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| 4/30/2006
4:00:00 AM |
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Today's capitalism favors society's
rich
Talk of the
Town
By CHARLES KELLY Special to the
Courier
If you want to understand how our country
is changing from the kind of democratic capitalism we had
under Roosevelt and Truman to an aristocratic capitalism
read two recent items from the Courier
First, Donald Lambro lamented the difficulties
President Bush will face in getting significant legislation
enacted, and suggested that he should focus on, among other
things, slowing the rate of spending growth, and extending the
capital gains and dividend tax rate reductions.
Second,
an Associated Press release described a few of the many kinds
of spending cuts that Lambro and Congress have in mind: Social
Security, Medicare, the National Institutes of Health, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Commodity
Supplemental Food Program (provides food to low-income mothers
and children under 6 years old, as well as to the elderly
poor).
Note that most of this legislation will endow
the greatest benefits to our wealthiest taxpayers, and the
greatest sacrifices to middle- and low-income working class
Americans the ones most hurt by globalization and
by their loss of power to negotiate for better wages and
working conditions.
Indeed, this trend becomes clearer
when you couple these two items with a commentary published in
Barron's magazine during Bush's period of high popularity
(April, 2004): "Šthere is strong evidence that Bush also is
engineering a fundamental change in the tax system. By
gradually taking capital out of the tax base through
reductions in levies on dividends, capital gains and
inheritances, Bush is transforming the income tax into a pure
tax on wages." (Note that Barron's is probably our most
influential conservative financial publication for serious
investors.)
In other words, we should inherit wealth
and not tax income from wealth, regardless of whether someone
inherits or not, should not be taxed. Only people who work for
an income should pay taxes. This is almost a classic
dictionary definition of an aristocracy, especially when you
combine it with economic policies that increasingly put
workers at a disadvantage in their relationships with
employers.
Voters should take a page from general
semantics and realize that "capitalism" and "free markets"
don't exist. They aren't things anyone can point at. They're
verbal symbols that represent different things to different
people. Too often, demagogues use the terms to justify, or
camouflage, their special view as to the real goals of their
economic policies.
To me, capitalism means that most of
the means of providing goods and services to the American
public are under private ownership and operation. Government
sets minimum standards for competition to make sure that the
market remains free for those who respect the rights of
investors, the public, the environment and their workers.
Corporations aren't "free" to destroy the environment, or to
cheat investors, or to take ruthless advantage of consumers
and workers.
In another era of great disparity between
rich and poor, Roosevelt set minimum standards for wages and
working conditions, and reasonable protections of workers from
competition from brutalized workers in other parts of the
world, (among many other things). His policies led to the
development of a vibrant middle- and upper-middle-class, and
gave the poor an easier access to a better life.
Today they define "capitalism," on the other hand, as
a way for the "successful," no matter how they achieve their
success, to live in luxury, while those who work hardest for a
living no longer can afford health care or send their kids to
college. Bush isn't alone in redefining capitalism and the
free market to favor corporations at the expense of labor.
President Clinton joined conservatives in Congress and gave us
NAFTA, and strengthened GATT (through the WTO).
By
expanding the labor pool to include the whole world, our
government has allowed corporations and their investors to pit
American workers against workers who don't live in this
country, don't have our standard of living, and who have
virtually no defenses against unfair labor
practices.
And to cap it off, they're giving tax breaks
to those who benefit most from workers' stagnant wages, and
reducing benefits for those who must make all the
sacrifices.
(Charles M. Kelly is a retired
management consultant living in Prescott. His e-mail is
kellycm@cableone.net)
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