May 14, 2012 |
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I
lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma
Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago.
Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits
from the health care, education and financial industries.
1. We're Near the Bottom of the Developed World in Children's Health and Safety
According to a 2007 The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
report, the US ranked last among 21 Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in an assessment of child
health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality,
immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.
A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the US 24th out of
30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the
devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the
second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries,
the US ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children
living in households that are below 50% of the median income).
2. We've Betrayed the Young People Who Were Advised to Stay in School
Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their
parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The
unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000
Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.
As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce
the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily
available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.
Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for
investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students
are forced to accept menial positions. Yet, delusions persist about our
new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about
today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs - jobs that "don't
yet exist."
3. The Main Source of Middle-Class Wealth Has Been Largely Wiped Out
American homeowners owe almost as much as the students, with $700 billion of debt over and above the value of their homes.
This removes the only source of wealth for middle America, especially
for blacks and Hispanics. Remarkably, for every dollar of non-home
wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.
So when minority families were specifically targeted for high-risk,
subprime loans that could be re-packaged and sold for a quick short-term
profit, most of their assets were erased. Median wealth fell 66% for
Hispanic households and 53% for black households. For whites the decline
was 16%.
With a disturbing note of irony, Sanford Weill - the banker largely
responsible for the reversal of the mortgage-protecting Glass-Steagall
Act - was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for
"extraordinary accomplishment and a call to serve."
4. We Give Prison Sentences for Smoking Marijuana, but Not for Billion-Dollar Fraud
About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for
non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing
out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed
for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003, in
California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or
more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two
non-violent offenses.
How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It
strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on
maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no
incentive for rehabilitation.
As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated
countless American lives "get out of jail free." The savings and loan
fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100
times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial
system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs
packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings
services to label it AAA and then bet against their own financial
creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider
trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide
Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the
Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of
over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements
involving fines and "monitoring" periods.
5. You Can Have Health Care, If You Pay for It
A recent Commonwealth Fund study compared US health care spending to
12 other OECD countries. The data shows that reducing our costs to the
median level of spending among the OECD countries would save us $1.5
trillion a year, more than our entire deficit.
Unfortunately, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and
hospital administrators won't hear of it. There's too much money to be
made. Bypass surgery in the US costs two to three times more than in
Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Cataract surgery costs four
times more.
That's if you can pay for it. There are currently about 50 million
uninsured Americans. At the other extreme are $2,400 oxymoronic
penthouse hospital suites complete with butler and grand piano. Or, for
those who don't get out much, emergency rooms in the home, with private
cell-phone access to "concierge doctors."
Inequality in our country is so severe that 120,000 health care
workers could have been hired with the salary paid to one man. That's a
$40,000 salary for 40 health care workers for every one of the 3,000
counties in the United States. Instead, $5 billion dollars went to one
man who reportedly made his first big haul ($4 billion, in 2007) by
conspiring with Goldman Sachs in the above-mentioned short sale
subterfuge.
The result of ignoring the health needs of the greater population,
according to a report in the Annual Review of Public Health, is that
"the health rankings of the United States have declined substantially
when compared with other nations."
Conclusion
Privatization simply hasn't worked for health care, mortgage banking,
higher education, or prison management. There is little incentive for
profit-motivated firms to invest in disadvantaged or underemployed
Americans. That's why taxes are necessary - to provide for the common
good, and to return some of the gains from 60 years of productivity to
the great majority of Americans who contributed to our growth.
Unfortunately, the golden door on the Statue of Liberty seems to have an
invisible hand holding it shut.
Paul Buchheit is a professor with
City Colleges of Chicago, founder of fightingpoverty.org and co-founder
of Global Initiative Chicago. He is the editor and main contributor to
the forthcoming book, "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity
Press).
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