even our universities have embraced this short-sighted mandate with over 70% of college students now being taught by temps (adjuncts) and the dream of tenure thrown over-board. The average age of a tenured professor is now 55; they shoud be put on the endangered list. They only get to work if their courses are filled by cash-carrying students.
Productivity is high, wages are low and corporate profits are massive. And the income paradigm of our country looks like a template for a Banana Republic.
My children and their spouses work 80 hours a week while some of their friends are either unemployed or waiting tables. They are all well-educated, highly skilled and under utilized by a management class that is addicted to short-term movements in stock prices. Jack Welch's management philosophy only works in the short -term which is now behind us.
Jerry Kriss
Baltimore, MD
Many of the writers above have noted the fallacy in Mr. Nocera's suggestion---that U.S. businesses would voluntarily create jobs in the absence of any increased demand. It's the same fallacy promulgated by the supply-side economists. Our economy is demand driven, and employers won't hire until there is increased demand. That's why they'r sitting on hoards of cash.
In situations like this, the only entity that increase demand is the government. Increased government spending puts more money in people's pockets that they can spend, and demand goes up. How do we pay for that? Increasing taxes! If businesses won't spend the hoarded cash (much of it accumulated from the Bush tax cuts), then the government should. Increased capital gains taxes and taxes on corporate dividends will actually *increase* job creation by business. The higher tax gives them an incentive to put their money back into the business. While hiring workers immediately is not a good idea, plowing that money into refurbished equipment, new equipment, and improved facilities is an investment in the future that will pay off when demand returns. Companies avoid taxes then because that moneyt has turned into a business expense. This purchasing in upgrades also increases demand and stimulates the economy. With higher tax rates, hiring more employees actually will cost a business *less* in net income. The taxed profit has been turned into a business expense.
The evidence for all this is quite clear in the economic record. The economy always boomed when marginal tax rates and taxes on dividends and capital gains were higher, during the Eisenhower era and the Clinton presidency. We should be pushing for higher taxes in these areas now to boost the economy.
John F. McBride
Seattle, WA
Growing up through the Korean War and Cold War years, then Vietnam, I assumed the truth of the constant assertion of living in America: that America is superior and because it is superior everyone wants to live here.
But the decades have gone by and I was disillusioned with time. America has some superior qualities, but isn't carte blanche superior. There are other methods in the world that work as well, and in many cases that work better.
Germany's societal understanding about jobs and employment is one. The much lower cost of health care in other nations and yet equal and even superior care is another.
A truth about America is that we in some large minority, even at times a majority, prefer belief, believing what America is, to the truth.
Sadly our Republican Party in general, and the Tea Party specifically, our extreme right conservatism, refuses to accept that it can learn from others and to insist that even if an idea has been tried time and again, during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II years, and failed, it will work. It has to work.
Maybe you're right Mr. Nocera, and corporations will voluntarily take on solving our employment problem. But I don't believe it. That's not happened in this nation before because our business model prefers strict capitalism and I know it. I'd have be as insane, in trusting after all this time that corporations can be trusted this first time to take this one as Republicans are in asserting that this time supply side and cutting spending in a severe contraction will work even though it never has before in the history of economics.
I'm not that crazy. Once burned, in my case, twice shy.
dickginnold
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Great article, Joe. I trained as an economist in the l950s when 'enlightened self interest' was the key word and stocks traded in the 5/10 PE range. Corporate CEOs didn't get rich. There might have been a few $1 to 2M CEOS, but most made a couple hundred thousand. To get through school for a couple years I piled pigs and poured metal for Kaiser Aluminum. I could earn $7,000 with overtime. Henry Kaiser, the CEO got about $200K, 30 times my wage. Our union was respected. Now US CEOs make 10s of millions, maybe up to 100M,, or 100s of times worker salaries,while their corporations are breaking unions, cutting benefits, laying off people, paying off Congressional represenatives and frequently losing money.
In 2008 I visited my relatives in Germany and travelled the country from Berlin to Hamburg. Amazing. Corporate boards have union reps and there is a social compact to share sacrifice, the origin of the hours reduction policy to reduce unemployment.
The country and its flourishing economy puts us to shame, full of windpower and several kinds of fast, modern transit, in its infrastructure, in the mixture of nationalities, social benefits and dignity of workers. I saw huge numbers of export containers in Hamburg, which exports 10M containers a year, mostly filled with industrial goods. During my visit, a Berlin paper had a spread on the top CEO salaries in Germany, major companies like Lufthansa, BMW. I don't believe there was a one above 1 to 3 M Euros,around 40 times the worker earnings, like we had it 60 years ago. They learned democratic capitalism, while the US was taken over by Wall Street and corporate rapists.
Jumper
South Carolina
Twenty-five years ago a young associate professor of business I knew relentlessly repeated to everyone who'd listen a key difference between Japanese managers and U.S. managers. Japanese managers could recite their market share but seldom knew their return on investment (ROI.) U.S. managers could recite their ROI but seldom knew their market share.
This same associate professor condemned the U.S. quarterly-report fixation. It was one of many indicators but it led U.S. investors to want every quarter to be better than the last. Simple algebra with exponents shows that folly.
Today, that former associate professor is Chair of the Department with no shortage of students.
An important question will be how the companies will judge the success of their efforts. Are they willing to be patient? Are workers willing to start at a lower salary? Are corporations willing to raise the pay as profits increase? Some may bring up unions. Only 6.9% of the U.S. private sector workforce is in unions.
You mention the Germans, but the Japanese also have a practice of setting aside money to keep workers on the job. The work may involve a lot of equipment and building maintenance but they are kept employed.
What's also going on in Japan and Germany is that fear is minimized in the workplace. When workplace fear is minimized, productivity increases. People pay attention to productivity and creativity rather than worrying about how to word their resume, or worrying about what they need to ask HR. They discuss coordinating efficiency or product improvement rather than discussing the latest company rumors.
In early 1914, at the height of a two year recession, Henry Ford doubled the daily wage to $5.00. He also cut the work day to eight hours. He was able to keep workers on the job and he was able to run three shifts. Car prices dropped.
Those were benefits to his corporation but those changes also had positive impact on American prosperity and standard of living in general.
9.12.11
The UK: 'Isolated' vs. 'Insulated'
LONDON — When he rejected a new European accord on Friday that would bind the continent ever closer, Prime Minister David Cameron seemingly sacrificed Britain’s place in Europe to preserve the pre-eminence of the City, London’s financial district. The question now is whether his stance will someday seem justified, even prescient.
MFF Frankfurt, Germany
I'm an American, living in Germany for the past 3 years, and with close family in the UK. I travel constantly throughout the EU as well as to England--and all I can say is: the problem is Britain, not Europe. England has had post WWII the most bizarre attachment to the US and all things American, a sort of hero worship that is at times even embarrassing to witness.
As the last UK elections have shown, the Brits are much more aligned to Wall Street and Big Money than to core European values like a solid welfare state and strict regulation of markets. They don't feel European and I've met few Europeans who feel England is part of Europe, either. Traveling in the EU is simple and easy--entering Germany is the easiest, most stress-free country entry I ever experience, but the same cannot be said for the UK.
Part of it is, of course, a result of being an island.
All I can say is: I feel sorry for the regular British folk, duped by their unscrupulous politicians so that they never get to understand how much more important is their link to their own continent rather than the one across the pond.
Al Minneapolis
This just lays bare the fact that the UK government, like its US counterpart, is a creature of the big banks. It also exposes the folly of letting your industrial and manufacturing sector shrivel up in the hope that the financial sector shall takeover as the bedrock of your economy.
The financial sector does not create capital, it only funnels them from those who have spare capital to those who need more of it. New York and London became the dominant financial centers when the UK and the US had the largest, and wealthiest industrial and manufacturing sectors in the world and thus generated the most wealth and capital. In fact London's dominance is now but a vestige of their long dissipated industrial might.
I can very well imagine Merkel thinking "our country's industry and manufacturing is much larger than the UK's, why should we grant special privileges to the UK's financial sector to the detriment of my own country's financial sector when our economy is a much bigger generator of capital than the UK and it's shrunken industrial base? It's not our fault that the UK pursued policies that were harmful to their industry."
campbell spain
As a British citizen living in Spain I am saddened by David Cameron.Britain had the chance to reform the City after the scandals of 2008 but a Tory Government has too many "ties" to the City to act. The City cost UK taxpayers a fortune but wave a few Union Jacks around and everything is forgotten. A mistake of historical proportions has been made.
N P Johnson Sheffield, England
I feel rather disappointed by this country's negative attitude. Look at a map. It's part of Europe. Ok there's 21 miles of water. So what? Hawaii's part of the USA, as is Manhattan. Being an island's nothing to do with it. Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus are all islands and happy to be in the EU. We had an Empire? So did France, Spain, Portugal, Holland? We won the war? Yes but that finished 66 years ago. Not everybody in England is Eurosceptic. It tends to be more the case in the prosperous Home Counties in the south of England around London, where the Conservatives have their power base. Further north the Tories are much less popular, especially in the cities. Labour/LibDems are generally more pro-European. The problem in England is the press. Rabidly Europhobic tabloid papers print whatever suits their point of view, and which is not necessarily accurate. How can the public make a decision in a referendum without being given both sides of the argument and all of the true facts?
robert iacobacci annapolis, md
Since their tentative entry into the EU, Briton has shown their half hearted faith in the institution and its goals. Content to reap the benefits but unwilling to share the burdens that are part of a full fledged commitment. Perhaps this is a good time for the E.U to ask for a decision. The loss of England at this point would do little harm and the British can discover if they perhaps need Europe more then it needs them.
ance Lee Pacific Palisades, California
England's decision - the Conservative party hardly exists in Scotland - is self-destructive. Cameron has played to his party's right wing, a minority of his party, no doubt hoping this will defuse them and let him get on with managing the economic crisis. But it is a defining vote, and he has made himself one of those rightwingers by doing so. If he is comfortable there, he should feel pleased.
The price is high. England now will not participate In whatever measures the other 17 - 26 EU countries take to secure the euro. It will not be able to protect The City, its Wall Street, from whatever body arises by treaty among these states. It will be an outsider. It cannot participate in the shape new European institutions take, who runs them, and how they are run. It will have no membership on its bodies, and no special understandings to protect its interests. It has marginalized itself.
And if, an 'if' of some controversy, a new euro-centered 'national' state arises successfully, the road to further European integration will have been opened, without England. In such a situation, faced by an entity with a far larger population and economy, it can hardly think its financial prominence can continue or be defended.
This decision plays only to a fraction of its internal politics, on whose members the sun never sets in their eyes, even amid their darkness. And it bares a disingenuous political class unwilling to face or speak the truth.
joe new york
The really important and, so far, un-asked question is why Britain insisted its financial institutions be exempt from any jointly agreed upon financial regulations. I'll tell you why. Because the problem is not Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Ireland, or Portugal or Germany. The problem is in England and the United States. Those two countries are the origin of the speculation that caused a global financial contagion and remain the center of a cancerous derivatives market that has, WITHOUT MEDIA ATTENTION, exploded again this year to over $707 trillion dollars, breaking the record it set in mid-2008, just before the crash.
You think the United States would cede control over its financial institution regulatory framework to an international organization? Uh-huh. Not in a million years. The belly of that beast is too ugly. Britain has extraordinarily lax regulations with respect to leveraged re-hypothication of borrowed capital. That's why it became very attractive to companies like A.I.G. and M.F. Global. You think they want to let someone else lift the curtain on that?
When the mother of all margin calls occurs and the global debt titanic goes down, and the global derivative pyramid scheme the U.S. and Britain built collapses, it will be every man for himself.
Dean Vantari Atlanta, GA
The City vs the People, that is the crux of the matter here. There is a disconnect between the financial sector and the real economy of Europe. All the hand wringing about defaults are the premise of investment bankers, not the People of Europe. It may actually be healthy to maintain a fire wall to isolate the financial speculators in the City, and the Street, from further poisoning the real economy, where real goods and services are exchanged, not digital representations swapped for intangibles. Wealth is not created in any speculative "market", it is created by the work and innovation of real human beings.
W. van Tuinen The Netherlands
Why does every American news article I read talk about 'huge rifts' and 'deep divides'? There are no rifts. There is Britain on one side and everybody else on the other. And Britain matters much less to Europe than they would like and American analysts seem to believe.
Relax.
My government agrees with the changes now on the table and so do I.
I see no looming totalitarianism but an organisation that:
- has resulted in a peace so fundamental that the idea of war between countries in the EU is now basically unimaginable.
- introduced a common currency and open borders, which have allowed all EU citizens to travel all over the continent and become more open-minded and multi-cultural. Even with the financial troubles of the last several years, I myself have found a job in Ireland and work there now without any political hassle.
- provided an economic growth and integration that allows me to live in the luxury I do today.
- has introduced rules and regulations binding all over Europe that safeguard the quality of the food we eat and the appliances we use, where single governments were too slow or corrupt to do this.
- is now slowly but surely working to change a financial system that launched the whole world into a depression. And as far as I can see, the EU is the only government even attempting this.
I am pro-EU and have full confidence in the ability of the EU.
friedmann Paris
The policy of the UK towards Europe is suicidal. Imperial England ruling the open seas is no more. Its special relationship with the US is mostly a servile relationship. Moreover, it is in the US national interest to chose the stronger side (a UE led by Germany) over a country in decline, however important its past tole in world history. Surely, the other EU counties are also declining. But, they seem to have understood that the only way to leverage their weak individual power is through a united, and strong Europe. This involves pooling together some of their sovereign rights of the past to build a novel political entity, the foundation of which is what Jürgen Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism” . Even, Cameron’s belief that he is protecting the City by refusing to sign is probably wrong. I would not be surprised that in the not too distant future, Frankfurt will take business away from London. Of course, this implies the Euro rescue plan works.
Mick Boston
Let’s talk about the democracy deficit. Its a little rich of London to complain about the EU as composed of bunch of undemocratic, unaccountable, and top down faceless bureaucrats and cozy political appointees.
When one considers that the majority of the Britain’s conservative government is elected under a first past the post system and is almost entirely composed of members from southern England. This from a party that is consistently opposed to devolution of powers to the constituent nations of the UK and is adamantly opposed to any type of proportional representation voting system as such suspiciously foreign even though it is in use in parts of the UK. They can fly their St. George’s flag all they want but it is abundantly clear that the UK is run for and by the benefit of the "City". Just ask any Glaswegian, Cardiffian, Manchurian, or Liverpudlian what they think of "London" and where their once prized industries have gone.
-neal02- Germany
I am writing from Germany and the first thing I did after get up from bed was looking for my socks. I do not want to dominate the British nor march into Czechoslovakia.
so far I have heard no constructive proposal of the british but who wants a say, must contribute. That talks about the failure of the euro countrie sucks. The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members. A monetary union, the eurozone, using a single currency comprises In 2010 the EU generated an estimated 26% (16.242 billion international dollars share of the global gross domestic product making it the largest economy in the world. It is the largest exporter,the largest importer of goods and services, and the biggest trading partner to several large countries such as China, India,and the United States. The euro is designed to help build a single market by, for example: easing travel of citizens and goods, eliminating exchange rate problems, providing price transparency, creating a single financial market, price stability and low interest rates, and providing a currency used internationally and protected against shocks by the large amount of internal trade within the eurozone.
If the Britons withdrawal from the EU they will not participate in this market.
Surely the Euro will not collapse even if many would like.
Patrick Frankfurt, Germany
To all Brits and Americans hailing Mr. Cameron as a fighter for democracy and liberty.
You are kidding yourselves if you tell me the "NO" from Mr. Cameron is in first place the voice of the British people but the will of the so much elected City of London.
British people you are just a supporting side-kick.
Emmanuel New York, NY, USA
The Brits. Masters of deception...but this time they went too far. On this one I'd rather bet my future with no nonsense Germany than follow the foggy treacherous corrupt ways of Wall Street and Old England banksters. Mr Cameron, you are dead wrong!
MFF Frankfurt, Germany
I'm an American, living in Germany for the past 3 years, and with close family in the UK. I travel constantly throughout the EU as well as to England--and all I can say is: the problem is Britain, not Europe. England has had post WWII the most bizarre attachment to the US and all things American, a sort of hero worship that is at times even embarrassing to witness.
As the last UK elections have shown, the Brits are much more aligned to Wall Street and Big Money than to core European values like a solid welfare state and strict regulation of markets. They don't feel European and I've met few Europeans who feel England is part of Europe, either. Traveling in the EU is simple and easy--entering Germany is the easiest, most stress-free country entry I ever experience, but the same cannot be said for the UK.
Part of it is, of course, a result of being an island.
All I can say is: I feel sorry for the regular British folk, duped by their unscrupulous politicians so that they never get to understand how much more important is their link to their own continent rather than the one across the pond.
Al Minneapolis
This just lays bare the fact that the UK government, like its US counterpart, is a creature of the big banks. It also exposes the folly of letting your industrial and manufacturing sector shrivel up in the hope that the financial sector shall takeover as the bedrock of your economy.
The financial sector does not create capital, it only funnels them from those who have spare capital to those who need more of it. New York and London became the dominant financial centers when the UK and the US had the largest, and wealthiest industrial and manufacturing sectors in the world and thus generated the most wealth and capital. In fact London's dominance is now but a vestige of their long dissipated industrial might.
I can very well imagine Merkel thinking "our country's industry and manufacturing is much larger than the UK's, why should we grant special privileges to the UK's financial sector to the detriment of my own country's financial sector when our economy is a much bigger generator of capital than the UK and it's shrunken industrial base? It's not our fault that the UK pursued policies that were harmful to their industry."
campbell spain
As a British citizen living in Spain I am saddened by David Cameron.Britain had the chance to reform the City after the scandals of 2008 but a Tory Government has too many "ties" to the City to act. The City cost UK taxpayers a fortune but wave a few Union Jacks around and everything is forgotten. A mistake of historical proportions has been made.
N P Johnson Sheffield, England
I feel rather disappointed by this country's negative attitude. Look at a map. It's part of Europe. Ok there's 21 miles of water. So what? Hawaii's part of the USA, as is Manhattan. Being an island's nothing to do with it. Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus are all islands and happy to be in the EU. We had an Empire? So did France, Spain, Portugal, Holland? We won the war? Yes but that finished 66 years ago. Not everybody in England is Eurosceptic. It tends to be more the case in the prosperous Home Counties in the south of England around London, where the Conservatives have their power base. Further north the Tories are much less popular, especially in the cities. Labour/LibDems are generally more pro-European. The problem in England is the press. Rabidly Europhobic tabloid papers print whatever suits their point of view, and which is not necessarily accurate. How can the public make a decision in a referendum without being given both sides of the argument and all of the true facts?
robert iacobacci annapolis, md
Since their tentative entry into the EU, Briton has shown their half hearted faith in the institution and its goals. Content to reap the benefits but unwilling to share the burdens that are part of a full fledged commitment. Perhaps this is a good time for the E.U to ask for a decision. The loss of England at this point would do little harm and the British can discover if they perhaps need Europe more then it needs them.
ance Lee Pacific Palisades, California
England's decision - the Conservative party hardly exists in Scotland - is self-destructive. Cameron has played to his party's right wing, a minority of his party, no doubt hoping this will defuse them and let him get on with managing the economic crisis. But it is a defining vote, and he has made himself one of those rightwingers by doing so. If he is comfortable there, he should feel pleased.
The price is high. England now will not participate In whatever measures the other 17 - 26 EU countries take to secure the euro. It will not be able to protect The City, its Wall Street, from whatever body arises by treaty among these states. It will be an outsider. It cannot participate in the shape new European institutions take, who runs them, and how they are run. It will have no membership on its bodies, and no special understandings to protect its interests. It has marginalized itself.
And if, an 'if' of some controversy, a new euro-centered 'national' state arises successfully, the road to further European integration will have been opened, without England. In such a situation, faced by an entity with a far larger population and economy, it can hardly think its financial prominence can continue or be defended.
This decision plays only to a fraction of its internal politics, on whose members the sun never sets in their eyes, even amid their darkness. And it bares a disingenuous political class unwilling to face or speak the truth.
joe new york
The really important and, so far, un-asked question is why Britain insisted its financial institutions be exempt from any jointly agreed upon financial regulations. I'll tell you why. Because the problem is not Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or Ireland, or Portugal or Germany. The problem is in England and the United States. Those two countries are the origin of the speculation that caused a global financial contagion and remain the center of a cancerous derivatives market that has, WITHOUT MEDIA ATTENTION, exploded again this year to over $707 trillion dollars, breaking the record it set in mid-2008, just before the crash.
You think the United States would cede control over its financial institution regulatory framework to an international organization? Uh-huh. Not in a million years. The belly of that beast is too ugly. Britain has extraordinarily lax regulations with respect to leveraged re-hypothication of borrowed capital. That's why it became very attractive to companies like A.I.G. and M.F. Global. You think they want to let someone else lift the curtain on that?
When the mother of all margin calls occurs and the global debt titanic goes down, and the global derivative pyramid scheme the U.S. and Britain built collapses, it will be every man for himself.
Dean Vantari Atlanta, GA
The City vs the People, that is the crux of the matter here. There is a disconnect between the financial sector and the real economy of Europe. All the hand wringing about defaults are the premise of investment bankers, not the People of Europe. It may actually be healthy to maintain a fire wall to isolate the financial speculators in the City, and the Street, from further poisoning the real economy, where real goods and services are exchanged, not digital representations swapped for intangibles. Wealth is not created in any speculative "market", it is created by the work and innovation of real human beings.
W. van Tuinen The Netherlands
Why does every American news article I read talk about 'huge rifts' and 'deep divides'? There are no rifts. There is Britain on one side and everybody else on the other. And Britain matters much less to Europe than they would like and American analysts seem to believe.
Relax.
My government agrees with the changes now on the table and so do I.
I see no looming totalitarianism but an organisation that:
- has resulted in a peace so fundamental that the idea of war between countries in the EU is now basically unimaginable.
- introduced a common currency and open borders, which have allowed all EU citizens to travel all over the continent and become more open-minded and multi-cultural. Even with the financial troubles of the last several years, I myself have found a job in Ireland and work there now without any political hassle.
- provided an economic growth and integration that allows me to live in the luxury I do today.
- has introduced rules and regulations binding all over Europe that safeguard the quality of the food we eat and the appliances we use, where single governments were too slow or corrupt to do this.
- is now slowly but surely working to change a financial system that launched the whole world into a depression. And as far as I can see, the EU is the only government even attempting this.
I am pro-EU and have full confidence in the ability of the EU.
friedmann Paris
The policy of the UK towards Europe is suicidal. Imperial England ruling the open seas is no more. Its special relationship with the US is mostly a servile relationship. Moreover, it is in the US national interest to chose the stronger side (a UE led by Germany) over a country in decline, however important its past tole in world history. Surely, the other EU counties are also declining. But, they seem to have understood that the only way to leverage their weak individual power is through a united, and strong Europe. This involves pooling together some of their sovereign rights of the past to build a novel political entity, the foundation of which is what Jürgen Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism” . Even, Cameron’s belief that he is protecting the City by refusing to sign is probably wrong. I would not be surprised that in the not too distant future, Frankfurt will take business away from London. Of course, this implies the Euro rescue plan works.
Mick Boston
Let’s talk about the democracy deficit. Its a little rich of London to complain about the EU as composed of bunch of undemocratic, unaccountable, and top down faceless bureaucrats and cozy political appointees.
When one considers that the majority of the Britain’s conservative government is elected under a first past the post system and is almost entirely composed of members from southern England. This from a party that is consistently opposed to devolution of powers to the constituent nations of the UK and is adamantly opposed to any type of proportional representation voting system as such suspiciously foreign even though it is in use in parts of the UK. They can fly their St. George’s flag all they want but it is abundantly clear that the UK is run for and by the benefit of the "City". Just ask any Glaswegian, Cardiffian, Manchurian, or Liverpudlian what they think of "London" and where their once prized industries have gone.
-neal02- Germany
I am writing from Germany and the first thing I did after get up from bed was looking for my socks. I do not want to dominate the British nor march into Czechoslovakia.
so far I have heard no constructive proposal of the british but who wants a say, must contribute. That talks about the failure of the euro countrie sucks. The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members. A monetary union, the eurozone, using a single currency comprises In 2010 the EU generated an estimated 26% (16.242 billion international dollars share of the global gross domestic product making it the largest economy in the world. It is the largest exporter,the largest importer of goods and services, and the biggest trading partner to several large countries such as China, India,and the United States. The euro is designed to help build a single market by, for example: easing travel of citizens and goods, eliminating exchange rate problems, providing price transparency, creating a single financial market, price stability and low interest rates, and providing a currency used internationally and protected against shocks by the large amount of internal trade within the eurozone.
If the Britons withdrawal from the EU they will not participate in this market.
Surely the Euro will not collapse even if many would like.
Patrick Frankfurt, Germany
To all Brits and Americans hailing Mr. Cameron as a fighter for democracy and liberty.
You are kidding yourselves if you tell me the "NO" from Mr. Cameron is in first place the voice of the British people but the will of the so much elected City of London.
British people you are just a supporting side-kick.
Emmanuel New York, NY, USA
The Brits. Masters of deception...but this time they went too far. On this one I'd rather bet my future with no nonsense Germany than follow the foggy treacherous corrupt ways of Wall Street and Old England banksters. Mr Cameron, you are dead wrong!
6.12.11
Pink-er-ology from the left bank of Charles River
Human Nature’s Pathologist
By CARL ZIMMER
In his latest book, Steven Pinker, a leading advocate of evolutionary psychology, says our brains have produced a far less violent world.
___________________________________________
Frank Stanton
Campbell, Ca.
I can live with the idea of the evolution of the brain, and the amount of physical violence may have gone down statistically with time. However, can't one argue that these violent activities have been replaced by predatory practices one sees in downsizing of jobs, exporting jobs to Third World and, in turn, exploiting the poor to a form of near involuntary servitude or even slavery in those countries? In other words, preying upon the weak has changed from cutting off noses to holding people's welfare in one's hands. To some, having one's life destroyed through economic actions, could equate to a long, slow death. In both cases, the perpetrators hold the exploited as having no real value and so act as though the exploited are not even fellow humans. Yes, the mind of some have evolved, but the old cruelties have been replaced by a different kind of cruelty. Of course, by its definition, that is evolution. Maybe the OWS and 99% movement(s) are about an evolved response to the historical cruelties of our time.
Lee
Moosehead Lake
What about the violence against animals at factory farms and the violence of humans against nature. Both have become more widespread and efficient.
Kathleen Fisher
Amherst, MA
I am curious how Mr. Pinker describes what has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last ten years. I wonder what he thinks of the covert operations in Iran and Pakistan are about. What does he think of the details of rendition. How about Bagram? How about Guantanamo?
ekeizer4
Oregon
There should be a rule against writing about someone who has already been the subject of 1001 articles -- most of which say the exact same things. Regardless of the merits of Mr. Pinker's theories, I am thoroughly sick of hearing about him. There's hardly a magazine or newspaper that has not spilled a potful of ink over his new book, and judging from this profile, there is simply nothing new left to say. So many scientific ideas and non-fiction books barely get a glance from the media. It would be wonderful if we could end this myopic focus on just a couple of authors and spread the wealth around a little more. At some point, publicity is self-defeating: I have read so much about Mr. Pinker and his theory of violence that I have absolutely no desire to buy his book. Why bother, when the media has essentially read it, digested it, and repeated it ad nausea for me?
GrumpaT
Sequim WA
Hamlet said it best:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Our natures haven't changed. We're as violent and cruel as we ever were. We're just increasingly hemmed in by our civilizing. Now instead of being overtly beastly, we wallow in bestial entertainments and hoard guns. We suffer the miseries of our stifled anger...and just vote no.
Alan
Chicago, IL
"'It’s psychologically astute, given the massive amount of self-serving biases,' he said." And further, "If you want peace, understand psychology."
I wonder if Prof. Pinker would have come to the same conclusions if he had written his book in Kabul or Congo, rather than Cape Cod and Cambridge. Call it the fallacy of "immediacy" or of "near/far" or just "us and them", although as a psychologist Prof. Pinker would be able to provide the proper scientific term for it.
One could equally well argue that the modern state-upon-state violence is far more lethal than older tribe-upon-tribe one, although modern states have mastered the art of lofty justificatory rhetoric to a far greater extent, through great - perhaps evolutionary - refinements in the arts of the technicians of the word such as Prof. Pinker himself. If there is evolution then, it is still in Prof. Pinker's old specialty, language, which can spin its magical web even around most gruesome acts of violence. Prof. Pinker should look further into linguistic bases of civilization. He would then be able to see the primary difference between violence perpetrated by the Congolese and by the Americans, to take just two random examples.
By CARL ZIMMER
In his latest book, Steven Pinker, a leading advocate of evolutionary psychology, says our brains have produced a far less violent world.
___________________________________________
Frank Stanton
Campbell, Ca.
I can live with the idea of the evolution of the brain, and the amount of physical violence may have gone down statistically with time. However, can't one argue that these violent activities have been replaced by predatory practices one sees in downsizing of jobs, exporting jobs to Third World and, in turn, exploiting the poor to a form of near involuntary servitude or even slavery in those countries? In other words, preying upon the weak has changed from cutting off noses to holding people's welfare in one's hands. To some, having one's life destroyed through economic actions, could equate to a long, slow death. In both cases, the perpetrators hold the exploited as having no real value and so act as though the exploited are not even fellow humans. Yes, the mind of some have evolved, but the old cruelties have been replaced by a different kind of cruelty. Of course, by its definition, that is evolution. Maybe the OWS and 99% movement(s) are about an evolved response to the historical cruelties of our time.
Lee
Moosehead Lake
What about the violence against animals at factory farms and the violence of humans against nature. Both have become more widespread and efficient.
Kathleen Fisher
Amherst, MA
I am curious how Mr. Pinker describes what has gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last ten years. I wonder what he thinks of the covert operations in Iran and Pakistan are about. What does he think of the details of rendition. How about Bagram? How about Guantanamo?
ekeizer4
Oregon
There should be a rule against writing about someone who has already been the subject of 1001 articles -- most of which say the exact same things. Regardless of the merits of Mr. Pinker's theories, I am thoroughly sick of hearing about him. There's hardly a magazine or newspaper that has not spilled a potful of ink over his new book, and judging from this profile, there is simply nothing new left to say. So many scientific ideas and non-fiction books barely get a glance from the media. It would be wonderful if we could end this myopic focus on just a couple of authors and spread the wealth around a little more. At some point, publicity is self-defeating: I have read so much about Mr. Pinker and his theory of violence that I have absolutely no desire to buy his book. Why bother, when the media has essentially read it, digested it, and repeated it ad nausea for me?
GrumpaT
Sequim WA
Hamlet said it best:
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Our natures haven't changed. We're as violent and cruel as we ever were. We're just increasingly hemmed in by our civilizing. Now instead of being overtly beastly, we wallow in bestial entertainments and hoard guns. We suffer the miseries of our stifled anger...and just vote no.
Alan
Chicago, IL
"'It’s psychologically astute, given the massive amount of self-serving biases,' he said." And further, "If you want peace, understand psychology."
I wonder if Prof. Pinker would have come to the same conclusions if he had written his book in Kabul or Congo, rather than Cape Cod and Cambridge. Call it the fallacy of "immediacy" or of "near/far" or just "us and them", although as a psychologist Prof. Pinker would be able to provide the proper scientific term for it.
One could equally well argue that the modern state-upon-state violence is far more lethal than older tribe-upon-tribe one, although modern states have mastered the art of lofty justificatory rhetoric to a far greater extent, through great - perhaps evolutionary - refinements in the arts of the technicians of the word such as Prof. Pinker himself. If there is evolution then, it is still in Prof. Pinker's old specialty, language, which can spin its magical web even around most gruesome acts of violence. Prof. Pinker should look further into linguistic bases of civilization. He would then be able to see the primary difference between violence perpetrated by the Congolese and by the Americans, to take just two random examples.
29.11.11
equality of chances? the brightest choose engineering? meritocracy instead of dynasty?
America’s meritocratic, watchdog news media
In this Feb. 9, 2011 photo, Chelsea Clinton attends amfAR's annual New York Gala at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini) (Credit: AP)
(updated below)
New York Times, July 31, 2008:
Business Insider, August 31, 2009:
New York Times, today:
I really don’t understand what those angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset about. America is a meritocracy; if you work hard and prove your skills, you get ahead. The winners deserve what they have because they have earned it. And when all else fails, we have a media filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power because that’s what our media outlets are: true outsiders there to check the most powerful factions.
Even more encouragingly, we have a media that ensures that diverse views are heard; Chelsea Clinton previously worked at a $12 billion hedge fund and her former-Goldman-Sachs-banker husband earlier this year launched his own hedge fund with “two guys from Goldman,” so she brings a depth and diversity of perspetive that is sorely lacking in our news (true, CNN boldly features Erin Burnett — the former Goldman, Sachs employee and current fiancé of a top Citigroup executive — but nothing can compete with Chelsea Clinton’s rich, impressive journalism background).
Thankfully, the American Founders waged a revolution to free us from the shackles of monarchy so that we’re no longer captive to the inanities of royalty (like those silly Brits). In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine mocked and scorned aristocracies as producing “counterfeit nobles” — those bestowed with prerogatives not because of what they’ve achieved but because of the accidental fortune of their birth — and we are thankfully free of those:
UPDATE: With so many superb young journalists being hired by NBC News based on their record of outstanding achievement, it is — I hope you will agree — understandable that I neglected to include this, from earlier this month:
We all owe our gratitude to NBC News for single-handedly correcting the shameful, long-standing exclusion from our media discourse of the views of young, journalistically accomplished heirs and heiresses to political power and great fortune; it is long overdue that former NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller, son of the CEO and Chairman of Chevron, finally be joined by the next generation.
New York Times, July 31, 2008:
I really don’t understand what those angry, lazy losers in the Occupy movement are so upset about. America is a meritocracy; if you work hard and prove your skills, you get ahead. The winners deserve what they have because they have earned it. And when all else fails, we have a media filled with insurgent outsiders who will be relentless watchdogs over those in power because that’s what our media outlets are: true outsiders there to check the most powerful factions.
Even more encouragingly, we have a media that ensures that diverse views are heard; Chelsea Clinton previously worked at a $12 billion hedge fund and her former-Goldman-Sachs-banker husband earlier this year launched his own hedge fund with “two guys from Goldman,” so she brings a depth and diversity of perspetive that is sorely lacking in our news (true, CNN boldly features Erin Burnett — the former Goldman, Sachs employee and current fiancé of a top Citigroup executive — but nothing can compete with Chelsea Clinton’s rich, impressive journalism background).
Thankfully, the American Founders waged a revolution to free us from the shackles of monarchy so that we’re no longer captive to the inanities of royalty (like those silly Brits). In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine mocked and scorned aristocracies as producing “counterfeit nobles” — those bestowed with prerogatives not because of what they’ve achieved but because of the accidental fortune of their birth — and we are thankfully free of those:
UPDATE: With so many superb young journalists being hired by NBC News based on their record of outstanding achievement, it is — I hope you will agree — understandable that I neglected to include this, from earlier this month:
23.11.11
letters from the police state
Dr. O. Ralph Raymond
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33315
The most disturbing thing about this episode as captured in video footage is its casual banality, the "banality of evil," the reduction of human beings essentially to insect or vermin status. It shocks the conscience.
Blanche Batey
Florida
What is horrifying is that police, politicians, and petty administrators have learned so little and apparently believe they have the right to rule us instead of serve us.
shipwhistle
Baltimore, MD
Part of the problem is revealed by this statement: "The New York Police Department says pepper spray should be used chiefly for self-defense or to control suspects who are resisting arrest."
Ordinary Americans think "resisting arrest" involves actively fighting the arresting officer(s). In fact, passive, peaceful resistance is also considered "resisting arrest." Thus, refusing to move or going limp would make one subject to this type of "control."
This is widely quoted: "Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a 'compliance tool' that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.
'When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,' Kelly said. 'Bodies don't have handles on them.'
"After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of 'active resistance' from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques."
So we are to believe that police officers use pepper spray, which hurts and can kill people, to avoid the "risk [of] hurting them." THIS DEFINITION OF 'RESISTING ARREST' MUST CHANGE.
htg
Greensboro, NC
I'm horrified that our police forces have become so militarized and seem almost gleeful as they use their new toys on the participants in a peaceful protest. But, with that said, even I had to laugh a little as FOX news downplayed the recent sprayings, based on the argument that pepper spray was basically vegetable juice. Yeah! It's like getting sprayed with V8 juice. Yeah. Right.
Bildad the Shuhite
Arabia
I cannot believe there is not more outrage at these actions at the highest level of government. I thought it was ironic and sad that scenes from this incident were shown followed by scenes from Egypt and the Middle East and really, aside from the degree of police force not much different. If you had shown the videos with different captions it may have gone unnoticed that this was two different instances.
Having not grown up in the 60's-era I do not understand what "the man" finds so threatening about these protests. And if you can honestly say that you do not think that major corporations, banks act in many immoral, dishonest, and acted in a manner that deserves at least protest and condemnation than you have really not studied the history and growth of corporate America nor read anything beyond your 401K statement.
I own my own small business, employ people (aka job-creator), pay in inordinate amount of business taxes and vote mostly Republican but try to find the "best person" for the job.
What I feel the media and "older society" does not get about the Occupy Mvmnt is that it is not trying to have "communism". They are asking that the system not be rigged. That everyone gets a fair opportunity and that the biggest and best do not also get the most benefits.
Dave
Everywhere
As a "conservative person" who generally defers to the police in matters of public safety, I've been appalled at the actions of officials at all levels of government in regard to their dealings with the OWS movement over the past ten weeks. When you combine the reports of actions against generally non-violent protesters plus yesterday's articles in the NYT regarding the actions of the NYPD against accredited reporters and photographers, it becomes hard to differentiate between these actions and what has been going on in Egypt, Syria and other places. Surely this is not the vision of American freedom and democracy that we are trying to sell to the rest of the world?
rpg
Lakeville, Ct
Non lethal weapons?
As a question of will, rights and authority, 'might makes right', dominance and using whatever gives power to point of view will be used. Sad that this violence is still as interpersonal as bludgeoning someone with a rock lashed to a stick. I don't see much difference between this and piloting, from Virginia, a radio-controlled model plane that kills someone in the Middle east. It is just from a longer arms-length, less personal risk on the damage you're doing . . . until they get the weapon . . . or steal it. Imagine, piloting our own planes a weapons. Those thoughts have dominated our political and domestic lives since. Projectiles are intended to do damage.
Our '60's 'civil rights' experience of firehoses, rubber bullets, clubs and dogs showed us that differences of personal opinion, expressed contrary to politically motivated dominance, sometimes prevails, to an extent, at great risks and price. Any weapon can be lethal to someone with a congenital weakness or physical problem.
I think maybe the next protesters should line up the elderly and wheelchair-bound as their first line of defense. That'll make the headlines!
I always refer back to Eddie Rickenbacker who, after being a WW I flying ace, called aerial warfare 'scientific murder'.
Spraying someone in the face with pepper spray is a thinly veiled substitute.
Isobel
Ann Arbor, Mich.
The militarization of police departments across this country is inexcusable. Apparently, the police believe that their first response should be that of paramilitary enforcers as opposed to their real roles, which is that of peace officers. The aggressive, violent, and criminal response of these law enforcement agencies is a national disgrace.
Frankly, the brutal police tactics taking place at Occupy sites should be front and center on every mainstream newspaper and media site in this country. How can we spread democracy abroad when we can’t even defend it at home?
The Tea Party contingent carried open weapons to various events, spit on public officials, and spouted some pretty threatening comments yet I don't remember even one arrest. On the other hand, OWS protesters have been beaten, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, and subjected to sound cannons for simply engaging in peaceful protests - I shudder to think of the outcome should an Occupy protester show up to an event openly packing a gun.
As for cities and universities seeking to "regain control of their streets, parks, and campuses", let us not forget who really pays to build and maintain these public structures and edifices. The streets, parks, and public campuses belong to The People and they have every right to occupy them if they so choose. If we're going to deny people access, then it's time for cities and universities to find another source of funding. Since they have all the cash, maybe it's time to require that corporate America finance infrastructure construction and upkeep.
Justine
Wyoming
These police obviously never have had pepper spray in their face. They have absolutely NO idea of the power of the weapon they are carrying. Living near bears, I carry it on hikes and several times have had just a breeze of it hit me. One time I thought I'd have to go to the hospital. That cop was spraying it like a can of air freshener, which is also not how you use it. He had no idea what kind of weapon he was using. I actually used it in Yellowstone this year on a charging bison. It did a 90 degree turn immediately. That's how powerful it is. Watching that video was appalling and sickening.
The amount of police reactivity and violence, in the midst of peaceful assembly, has been shocking. It demonstrates how much our rights have eroded while we've been 'making other plans'.
Brenda
Reading PA
“we are in the age of pepper spray, not the age of real bullets.”
Tell that to the veteran who is in intensive care because of getting hit in the head with a rubber bullet in Oakland. This attempt to find something positive to say about attacking peaceful protestors in a putative democracy seems very labored.
Certainly we are in the age of bullets and bombs in our multiple wars overseas and the official rationale presented is that these unending wars are in defense of our "freedoms."
For all the billions we are spending in defense of "our freedoms" we don't seem to be getting much in return if we can't peacefully express our views as the First Amendment guarantees without getting pepper-sprayed.
ivehadit
massachusetts
My impulse, if stopped by a police officer for overspeeding, is to be as courteous and polite as possible. Do do otherwise would invite not just a higher priced ticket, but also the threat of a humiliating exercise of power (get out of the car, etc). Police have to be taught that their egos are not the determining choice in exercise of power. In other words "i wield the baton (or pepper spray), so i deserve respect and submission to my wishes" is not the message. It was clearly on display at UC Davis, an institution of higher learning, but clearly the police are not part of that culture. The students had an expectation of proportionate action, not life threatening abuse of power.
Jim T.
MA
The video that I've watched showed protesters linking arms and blocking a road. If one assumes these protesters were asked to disperse and refused, the next step would be for the police to forcibly remove. This would risk injury to both the protester and the police officer. Pepper spray is a useful tool in that is will force the protesters to disperse without risking physical harm to themselves or the officers.
Steve Bolger
New York, NY
Consent of the governed to be sprayed like insects by psychotic cops?
Yeah, you sure are doing well after 35 years of open season asset-stripping.
21.11.11
most people kill (themselves) for what the few consider rounding error
JACK O'HANLON
SALT LAKE CITY
There has to be some form of secure regulatory control over these computer financial accounts where you can easily move around billions of dollars in a few mouse clicks and the "money" (I use the word lightly, as we're talking about numbers in a computer) is then dispersed into the so-called cloud and it's then - pick one: "lost, stolen, missing, misappropriated" or otherwise not able to be found.
I have a banker friend who told me "there is not enough printed currency in the world to cover all the cash that sits in (computerized) bank accounts."
In other words, the financial system is simply a bunch of numbers being moved from one computer network to another. Very, very scary.
So, when someone asks - "were did all that money go?"
One of the answers could be - "It was never really there."
Some folks at MF Global had access to the computers that contained the numbers that represented this missing "money." I'd be confiscating their passports right about now.
SALT LAKE CITY
There has to be some form of secure regulatory control over these computer financial accounts where you can easily move around billions of dollars in a few mouse clicks and the "money" (I use the word lightly, as we're talking about numbers in a computer) is then dispersed into the so-called cloud and it's then - pick one: "lost, stolen, missing, misappropriated" or otherwise not able to be found.
I have a banker friend who told me "there is not enough printed currency in the world to cover all the cash that sits in (computerized) bank accounts."
In other words, the financial system is simply a bunch of numbers being moved from one computer network to another. Very, very scary.
So, when someone asks - "were did all that money go?"
One of the answers could be - "It was never really there."
Some folks at MF Global had access to the computers that contained the numbers that represented this missing "money." I'd be confiscating their passports right about now.
18.11.11
(when) will we run out of excuses for not knowing/doing?
Chalmers Johnson
- Audio interview March 2010 on Media Matters with Bob McChesney
- Video/Audio: Chalmers Johnson on the military-industrial complex October 4–7, 2008 on The Real News with Paul Jay
- Audio: Is America on the brink of destruction through imperial over-reach?
- Audio interview February 2007 on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman
- Chalmers Johnson, Evil Empire, A Talk by Chalmers Johnson, DVD, 2006
- Audio interview April 2004 on Behind the News with Doug Henwood
- Video Interview: Decline of Empires: The Signs of Decay by Ecological Options Network
- A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States by Chalmers Johnson (from Harper's Magazine)
- Empire v. Democracy: Why Nemesis Is at Our Door by Chalmers Johnson
- Blowback Chalmers Johnson essay from The Nation
- Cold Warrior in a Strange Land Tom Engelhardt interviews Chalmers Johnson
- Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us? By Chalmers Johnson, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 17, 2007.
- Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire by Chalmers Johnson, The Huffington Post
- Chalmers Johnson vs. the Empire, Antiwar.com
7.11.11
back and forth, from the right of center
William Gill, Esq.
Montgomery, Alabama
There is no such thing as the "99%." Never was.
Here are the real life numbers:
54% pay all federal income taxes and most of the social security and medicare taxes that subsidize the 46% who pay no federal income taxes and little SS and Medicare taxes.
The "rich" pay the highest amount of taxes already. The top 1% pay 37% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% pays nearly 50% of all federal income taxes, and the top 10% pays over 70% of all income taxes. Plus those categories of income earners pay the vast bulk of all SS and Medicare taxes that help pay for everyone else's SS and Medicare.
Here is another number: the top 20% of income earners pay 80% of all federal taxes. 80%!
Hence, the whole OWS anarchist and envious socialist arguments are way off base. However, if they would simply come out and say raise the federal income tax on that 1% (or even top 2 or 3%) a total of an additional 5%, there would probably be no objection for wage earners in those categories. But the OWS anarchists and Marxists do not seem to be interested in that. They seem to have a much more far ranging agenda of a dark nature.
How about some more real numbers other than the fact that 46% are ungrateful that 54% support the entire country at the federal level:
40% of American chldren are born out of wedlock and this is the #1 cause of poverty in America. 72% black, 50% hispanic and 30% white are the sad illegitimacy numbers, and with the "free love" with no responsibility society America has these numbers are only increasing.
The divore rate is over 50% for first marriages and that is the #2 cause of poverty in America. Marital commitment means nothing anymore.
So, to the OWS crowd and their sympathizers, promoters and fellow travelors, let these REAL numbers sink in.
*******
Disclaimer: I am not one of the "rich". I am just a reporter of historical facts. Do with them what ye will.
Michael Smith
New York, NY
To William Gill, Esq. from Montgomery Alabama: the only figures you left out were the percentage of the national wealth held by the top 1%, and how dramatically their wealth has increased over the last 20 years, and how their taxes, as a percentage of income, have dramatically decreased over the last 20 years.
If you are not one of the "rich", as you claim, but you nevertheless go around citing meaningless statistics about the amount of taxes paid by billionaires as opposed to amount paid by minimum wage workers, you are either a fool or a con-man. The facts that you selectively site are obviously set forth as a bogus attempt to defend the super rich and blame the poor for the sorry state that we find ourselves in this country.
You are either a fraud and are writing as a shill for the rich, or you are just a fool; my guess is the former. Such tactics may fly in Alabama newspapers, but not in the New York Times. So take your "historical facts" and shove them up your phony ye-know-what.
William Gill, Esq.
Montgomery, Alabama
To Michael Smith of New York, New York: nice ad hominem abusive. It is typical of liberal socialists and atheists like yourself to engage in anonymous online personal attacks and regional bigotry instead of just focusing on facts and logic. Not to mention spineless and cowardly. Truth hurts doesn't it Mr. Smith?
As far as the 1% goes, I do not covet them. As a matter of fact the Holy Scriptures have a commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. And as far as the wealth gap, as anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge and understanding of recent world history knows, it is because of globalism and the technological revolution that that 1% has become so rich, and they have created most of the jobs in the process and made everyone's live's better as a result. Again, I don't covet them. And I am sure they would not object to a reasonable tax increase. I notice you didn't even have the intellectual integrity of stating what amount of increase YOU are proposing for them. And you are futher dishonest about what amount of *income* taxes "minimum wage workers" are paying - virtually nothing with all the deductions and tax credits. They are part of the 46% who pay no federal income taxes.
You are a fool and a schill for anarchists, socialists and Marxists Mr. Smith. Plain and simple. Truth hurts and numbers don't lie.
Rebecca
Harlem
As for William Gill, Esq., you seem to have less faith in capitalism than the OWS protesters do: they believe that our economic system can generate profit and productivity AND ensure a basically acceptable standard of living for everyone who lives in it, whereas you seem to be saying that the best we can hope for is to provide solely for the rich, shrugging and shaking our heads as the innocent children of whose birth conditions you disapprove sink into poverty through no fault of their own. I'm not willing to give up that easily.
William Gill, Esq.
Montgomery, Alabama
Rebecca, it is not the responsibility of people - or the government via forced redistribution of the wealth "to provide" for some kind of mythical "standard of living" for some other group of people. To think so is what is called socialism. Socialism is antithetical to Americanism.
Now, having said that, there undoubtedly ARE all kinds of corporate abuses that need to be fixed, but not in the way anarchists and socialists that permeate the OWS are arguing for. I am going to surprise you and the rest of the NYTs readership who are mainly of the "liberal" persuasion: I have enough centrist in me and life experience to know that all businesses, ESPECIALLY the finanical industry need some amount of regulation. I have said it here and I say it all the time over at the WSJ: U.S. businesses need less regulation BUT the financial industry needs MORE regulation. I continously argue for such things as follows:
1. Defend Sarbanes-Oxley.
2. Defend Dodd-Frank.
3. Ban financial derivatives.
4. Ban leveraged ETFs.
5. Require at least 50% or more of inverstors own money
with respect to commodities futures (significantly increase "margin" requirements).
7. Ban high frequency trading.
8. Impose a standard of true *fiduciary* duty on all investment brokers/dealers for their customers.
9. Reinstate Glass-Steagall to completely separate commercial and investment banking and insurance and brokerage/investment houses, and I mean not even allowing a common parent corp. whatsoever.
10. This one is tricky, but clearly many of the Fortune 500 companies have a racket going on the last 20 years whereby there is massive overlap of Boards and Executives and they are all taking care of each other thru ridiculous and exorbitant compensation packages (typically disguised as "stock option", and golden parachute severance deals). This is really the responsibility of Shareholders, but something has to be done.
Things all people should agree on, whatever persuasion.
Montgomery, Alabama
There is no such thing as the "99%." Never was.
Here are the real life numbers:
54% pay all federal income taxes and most of the social security and medicare taxes that subsidize the 46% who pay no federal income taxes and little SS and Medicare taxes.
The "rich" pay the highest amount of taxes already. The top 1% pay 37% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% pays nearly 50% of all federal income taxes, and the top 10% pays over 70% of all income taxes. Plus those categories of income earners pay the vast bulk of all SS and Medicare taxes that help pay for everyone else's SS and Medicare.
Here is another number: the top 20% of income earners pay 80% of all federal taxes. 80%!
Hence, the whole OWS anarchist and envious socialist arguments are way off base. However, if they would simply come out and say raise the federal income tax on that 1% (or even top 2 or 3%) a total of an additional 5%, there would probably be no objection for wage earners in those categories. But the OWS anarchists and Marxists do not seem to be interested in that. They seem to have a much more far ranging agenda of a dark nature.
How about some more real numbers other than the fact that 46% are ungrateful that 54% support the entire country at the federal level:
40% of American chldren are born out of wedlock and this is the #1 cause of poverty in America. 72% black, 50% hispanic and 30% white are the sad illegitimacy numbers, and with the "free love" with no responsibility society America has these numbers are only increasing.
The divore rate is over 50% for first marriages and that is the #2 cause of poverty in America. Marital commitment means nothing anymore.
So, to the OWS crowd and their sympathizers, promoters and fellow travelors, let these REAL numbers sink in.
*******
Disclaimer: I am not one of the "rich". I am just a reporter of historical facts. Do with them what ye will.
Michael Smith
New York, NY
To William Gill, Esq. from Montgomery Alabama: the only figures you left out were the percentage of the national wealth held by the top 1%, and how dramatically their wealth has increased over the last 20 years, and how their taxes, as a percentage of income, have dramatically decreased over the last 20 years.
If you are not one of the "rich", as you claim, but you nevertheless go around citing meaningless statistics about the amount of taxes paid by billionaires as opposed to amount paid by minimum wage workers, you are either a fool or a con-man. The facts that you selectively site are obviously set forth as a bogus attempt to defend the super rich and blame the poor for the sorry state that we find ourselves in this country.
You are either a fraud and are writing as a shill for the rich, or you are just a fool; my guess is the former. Such tactics may fly in Alabama newspapers, but not in the New York Times. So take your "historical facts" and shove them up your phony ye-know-what.
William Gill, Esq.
Montgomery, Alabama
To Michael Smith of New York, New York: nice ad hominem abusive. It is typical of liberal socialists and atheists like yourself to engage in anonymous online personal attacks and regional bigotry instead of just focusing on facts and logic. Not to mention spineless and cowardly. Truth hurts doesn't it Mr. Smith?
As far as the 1% goes, I do not covet them. As a matter of fact the Holy Scriptures have a commandment: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. And as far as the wealth gap, as anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge and understanding of recent world history knows, it is because of globalism and the technological revolution that that 1% has become so rich, and they have created most of the jobs in the process and made everyone's live's better as a result. Again, I don't covet them. And I am sure they would not object to a reasonable tax increase. I notice you didn't even have the intellectual integrity of stating what amount of increase YOU are proposing for them. And you are futher dishonest about what amount of *income* taxes "minimum wage workers" are paying - virtually nothing with all the deductions and tax credits. They are part of the 46% who pay no federal income taxes.
You are a fool and a schill for anarchists, socialists and Marxists Mr. Smith. Plain and simple. Truth hurts and numbers don't lie.
Rebecca
Harlem
As for William Gill, Esq., you seem to have less faith in capitalism than the OWS protesters do: they believe that our economic system can generate profit and productivity AND ensure a basically acceptable standard of living for everyone who lives in it, whereas you seem to be saying that the best we can hope for is to provide solely for the rich, shrugging and shaking our heads as the innocent children of whose birth conditions you disapprove sink into poverty through no fault of their own. I'm not willing to give up that easily.
William Gill, Esq.
Montgomery, Alabama
Rebecca, it is not the responsibility of people - or the government via forced redistribution of the wealth "to provide" for some kind of mythical "standard of living" for some other group of people. To think so is what is called socialism. Socialism is antithetical to Americanism.
Now, having said that, there undoubtedly ARE all kinds of corporate abuses that need to be fixed, but not in the way anarchists and socialists that permeate the OWS are arguing for. I am going to surprise you and the rest of the NYTs readership who are mainly of the "liberal" persuasion: I have enough centrist in me and life experience to know that all businesses, ESPECIALLY the finanical industry need some amount of regulation. I have said it here and I say it all the time over at the WSJ: U.S. businesses need less regulation BUT the financial industry needs MORE regulation. I continously argue for such things as follows:
1. Defend Sarbanes-Oxley.
2. Defend Dodd-Frank.
3. Ban financial derivatives.
4. Ban leveraged ETFs.
5. Require at least 50% or more of inverstors own money
with respect to commodities futures (significantly increase "margin" requirements).
7. Ban high frequency trading.
8. Impose a standard of true *fiduciary* duty on all investment brokers/dealers for their customers.
9. Reinstate Glass-Steagall to completely separate commercial and investment banking and insurance and brokerage/investment houses, and I mean not even allowing a common parent corp. whatsoever.
10. This one is tricky, but clearly many of the Fortune 500 companies have a racket going on the last 20 years whereby there is massive overlap of Boards and Executives and they are all taking care of each other thru ridiculous and exorbitant compensation packages (typically disguised as "stock option", and golden parachute severance deals). This is really the responsibility of Shareholders, but something has to be done.
Things all people should agree on, whatever persuasion.
Real Men Liberate Invade Iran
After trying our hand at smaller targets, it's time we took it up to the next level: Iran. Never mind that none of our liberation missions has been anywhere near accomplished, for the objective is to keep things in motion so that the 99% remain dazed and confused about the economy and any other matter of real concern. Let's hear from the 99%:
SA
Houston, TX
I’m concerned that the impending I.A.E.A. report on Iran’s alleged advances in her nuclear program may not be strictly professional and fair. And it’s because, as this article states, “the director of the agency, Yukia Amano,” secretly visited “the White House 11 days ago to meet top officials of the National Security Council about the coming report ….”
Is it customary for the head of the I.A.E.A. to meet secretly with “top officials of the National Security Council” of each of the member states of the I.A.E.A. Board to discuss a coming report?
The United States, Israel and Europe provided some of the information used for the impending report. These are the same countries which have been leading the crusade to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. A conflict of interest is obvious.
An inconvenient truth is that the US has the unhealthy habit of corrupting international bodies and their officials. The case for this harsh but unavoidable observation is laid out in the article, “Special Relationship,” by Colum Lynch, in the April 18, 2011, issue of Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.com
“In the aftermath of Israel’s 2008-2009 intervention into the Gaza Strip, Susan E. Rice, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, led a vigorous campaign to stymie an independent U. N. investigation into possible war crimes, while using the prospect of such a probe as leverage to pressure Israel to participate in a U. S.-backed Middle East peace process….”
And the “United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an “independent” U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.”
Obviously, the U. S. tampered with the integrity of the U. N. Secretariat and a supposedly “independent” U. N. investigation.
Ms. Rice also warned the president of the ICC that an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes could damage its standing with the United States
The U.S. also colluded with Israel in ultimately stopping the original investigation that was ordered by U.N. Security Council resolution 1405 into alleged Israeli misconduct during her intervention in Jenin, the West Bank.
ALL nations must abide by international laws. When any country habitually obstructs justice, we have a duty to yell “STOP!” As Charles Peguy, the French philosopher, noted, “He who does not bellow the truth, when he knows the truth, makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”
The I.A.E.A. should do its job without the heavy-handed interference of outside interests.
Bill Messina
NY
Who the heck are we to demand that other countries stop their nuclear weapon strategy?
If we don't give up ours, why should they have to give up their research.
Since any country that has a nuclear capability is immune from our "shock and awe" tactics (Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan), why wouldn't these countries try to develop doomsday weapons to protect themselves against us?
Considering that we could totally destroy any country, that would dare send a nuclear weapon our way, none of them would dare take an offensive action against us.
What are we doing, here, attempting to build up a consensus to repeat our foolhardy efforts in Iraq against the Iranian people?
Citizens! Beware! The military industrial complex is still scheming.
MACV in DaNang
Castro Valley, CA
So What!. Iran deserves and reserves the right to acquire Nuclear Weapons. Who knows what country may try and invade (Israel, America) or bomb their people. A NUKE keeps everyone on their toes and in-their-place. Remember in 1953 The democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown by the CIA and Britain's MI6. This led to the Shah of Iran dictatorship up until 1979, during which thousands of Iranians were killed, tortured and repressed and the oil flowed to the west like honey. Now a country that can't tell the difference between forged papers concerning Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger, a country that created Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, the secret prisons and prison ships around the world, a country that launched two recent wars on faked justifications and killed more than a million civilians, a country that overthrew 13 legitimate democracies, and that installed and financed 42 bloody and brutal dictatorships around the world, shouldn't be shooting off too loudly about human rights violations and IRAN; there are still murderers with badges, guilty of lynchings, running around free. By the way, Asians have a loooong memory and they remember the 'Chinese Exclusion Act'. They also know that the Opium Poppy is not and was never native-to-China. The British (read White-man) introduced it in order to addict the population and control the tea-silk-spice trade. Now the Chinese own us lock-stock and barrel. They are in Africa, the Mid-East and South America. Do you really think China (and Russia) will allow the U.S. or Israel to start World War III without them being involved?
Are you still stupid after all these years? Have you forgotten the U.S.S. Liberty which was attacked in international waters by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 174?
James O'Donnell III
Fremont, CA
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer winner who accurately debunked Bush’s case for war in IRAQ, sheds light on today’s crusade to vilify Iran using the IAEA (from DemocracyNow, 6/3/11):
So now, in 2011, Washington is having secret meetings with its preferred IAEA director and AGAIN endeavoring to hurl the world into chaos based on a pack of lies. The evidence supporting THAT conclusion is abundant.
James O’Donnell III
Invitation2Artivism.com
Johndrake07
NYC
The US Neo-Cons have been salivating over Syria and Iran for years now - all you have to do is read their report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' on the Middle East found on the (now disappeared) web site of the 'Project for a New American Century' and the textbook instructions on how they and their proxy, Israel, plan on destabilizing those countries, overthrowing their leaders, and seizing the oil and natural gas resources for the US in their hegemonic drive to sole world power status - all part of what they call the "Great Game."
General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book 'Winning Modern Wars' being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].
When Douglas Feith was asked which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
Fortunately there are some saner heads standing up to the Israelis, the US and the Brits. Russia has finally started to exercise some clout and has warned Israel off of any attack or interference in the internal affairs of Iran or an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.
Now if we could get China to make similar suggestions to the US and the UK, then we might actually see some diplomatic skills at work and a defusing of the tensions that are threatening to embroil the US in yet another unaffordable war.
The Iranians are not stupid. Their civilization goes back way longer than others in the region. They are not Arabs, nor are they insane jihadists as other posters have written. They have never threatened the US.
This is all about making sure our puppet regimes in the Middle East are propped up with lackeys of our own making, and guaranteeing that oil and gas continue to flow. He who controls the oil controls the world.
Ike Solem
CA
According to NYT reporter James Risen in his book, "State of War", a least some of that nuclear explosive trigger technology was delivered to Iran via a Russian engineer as the result of flawed covert CIA program (with some assistance from Department of Energy scientists), along the lines of the "Fast and Furious" fiasco in Mexico that led to the resignation of the ATF head.
This was all apparently true, as evidenced by the CIA and DOJ responses:
Subpoena Issued to Writer in C.I.A.-Iran Leak Case
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: May 24, 2011
"WASHINGTON — With the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., federal prosecutors are trying to force the author of a book on the C.I.A. to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked information to him about the agency’s effort to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program at the end of the Clinton administration."
Given similar claims about the Iraqi nuclear program - made by both the UN agency as well as by the Bush Administration lackeys - all this should be considered highly suspect.
If the UN would generate a report on Israel's nuclear weapons program, to go hand-in-hand with the one on the supposed Iranian version, then they might have a little more credibility on this.
John Williford
Richland, Washington
We see an endless chain of demonization of foreigners, creating the enemies needed to manipulate the public to support endless military actions and enrichment of the elite military-industrial complex. The pattern is the old technique of manipulation of meat puppets who imagine that their voting privilege gives them leverage on events. It is the story of Mussolini in Italy and Adolph Hitler in Germany. It is an easily recognized pattern of fascism.
If, like the Germans of the 1930s, we eat the hate-mongering garbage we are fed and continue to ignore the theft of our republic by the current crop of fascists, we will no doubt continue to be drawn into endless war, and greater and greater war criminality.
Fascism is an amoral system, playing to the most base aspects of crowd psychology. In the short term, it creates an illusion of being part of a Master Race (read American Exceptionalism), which is taken as an entitlement or exemption from law and morality.
Although it is said that the trains ran on time in Italy during the fascist period, the system does not have legs. In pragmatic terms, fascism doesn't work, because the dependence on external enemies and constant war leads to collapse and loss. This is not rocket science.
Looking at the Italian fascists and the German Nazi party, only an ignorant fool afflicted with exceptional vanity would purposely take this path.
The question ahead of US is: Does China want to own Iran? Hint: Is China getting a better deal from the liberated Libya than from Qaddafi?
SA
Houston, TX
I’m concerned that the impending I.A.E.A. report on Iran’s alleged advances in her nuclear program may not be strictly professional and fair. And it’s because, as this article states, “the director of the agency, Yukia Amano,” secretly visited “the White House 11 days ago to meet top officials of the National Security Council about the coming report ….”
Is it customary for the head of the I.A.E.A. to meet secretly with “top officials of the National Security Council” of each of the member states of the I.A.E.A. Board to discuss a coming report?
The United States, Israel and Europe provided some of the information used for the impending report. These are the same countries which have been leading the crusade to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. A conflict of interest is obvious.
An inconvenient truth is that the US has the unhealthy habit of corrupting international bodies and their officials. The case for this harsh but unavoidable observation is laid out in the article, “Special Relationship,” by Colum Lynch, in the April 18, 2011, issue of Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.com
“In the aftermath of Israel’s 2008-2009 intervention into the Gaza Strip, Susan E. Rice, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, led a vigorous campaign to stymie an independent U. N. investigation into possible war crimes, while using the prospect of such a probe as leverage to pressure Israel to participate in a U. S.-backed Middle East peace process….”
And the “United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an “independent” U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.”
Obviously, the U. S. tampered with the integrity of the U. N. Secretariat and a supposedly “independent” U. N. investigation.
Ms. Rice also warned the president of the ICC that an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes could damage its standing with the United States
The U.S. also colluded with Israel in ultimately stopping the original investigation that was ordered by U.N. Security Council resolution 1405 into alleged Israeli misconduct during her intervention in Jenin, the West Bank.
ALL nations must abide by international laws. When any country habitually obstructs justice, we have a duty to yell “STOP!” As Charles Peguy, the French philosopher, noted, “He who does not bellow the truth, when he knows the truth, makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”
The I.A.E.A. should do its job without the heavy-handed interference of outside interests.
Bill Messina
NY
Who the heck are we to demand that other countries stop their nuclear weapon strategy?
If we don't give up ours, why should they have to give up their research.
Since any country that has a nuclear capability is immune from our "shock and awe" tactics (Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan), why wouldn't these countries try to develop doomsday weapons to protect themselves against us?
Considering that we could totally destroy any country, that would dare send a nuclear weapon our way, none of them would dare take an offensive action against us.
What are we doing, here, attempting to build up a consensus to repeat our foolhardy efforts in Iraq against the Iranian people?
Citizens! Beware! The military industrial complex is still scheming.
MACV in DaNang
Castro Valley, CA
So What!. Iran deserves and reserves the right to acquire Nuclear Weapons. Who knows what country may try and invade (Israel, America) or bomb their people. A NUKE keeps everyone on their toes and in-their-place. Remember in 1953 The democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown by the CIA and Britain's MI6. This led to the Shah of Iran dictatorship up until 1979, during which thousands of Iranians were killed, tortured and repressed and the oil flowed to the west like honey. Now a country that can't tell the difference between forged papers concerning Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger, a country that created Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, the secret prisons and prison ships around the world, a country that launched two recent wars on faked justifications and killed more than a million civilians, a country that overthrew 13 legitimate democracies, and that installed and financed 42 bloody and brutal dictatorships around the world, shouldn't be shooting off too loudly about human rights violations and IRAN; there are still murderers with badges, guilty of lynchings, running around free. By the way, Asians have a loooong memory and they remember the 'Chinese Exclusion Act'. They also know that the Opium Poppy is not and was never native-to-China. The British (read White-man) introduced it in order to addict the population and control the tea-silk-spice trade. Now the Chinese own us lock-stock and barrel. They are in Africa, the Mid-East and South America. Do you really think China (and Russia) will allow the U.S. or Israel to start World War III without them being involved?
Are you still stupid after all these years? Have you forgotten the U.S.S. Liberty which was attacked in international waters by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 174?
James O'Donnell III
Fremont, CA
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer winner who accurately debunked Bush’s case for war in IRAQ, sheds light on today’s crusade to vilify Iran using the IAEA (from DemocracyNow, 6/3/11):
“What the IAEA said is something it’s been saying repeatedly, even under ElBaradei. And I must say, the new director general, Mr. Amano, is, I think, more willing to please us than ElBaradei was, just in terms of speculating more.
...The word ‘evidence’ was nowhere in the report. It’s been going on a long time... the IAEA has put out... report after report that say one thing, that’s the most important thing: NO EVIDENCE of any diversion of enriched materials, NO EVIDENCE that they’re squirreling away enriched uranium to make a secret bomb. They have a lot of uranium enriched, the 3.7 percent, yes, but there’s NO EVIDENCE they’re doing anything more than storing it up to run a civilian nuclear reactor... And so, it’s the same thing that’s been going on. You can look at the questions raised and lead your story with that, or you can look at the fact they say consistently that there’s been no diversion.”
And regarding those documents fed to the IAEA during Bush’s tenure -- the same SECRET-SOURCE, unauthenticated junk that’s been recycled for today’s warmongers (now that there’s a Western stooge leading the agency) -- here’s an excerpt from an IAEA press release in September 2009:
“...the IAEA reiterates that it has NO CONCRETE PROOF that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran. At the Board of Governors´ meeting on 9 September 2009, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei warned that continuing allegations that the IAEA was withholding information on Iran are POLITICALLY MOTIVATED AND TOTALLY BASELESS.”
So now, in 2011, Washington is having secret meetings with its preferred IAEA director and AGAIN endeavoring to hurl the world into chaos based on a pack of lies. The evidence supporting THAT conclusion is abundant.
James O’Donnell III
Invitation2Artivism.com
Johndrake07
NYC
The US Neo-Cons have been salivating over Syria and Iran for years now - all you have to do is read their report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' on the Middle East found on the (now disappeared) web site of the 'Project for a New American Century' and the textbook instructions on how they and their proxy, Israel, plan on destabilizing those countries, overthrowing their leaders, and seizing the oil and natural gas resources for the US in their hegemonic drive to sole world power status - all part of what they call the "Great Game."
General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book 'Winning Modern Wars' being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].
When Douglas Feith was asked which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
Fortunately there are some saner heads standing up to the Israelis, the US and the Brits. Russia has finally started to exercise some clout and has warned Israel off of any attack or interference in the internal affairs of Iran or an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.
Now if we could get China to make similar suggestions to the US and the UK, then we might actually see some diplomatic skills at work and a defusing of the tensions that are threatening to embroil the US in yet another unaffordable war.
The Iranians are not stupid. Their civilization goes back way longer than others in the region. They are not Arabs, nor are they insane jihadists as other posters have written. They have never threatened the US.
This is all about making sure our puppet regimes in the Middle East are propped up with lackeys of our own making, and guaranteeing that oil and gas continue to flow. He who controls the oil controls the world.
Ike Solem
CA
According to NYT reporter James Risen in his book, "State of War", a least some of that nuclear explosive trigger technology was delivered to Iran via a Russian engineer as the result of flawed covert CIA program (with some assistance from Department of Energy scientists), along the lines of the "Fast and Furious" fiasco in Mexico that led to the resignation of the ATF head.
This was all apparently true, as evidenced by the CIA and DOJ responses:
Subpoena Issued to Writer in C.I.A.-Iran Leak Case
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: May 24, 2011
"WASHINGTON — With the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., federal prosecutors are trying to force the author of a book on the C.I.A. to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked information to him about the agency’s effort to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program at the end of the Clinton administration."
Given similar claims about the Iraqi nuclear program - made by both the UN agency as well as by the Bush Administration lackeys - all this should be considered highly suspect.
If the UN would generate a report on Israel's nuclear weapons program, to go hand-in-hand with the one on the supposed Iranian version, then they might have a little more credibility on this.
John Williford
Richland, Washington
We see an endless chain of demonization of foreigners, creating the enemies needed to manipulate the public to support endless military actions and enrichment of the elite military-industrial complex. The pattern is the old technique of manipulation of meat puppets who imagine that their voting privilege gives them leverage on events. It is the story of Mussolini in Italy and Adolph Hitler in Germany. It is an easily recognized pattern of fascism.
If, like the Germans of the 1930s, we eat the hate-mongering garbage we are fed and continue to ignore the theft of our republic by the current crop of fascists, we will no doubt continue to be drawn into endless war, and greater and greater war criminality.
Fascism is an amoral system, playing to the most base aspects of crowd psychology. In the short term, it creates an illusion of being part of a Master Race (read American Exceptionalism), which is taken as an entitlement or exemption from law and morality.
Although it is said that the trains ran on time in Italy during the fascist period, the system does not have legs. In pragmatic terms, fascism doesn't work, because the dependence on external enemies and constant war leads to collapse and loss. This is not rocket science.
Looking at the Italian fascists and the German Nazi party, only an ignorant fool afflicted with exceptional vanity would purposely take this path.
The question ahead of US is: Does China want to own Iran? Hint: Is China getting a better deal from the liberated Libya than from Qaddafi?
23.10.11
Capitalism: Unfit for civilized societies
The Paradox of the New Elite
By ALEXANDER STILLE
In economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.
_______________________________________
L.R.
Upstate New York
The U.S. has seen extreme economic stratification before; the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons still resonates across the decades. What has happened is that the forces that used to oppose wealth have largely abandoned the field, in part because of success, in part because of a shift in priorities, in part because of other conflicts.
To make a long comment short, the Democratic Party stopped fighting for economic justice in favor of social justice, and ended up selling out to the business community. For example, we now have a Democratic governor in New York State who is attacking state employee unions for having too much, while defending the right of millionaires to have even more - but he supports same sex marriage for rich and poor alike.
The full legacy of Martin Luther King has been forgotten. While everyone is aware of his leadership in fighting racial inequality, few know that he had come to see that economic inequality was as great a problem. At the time of his assassination, he was shifting his efforts to fight poverty as well as racism. It is ironic that King was rejected by many unions because of racism among union members, one of the things that led many of them to turn to Nixon and then Reagan in reaction to a Democratic Party that was spending their tax money on - in their opinion - undeserving minorities, and giving them special preferences.
This has pretty much given the forces driving inequality free rein over the last 30 years. The Republican Party has never had any problem accommodating racism or economic injustice; the party thrives on division. The break down of the labor - Democratic alliance, the destruction of unions in America, and the growing symbiosis between Wall Street and the Democratic Party Leadership has further accelerated the trend.
Inequality comes at a high price. Wilkinson and Pickett detail in the book "The Spirit Level" how it corrodes the quality of life for rich and poor alike in ways beyond money - is anyone listening?
anne
New York City
It's the old divide-and-conquer. White men who see women, immigrants and minorities becoming successful become resentful toward egalitarianism. They retreat to a fantasy identificiation with the white men who are members of the economic elite. The elite channels the anger of white men toward immigrants through psychologically sophisticated propaganda that makes them think it is the immigrants, not the Wall Street bankers, who are destroying their lifestyle and sense of identity. This is changing slowly, however, as the job prospects for college-educated white men have plummeted. A successful revolution in the United States needs white men, and the white men of the 99 per cent are waking up as they realize that even a middle-class life for them may be out of reach.
Barbara
New York
Economic inequality in the U.S. is exacerbated when then "elite" class, particularly those who control the banks, are permitted to gamble with citizens' money and not be held to accounts when their bets fail.
As Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and a former official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, commented in a front-page NYT article today (Bank’s Collapse in Europe Points to Global Risks)regarding the possible collapse of the European banking giant, Dexia: “In the short run, it would help if the authorities would say they refuse to provide publicly funded money for the payoffs of derivatives,” he said. “This is like using public funds to support your local casino. It is difficult to see how this is good for society in the long run.”
Nathan an Expat
China
In many ways "inclusion" as discussed in this article (gender, race sexual orientation,etc...has) often serves as a specious bait and switch for the real issue of socio-economic class. Replacing the sons of the wealthy with the daughters of the rich will do little to address the growing gap between rich and poor. I remember clearly a conversation with a rich White South African on the eve of Mandela's triumph. A reporter was asking him what he would do if a Black South African bought the house beside him. He replied looking over the well groomed hedges and expanses of closely clipped grass, "If he can afford that house I think we'll get along just fine". And they do -- all over the world with the Ivies and similar educational systems providing a fig lead of "certification" for the laughable argument the system is somehow a meritocracy as opposed to a corrupt inbred favors trading plutocracy that takes care of its own. (How many US President's children are now working for hedgefunds? How many senior government officials rotate out of investment banks?) Oh, one last anecdote a Yale admissions officer spoke of their concept of a "well rounded" candidate being one who could "roll all the way from New Haven to Wall Street".
Marv Raps
New York City
Excellent article. However, the assumption that the super rich earned their wealth and have an inalianable right to keep it needs to be challenged. Those who captured a percentage of a nations wealth that would have made the aristocracy of the 19th Century envious did not earn it through hard work, creativity and innovation. Few, if any, are inventors of great industries and even if they were, they would have relied on legions of inventors, innovators and laborers who paved the way for their success. Others relied on their wealth to capture greater wealth. Money does not earn money, it can merely capture it. Until we rethink the way wealth is captured and the way workers are denied the full fruit of their labor, the stratification of society will continue to get more unequal and social mobility, less common.
petevanpelt
Leesburg, Florida
Inclusion of minorities is probably a consequence of federal laws originating from the slavery issue and not from any humanity emanating from the people, at least in the south. I am from the deep south and believe me when I tell you that old perverse attitudes still prevail.
Concentration of wealth, however, and the elitism which naturally accompanies it is a direct consequence of capitalism. In but a few hundred years, capitalism has changed the typical person from one who took great pride in his work, who valued the work ethic, and realized that work itself is what makes people happy, to a person who values money and possessions above character, and appearance above substance. We have morphed into a vain and superficial society.
It seems that superficial and vain people also have less respect for the truth. The majority of presidents since Hoover have been caught in lies, who knows how much deceit went unnoticed. The people themselves have been transformed to have less respect for the truth. The point being that the elitist tenet ‘giving truth to the people would be like throwing pearls to swine‘ is probably now true.
Capitalism has another quality rendering it unfit for civilized societies, it is a natural enemy of the Earth. It is simply cheaper, hence more profitable, to dump one’s manufacturing waste into the earth, sky, or ocean, than to dispose of it responsibly.
kallian publico
Brooklyn, NY
Hard work? Setting up a financial industry casino is hard work? Facebook is hard work? Porn sites? Are these the businesses of the future or are they the new churches of a mentality scornful of collective, social responsiblity because they thrive on vulnerable, individual uncertainty. Without morality collective approval and disapproval will not be forthcoming. The symptom of this inequality, alienation, is also the cause. The only way to overcome this problem will be through morality. Whoever Resets the boundaries of what is right and wrong gets to define what is "legal"(financial derivatives) and what is "criminal"(terrorists).
Ronald Cohen
Wilmington, North Carolina
The shifting balance of power in this nation is directly connected to the influence of money and benefit that is conferred on elected officials by the financially dominant that the pervasive appointment of financial insiders to government positions. To restore the balance that must (a) be term limits; (b) public electoral financing; (c) end to the revolving door; (d) overruling of Citizen United by Congress commonsensically defining a person as a biological entity not a legal fiction; (e) return to Glass-Stiegel.
WillT26
Durham, NC
The part that is even worse than the loss of opportunity is the quality of our 'elite.' Our 'elite' 'leaders' are incompetent, short-sighted and greedy. Having a system like ours might be palatable if the people at the top actually deserved their positions.
Andrew
Colesville, MD
There are at least two common misconceptions among the pundits. First, the economic inequality and second the consumption demand slump are the two root-causes of economic debacle. They are not. The root cause has nothing to do with these results of systematic breakdown due to internally inherent contradictions.
“It is the system, stupid!”
It is true that inequality is associated with any private-ownership system but with capitalism, the ruling class has systematically established the legitimated and justified inequality. Historical, educational, news media and cultural inculcations render egalitarianism a taboo or if not, a freeload-like concept or a socio-irony. Capital relies on taboos and cultural misconceptions for its supreme reign on people’s spiritual and intellectual lives, just as it sets up politics, ideology, law and order as well as civil society to rein in people’s political lives.
Capital-owners have never volunteered to confer on people egalitarianism without a struggle. The more people struggle against the system, the more they get concessions from the ruling class. When they failed to struggle, the obtained concessions became invalid almost at once. The class struggles and never subjective wishes decide the outcome. This socio-political rule applies equally well to race, gender, age, immigration, religion and cultural equalities.
The author seems to lean too much towards the disinterested and subjective willingness of an unnamed ruling class to understand correctly the socio-political conflicts the vast population faces today.
OWS protesters clearly understand better than pundits their class struggle can make much more difference than ballots that are not a match of the greased palms. Mass movements with democratic awakening are no longer isolated anti-capital democratic activities of the frontal battlegrounds such as the Arab countries; it has spread to vastly large rear areas of advanced or emerging capitalist countries.
By ALEXANDER STILLE
In economic terms, the United States has gone from being a comparatively egalitarian society to one of the most unequal democracies in the world.
_______________________________________
L.R.
Upstate New York
The U.S. has seen extreme economic stratification before; the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons still resonates across the decades. What has happened is that the forces that used to oppose wealth have largely abandoned the field, in part because of success, in part because of a shift in priorities, in part because of other conflicts.
To make a long comment short, the Democratic Party stopped fighting for economic justice in favor of social justice, and ended up selling out to the business community. For example, we now have a Democratic governor in New York State who is attacking state employee unions for having too much, while defending the right of millionaires to have even more - but he supports same sex marriage for rich and poor alike.
The full legacy of Martin Luther King has been forgotten. While everyone is aware of his leadership in fighting racial inequality, few know that he had come to see that economic inequality was as great a problem. At the time of his assassination, he was shifting his efforts to fight poverty as well as racism. It is ironic that King was rejected by many unions because of racism among union members, one of the things that led many of them to turn to Nixon and then Reagan in reaction to a Democratic Party that was spending their tax money on - in their opinion - undeserving minorities, and giving them special preferences.
This has pretty much given the forces driving inequality free rein over the last 30 years. The Republican Party has never had any problem accommodating racism or economic injustice; the party thrives on division. The break down of the labor - Democratic alliance, the destruction of unions in America, and the growing symbiosis between Wall Street and the Democratic Party Leadership has further accelerated the trend.
Inequality comes at a high price. Wilkinson and Pickett detail in the book "The Spirit Level" how it corrodes the quality of life for rich and poor alike in ways beyond money - is anyone listening?
anne
New York City
It's the old divide-and-conquer. White men who see women, immigrants and minorities becoming successful become resentful toward egalitarianism. They retreat to a fantasy identificiation with the white men who are members of the economic elite. The elite channels the anger of white men toward immigrants through psychologically sophisticated propaganda that makes them think it is the immigrants, not the Wall Street bankers, who are destroying their lifestyle and sense of identity. This is changing slowly, however, as the job prospects for college-educated white men have plummeted. A successful revolution in the United States needs white men, and the white men of the 99 per cent are waking up as they realize that even a middle-class life for them may be out of reach.
Barbara
New York
Economic inequality in the U.S. is exacerbated when then "elite" class, particularly those who control the banks, are permitted to gamble with citizens' money and not be held to accounts when their bets fail.
As Walker F. Todd, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and a former official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, commented in a front-page NYT article today (Bank’s Collapse in Europe Points to Global Risks)regarding the possible collapse of the European banking giant, Dexia: “In the short run, it would help if the authorities would say they refuse to provide publicly funded money for the payoffs of derivatives,” he said. “This is like using public funds to support your local casino. It is difficult to see how this is good for society in the long run.”
Nathan an Expat
China
In many ways "inclusion" as discussed in this article (gender, race sexual orientation,etc...has) often serves as a specious bait and switch for the real issue of socio-economic class. Replacing the sons of the wealthy with the daughters of the rich will do little to address the growing gap between rich and poor. I remember clearly a conversation with a rich White South African on the eve of Mandela's triumph. A reporter was asking him what he would do if a Black South African bought the house beside him. He replied looking over the well groomed hedges and expanses of closely clipped grass, "If he can afford that house I think we'll get along just fine". And they do -- all over the world with the Ivies and similar educational systems providing a fig lead of "certification" for the laughable argument the system is somehow a meritocracy as opposed to a corrupt inbred favors trading plutocracy that takes care of its own. (How many US President's children are now working for hedgefunds? How many senior government officials rotate out of investment banks?) Oh, one last anecdote a Yale admissions officer spoke of their concept of a "well rounded" candidate being one who could "roll all the way from New Haven to Wall Street".
Marv Raps
New York City
Excellent article. However, the assumption that the super rich earned their wealth and have an inalianable right to keep it needs to be challenged. Those who captured a percentage of a nations wealth that would have made the aristocracy of the 19th Century envious did not earn it through hard work, creativity and innovation. Few, if any, are inventors of great industries and even if they were, they would have relied on legions of inventors, innovators and laborers who paved the way for their success. Others relied on their wealth to capture greater wealth. Money does not earn money, it can merely capture it. Until we rethink the way wealth is captured and the way workers are denied the full fruit of their labor, the stratification of society will continue to get more unequal and social mobility, less common.
petevanpelt
Leesburg, Florida
Inclusion of minorities is probably a consequence of federal laws originating from the slavery issue and not from any humanity emanating from the people, at least in the south. I am from the deep south and believe me when I tell you that old perverse attitudes still prevail.
Concentration of wealth, however, and the elitism which naturally accompanies it is a direct consequence of capitalism. In but a few hundred years, capitalism has changed the typical person from one who took great pride in his work, who valued the work ethic, and realized that work itself is what makes people happy, to a person who values money and possessions above character, and appearance above substance. We have morphed into a vain and superficial society.
It seems that superficial and vain people also have less respect for the truth. The majority of presidents since Hoover have been caught in lies, who knows how much deceit went unnoticed. The people themselves have been transformed to have less respect for the truth. The point being that the elitist tenet ‘giving truth to the people would be like throwing pearls to swine‘ is probably now true.
Capitalism has another quality rendering it unfit for civilized societies, it is a natural enemy of the Earth. It is simply cheaper, hence more profitable, to dump one’s manufacturing waste into the earth, sky, or ocean, than to dispose of it responsibly.
kallian publico
Brooklyn, NY
Hard work? Setting up a financial industry casino is hard work? Facebook is hard work? Porn sites? Are these the businesses of the future or are they the new churches of a mentality scornful of collective, social responsiblity because they thrive on vulnerable, individual uncertainty. Without morality collective approval and disapproval will not be forthcoming. The symptom of this inequality, alienation, is also the cause. The only way to overcome this problem will be through morality. Whoever Resets the boundaries of what is right and wrong gets to define what is "legal"(financial derivatives) and what is "criminal"(terrorists).
Ronald Cohen
Wilmington, North Carolina
The shifting balance of power in this nation is directly connected to the influence of money and benefit that is conferred on elected officials by the financially dominant that the pervasive appointment of financial insiders to government positions. To restore the balance that must (a) be term limits; (b) public electoral financing; (c) end to the revolving door; (d) overruling of Citizen United by Congress commonsensically defining a person as a biological entity not a legal fiction; (e) return to Glass-Stiegel.
WillT26
Durham, NC
The part that is even worse than the loss of opportunity is the quality of our 'elite.' Our 'elite' 'leaders' are incompetent, short-sighted and greedy. Having a system like ours might be palatable if the people at the top actually deserved their positions.
Andrew
Colesville, MD
There are at least two common misconceptions among the pundits. First, the economic inequality and second the consumption demand slump are the two root-causes of economic debacle. They are not. The root cause has nothing to do with these results of systematic breakdown due to internally inherent contradictions.
“It is the system, stupid!”
It is true that inequality is associated with any private-ownership system but with capitalism, the ruling class has systematically established the legitimated and justified inequality. Historical, educational, news media and cultural inculcations render egalitarianism a taboo or if not, a freeload-like concept or a socio-irony. Capital relies on taboos and cultural misconceptions for its supreme reign on people’s spiritual and intellectual lives, just as it sets up politics, ideology, law and order as well as civil society to rein in people’s political lives.
Capital-owners have never volunteered to confer on people egalitarianism without a struggle. The more people struggle against the system, the more they get concessions from the ruling class. When they failed to struggle, the obtained concessions became invalid almost at once. The class struggles and never subjective wishes decide the outcome. This socio-political rule applies equally well to race, gender, age, immigration, religion and cultural equalities.
The author seems to lean too much towards the disinterested and subjective willingness of an unnamed ruling class to understand correctly the socio-political conflicts the vast population faces today.
OWS protesters clearly understand better than pundits their class struggle can make much more difference than ballots that are not a match of the greased palms. Mass movements with democratic awakening are no longer isolated anti-capital democratic activities of the frontal battlegrounds such as the Arab countries; it has spread to vastly large rear areas of advanced or emerging capitalist countries.
BJW
Olympia, WA
I think, in fact, we have become a pseudo meritocracy. We are becoming more of an aristocracy where the privileged few can maintain their wealth from generation to generation through inheritance and their children get special treatment regardless of their academic achievement. Take George W. Bush, for example. Here was a mediocre student who gets into Yale because of his family name. With the demise of inheritance tax, compounded by economic stagnation, we've created a system that prevents social and economic mobility. Cronyism, nepotism, sycophantic behavior, and the like are the new norm in coporate and government culture. Arguably, the elite system perpetuates this condition since incompetent "leaders" like Bush now are the heads of of corporations And their dreadful decisions have destroyed the economy leaving only this aristocratic model in place. We are becoming a society like 19th century England without the glory of a monarchy.
professor
NC
Egalitarian? Equality?
This piece lacks a historical perspective and is inaccurate. This country was founded on inequality and that has remained the status quo! Rich, white male landowners pitted themselves against white indentured servants and African slaves to maintain economic, legal and political power. Very little has changed since then! The author is confusing the increased visibility of minorities and women with actual economic and political power. The truth is that the descendants of the white landowners comprise the 1% that own 80% of the wealth in this country. There still exists institutional discrimination which prevents low-income whites, women and minorities from acquiring real wealth in this country. There never has been equality and there never will be unless the class structure is exposed and fundamentally altered.
Stephen de las Heras
New York, NY
The left needs to take responsibility for their failings as well. Dividing everyone into groups by race, or gender, or sexuality really undermined the notion of caring about everyone's rights, and everyone's opportunities, and distracted people from the real issue: growing inequality. Togetherness and fairness were traded away for group identity and trying to leverage that identity into some sort advantage in the real world through diversity initiatives or quotas. The only liberals who ever had a real sense that this was a bad thing, to the extent that they didn't belong to a "group", were often sent to the back of the line, or portrayed as the bad guys, were white heterosexual men.
Lynne
Wisconsin
If by "egalitarian" the author means "fair," we as a country, society and culture have never been so. George Washington was the richest man in the United States. For all it's high falutin' language about liberty and equality, the Constitution is rather vague and subject to interpretation-some would say written largely in favor of property owners, of which there were only a handful in Washington's day. The American Revolution was about wealthy colonists wanting a larger share than King George allowed and a redirection of the fomenting, angry rebellion of the other 99%: white indentured poor, slaves and natives who were joining forces against American Colony elites holding all the cards.
The middle class is a lovely invention designed to give just enough comfort to just enough people. Sated, it provides a buffer for the 1% against rebellion of the angry poor, for whom the middle class life is held out as a carrot. With the decimation of workers rights and the loss of the rising tide, which in the past did "raise all boats," the angry poor becomes an ever increasing threat.
Nothing new under the sun.
Dwight Bobson
Washington DC
This discussion assumes the existence in the U.S. of ideals, i.e., a free market and capitalism. The U.S. could produce greater financial equality within limits of a person's ability if the ideals were not gamed and twisted in favor of the already wealthy, which to me means certain people are allowed to cheat. If a company buys (read: campaign contribution), via political favor, a loophole in a law that allows it be favored over relative equivalent competitors, it creates inequality. If the same is done with a regulation that allows what amount to corporate welfare (see: http://www.cato.org/corporate-welfare, it creates inequality. There is no apparent accountability applied to cheaters, be they members of congress or those who buy their influence from them. Laws and their enforcement need to be in place to have a chance at financial equality. What the GOP as a political arm of the wealthy, with the help of the Democrats who are willing to allow cheating for both those who tug at their heartstrings as well as the wealthy campaign contributors, endorse is the de-regulatory government that has been increasing. And this is not to excuse Clinton's repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as proposed by influential GOP congressmen. In summary, the average American has been cheated, knowingly and deliberately, by their elected representatives. And you cannot talk about ideals of equality and justice without recognizing that power corrupts and wealth buys power and so it also buys corruption. That man is so corruptible is simply a fact of life in America where greed has the stamp of approval from such a large segment of the powerful, of the leadership and of the elected.
Richard Doczy
California
So what is wrong with being un-egalitarian? Nothing in nature is. Nor in athletics, nor in scholarship, nor in beauty, nor...well you should get it by now. Why should we all be equally poor or rich? Makes no sense and trying to make us so simply makes those who would arrange it far more powerful than the rest of us.
Tom
Little Silver, NJ
It is time to recognize that income inequality is a normal, natural result of increasing productivity, especially from technology. We live in a world where increasingly complex (and formerly labor-intensive) tasks can be performed by fewer and fewer people. The trend started during the Industrial Revolution, and has likely accelerated during the Technological Revolution of the past 20 years. The difference is that we didn't notice, or didn't care, when 20 uneducated farm laborers were replaced by a thresher or combine. But when 20 college-degreed accountants are replaced by a spreadsheet program, or 20 highly-skilled arc welders are replaced by a robot on an assembly line, we notice. All the wages that those displaced workers used to receive are going to naturally get redistributed upward to fewer, more technologically-skilled workers.
This is progress, and is natural. And it is beneficial to society. Instead if fighting it, we must learn to cope, and teach our children to cope, and prepare so that they are not left behind.
You want income equality? Ban the computer. Ban electricity while you're at it.
Teed Rockwell
CA
Response to Tom in NJ:
"This is progress, and is natural."
So is bubonic plague, and economic collapse caused by housing bubbles. That doesn't make it right or desirable.
"And it is beneficial to society."
Only if you define society as the Rich
"Instead if fighting it, we must learn to cope, and teach our children to cope, and prepare so that they are not left behind."
And how are we to do that when education is now so expensive that only the Rich can afford it?
Vincent Amato
New York City
The real problem is the notion that American exceptionalism is to be maintained at any price. When it became clear that European and Asian economies were trending toward greater prosperity as the devastation of WWII receded into the past, it appeared that economic policy makers made decisions that said to our own citizens and to the world at large, "we may no longer be able to provide the relative advantages to our workers and ascendant middle class that they acquired in the 1950s, but we will allow some Americans at least to acquire wealth unimaginable in any other country." The now highly vaunted 1% is, in effect, an American version of the Potemkin Village, a facade of highly tinseled wealth behind which the vast majority are left to make do the best they can on their own. This is not a byproduct of superior skills or the magic of capitalism for a handful, it is a matter of policy, of, in effect, subsidies to the richest Americans. We have been taught to believe that anything more equitable would create a grey, Scandinavian style socialist reality.
Colorado Going Blue
Colorado
Inequities are forgiven if success is achieved. Success has become based on our modern icons. Our social icons are given, largely, by the media. These icons are the rich and famous. Success is determined, somewhat by talent, but mostly by access to capital. Those who are the traditional gatekeepers of the capital are formidable in excluding those who are not cultivated in the knowledge, or the family, understanding how to access capital. No investment, no return, so to speak. But more brutish is that there are painfully few protections any longer to control how capital is raised at the elite level. Pillaging those without has become fair game. Hence the elite end of the pool is heading in an upward trajectory toward success at the logistical expense of those on the bottom being pushed further downward. There is no equality in a society which cannot create a government that can consistently protect those with less political power from those who hold it. There are no protections in America for being poor.
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