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Today's
Stories
October 19,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Party
Favors: the Political Business of Terry McAuliffe
October 18,
2004
Saul Landau
Facts
and Lies; Slogans and Truth
Dave Lindorff
Bulletin
on the Bush Bulge
Diane Christian
Sheep
and Goats: On the Language of Goodness
Greg Bates / Dave Lindorff
Betting on War: a Wager on the Fallout of a Kerry Presidency
Uri Avnery
Ariel
Sharon's Philosophy
Peter LaVenia
Leaving the Greens So Soon? a Response to Josh Frank
Mike Whitney
O'Reilly at the Whipping Post
Elaine Cassel
The Other War: Civil Liberties Three Years After 9/11
October 16
/ 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
October 15,
2004
Paul Craig
Roberts
Where
Did These "Conservatives" Come From?: The Brownshirting
of America
Laura Carlsen
Wal-Mart
vs. the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon
Greg Bates
Empire of Insanity: Kerry's Iraq Troop Numbers
Michael Donnelly
News from a Swing State: Does Anyone Here Have a Spine?
Katherine Lahey
The Venezuelan "Threat": Why Do Kerry and Bush Fear
Hugo Chavez?
Robert Jensen
/ Pat Youngblood
Election Day Fears
Leah Caldwell
From
Supermax to Abu Ghraib: the Masterminds of Torture and Abuse
Website of
the Day
An Anti-Billionaire Policy? Why That Would Be Economic Racism
October 14,
2004
Darcy Richardson
The
Other Progressive Candidate: the Lonely Crusade of Walt Brown
Willliam A.
Cook
Turning
Myths into Truth
Laura Santina
Water, Women and War
Evelyn Pringle
Free Speech Banned by Big Pharma: What You Can't Say About Drug
Importation
Alan Farago
Lessons
from Nature
Rep. Maxine Waters
A Letter to Colin Powell on Haiti
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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October 19, 2004
American Myopia
"More
Money in Your Pocket"
By
MATT VIDAL
Ever since formally democratic governments
have replaced monarchies, one of the main rhetorical tricks of
conservatives of various stripes--including what are called liberals
in Europe and are now called Republicans in the US--has been
to continually invoke the image of the free individual versus
the authoritarian state. Freedom and state power, they say, grow
in inverse proportion.
In the impoverished condition
of contemporary American political discourse, this antagonism
takes an increasingly simplified and distorted form in conservative
rhetoric: state power is defined as intervention into the economy,
primarily through taxation. Thus, freedom is diminished whenever
the government taxes individuals (or even corporations!) or attempts
to regulate private industry.
Meanwhile, as critics from
Marx to Chomsky have pointed out, private power grows and concentrates
in fewer hands. Global mega-corporations, which own or set the
terms of business for most smaller corporations and businesses,
increasingly control more aspects of life.
Hard working individuals spend
years working forty, fifty or more hours per week for companies
that increasingly show little commitment to their employees.
Private tyranny grows, unabated, while citizens and workers are
instructed--by populist rhetoric fashioned by economic elites
and their apologists--to fear public tyranny.
And so it goes. In the final
presidential debate last Wednesday, October 13, two former Skull
and Bones members who had the same debate coach at Yale sought
to distinguish themselves. Chicken Hawk, who was fattened on
petroleum, tried to portray Hawk, fattened on ketchup, as a liberal--"a
Massachusetts Senator!"--who seeks to replace individual
freedom with government tutelage. In a move that would've made
their debate professor proud, I'm sure, Chicken Hawk pulled out
the old trick:
"Let me talk to the workers.
You've got more money in your pocket as a result of the tax relief
we passed and he opposed. If you have a child, you got a $1,000
child credit. That's money in your pocket. It's your money.
The way my opponent talks, he said, 'We're going to spend the
government's money.' No, we're spending your money. And when
you have more money in your pocket, you're able to better afford
things you want."
Money in your pocket? Is the
Bush campaign trying to buy the vote? Indeed, this is part of
the plan, though it should be noted that most of the money received
from tax cuts is actually a loan, financed through deficit spending
and to be paid for in the future by us and our children ($200
billion of the 2003 deficit according to the Congressional Budget
Office).
Mostly this appeal of Bush,
as with his conservative forbears, is rhetorical, meant to invoke
the image of struggle between individual freedom and authoritarian
government. It can't be exclusively an attempt to buy the vote
any more than it can be simply an appeal to the principle that
individuals should get to keep their hard-earned money, for these
both contradict reality. For most workers, real (inflation adjusted)
wages have been stagnating or declining over the last three decades.
In 1972, the average hourly
wage for US private sector, non-supervisory workers was, in 2003
dollars, $17.14. In 2003 it was $15.35, an 11% decrease over
30 years.[1] That's less money in your pocket.
And the reduction in purchasing
power of the average US worker has come not from an increase
in the public power of the state, but from an increase in the
private power of corporations and wealthy individuals. Corporations,
their managers and major stockholders have become fantastically
wealthy at the expense of their workers.[2]
Real wages for most workers
have been cut along with their social safety net and other social
services. But rather than continue to cite numbers on incomes
or taxes, I want to make a qualitative argument.
The conservative position is
only one view of the relationship between state and individual
and, I might add, the view supported by nearly every person who
benefits from the status quo. A more complex view of this
relationship recognizes that gross economic inequalities, concentrations
of power in private hands, pockets of extreme poverty, et
cetera, are as potentially damaging to individual freedoms
and a healthy democratic society as public tyranny.
Poverty and a lack of opportunities
for good jobs generate all sorts of social ills. Wal-Marts drive
out community-owned businesses, pay poverty wages, and force
suppliers into being sweatshops in order to provide an "everyday
low price." General Electric, the eighth largest US defense
contractor in 1999, owns NBC and major media outlets; more generally
extreme concentration of ownership by for-profit mega-corporations
shapes the means of communication to serve its own interests,
severely restricting democratic discourse.
A more complex view also sees
that while the state may certainly restrict individual freedoms,
it may also be an effective, and perhaps necessary mechanism
for guaranteeing the opportunity to realize individual potential
for large classes or segments of the population. Simply consider
the history of women, blacks and other minorities. A strong state
is needed to protect disadvantaged and unprivileged populations
from powerful, entrenched interests and to counter the private
tyranny that develops in a capitalist market society.
Consider Teddy Roosevelt's
implementation of anti-trust legislation in the face of massive
corporate monopolies or his Federal regulation of food and drug
purity; Franklin Roosevelt's establishment of social security
and a "welfare state" that laid the foundation for
the "Golden years" of post-war US economic growth,
including rising real wages until the 1970s; and Eisenhower's
use of the US military to enforce integration of schools in Little
Rock under Brown v. Board of Education in 1957.
Finally, a more complex view
realizes that modern economy and society are themselves extremely
complex and interdependent, that the US is a global economic
powerhouse because of a strong, well-funded state combined with
the collective labor of its workers to provide the foundation
for prosperity.
This idea is succinctly expressed
by the second wealthiest person in the US, Warren Buffet: "society
is responsible for a very significant percentage for what I've
earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru
or some place, you'll find how much this talent is going to produce
in the wrong kind of soil, I would be struggling 30 years later,
I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very
well, disproportionately very well."[3]
More generally, it is not simply
a "free market" that provides the creation of wealth
and prosperity, but what supports this so-called free market:
a well-funded government able to enforce property rights and
ensure order and safety, and also to provide infrastructure from
basic research and development to sewer systems, highways and
public spaces that increase the efficiency of the private sector
and make our communities nice places to live and work.
As two recently released reports
just confirmed, one from the World Bank and one from the World
Economic Forum, high tax rates are compatible with a competitive
business environment. In both reports Finland, Sweden, Denmark
and Norway, countries with some of the highest taxation rates
and most extensive welfare states in the West, were ranked among
the most competitive economies in the world.[4]
The US also ranked among the
top, placing second behind Finland in the World Economic Forum
report. But some key differences should be kept in mind: while
both economies are equally competitive, only one society has
universal health care, four to five weeks annual vacation for
beginning workers, publicly funded childcare as a right for all
parents, paid parental leave for all working mothers and fathers
[5], free high-quality university education, low economic and
social inequality, and a functional social safety net.
The conservative (anti-tax)
view of the state is a form of American myopia.
Matt Vidal is pursuing his doctorate at the University
of Wisconsin in Madison.
He can be reached at: mvidal@ssc.wisc.edu
[1] US Bureau of Labor Statistics,
author's calculations.
[2] United for a Fair Economy,
"Ratio
of CEO Pay to Average Worker Pay Reaches 301 in 2003".
[3] Chuck Collins, "Google
Wealth Built on Uncle Sam's Shoulders," CommonDreams.org,
August 23, 2004.
[4] Elizabeth Becker, "Nordic
Countries Come Out Near the Top in Two Business Surveys,"
New York Times, October 14, 2004.
[5] Compare
the Finnish system of parental leave .
Weekend
Edition Features for October 16 / 17, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Free Speech Movement and Howard Stern
Leslie Brill
Unmerciful Judge, Merry Executioners: the Death Penalty as the
True Measure of Bush's Character
Jules Rabin
Reckoning Deaths in an Agitated World
Dave Lindorff
About the Bush Bulge: Was There a Pucker in That Jacket or Was
the President Just Glad to be There?
Peter Linebaugh
Judging Judges: a Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices
Gary Leupp
Iran and Syria: How to Effect Regime Change and Expand the Empire
M. Shahid Alam
America, Imagine This!
Ron Jacobs
Trying to Cross Lake Champlain
Fred Gardner
The Flu Vaccine Question: How Bush Blew It
Jenna Orkin
The Toxic Legacy of 9/11
Dave Zirin
Name the DC Baseball Team: Contest Results
David Hamilton
Alone and Exposed: Bush as a Strong Leader?
Ralph Nader
Criticizing Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Doug Giebel
Thinking the Unthinkable
Mark Engler
Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador
Derek Tyner
Blacks Didn't Get the Vote by Voting: an Interview With Clarence
Thomas on the Million Worker March
Evan Jones
Gimme That Ole Time Religion: Cash and "The Mind of the
South"
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Klipschutz and Albert
Website of
the Weekend
No More Bush Girls
/
|