By MARC McDONALD
America has been gutting its already-threadbare social safety net for three decades. The recent cuts to food stamps are the latest evidence of that.
Does this mean that we will eventually see the realization of the GOP's dream of ending all welfare for low-income people?
Not if corporate America has a say in the matter. And make no mistake, nothing gets done in Washington, D.C. without corporate America's blessing.
The fact is, corporate America loves welfare. (No, I'm not just talking about the billions of dollars big corporations pocket in corporate welfare every year). I'm talking about welfare for low-income people.
In fact, welfare for low-income people plays a key and crucial role in the business models of companies ranging from Walmart to the fast-food industry. Without welfare programs like Medicaid and food stamps, many of these corporations would have to rethink their entire business model.
If all this sounds odd, it really shouldn't. After all, this explains why America has a social safety net in the first place.
Of course, America is a nation that has never had much sympathy for poor people. From birth, we are taught to admire the wealthy and spit on the poor. (Yes, this is indeed odd for a so-called "Christian" nation).
Hence, America's skimpy, bare-bones social safety net. In fact, given America's hostility toward the poor, it raises a question: why does America even have a social safety net at all? It certainly isn't because low-income people have much clout in Washington, D.C.
Republicans talk a real good talk about "ending welfare." And indeed, the GOP (along with the Democrats) have managed to slash welfare programs quite a bit over the past 30 years.
But the fact is, America still has a social safety net, even if it is very skimpy. And that social safety net is going nowhere, despite what the likes of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are demanding.
The fact, is America's social safety net exists not to protect the interests of low-income people. It exists mainly to protect the profit margins of corporate America.
The fact is, corporations like Walmart can't be bothered to pay a living wage these days. And if workers don't earn a living wage, guess who is forced to make up the difference?
Yes, that's right: you and me and tens of millions of other U.S. taxpayers.
It's clear that corporate America has cleverly manipulated the system to turn programs like food stamps into de facto corporate welfare.
Most Americans are in the dark about this. Most of us tend to believe that people on food stamps are simply too lazy to get a job.
But the reality is that "most recipients of food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, are working-class Americans with jobs, or are senior citizens or children."
Over the past 30 years, with the destruction of good middle class jobs and the crushing of organized labor, tens of millions of Americans are now finding it difficult to make ends meet without food stamps and other government aid programs.
And that's just the way corporate America likes it.
Once again, the Rich & Powerful and the corporations have manipulated the system to enrich themselves and to screw over ordinary working-class people.
I recently had a debate with a friend, who disputed my contention that today's America has become an oligarchy, the sole purpose which is to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.
"If that's true, then how to you explain welfare programs for low-income people?" my friend asked.
But as it turns out, even welfare programs for the poor ultimately benefit corporate America. Really, it's just a clever form of backdoor corporate welfare in the increasingly Third World-like nation called America.
So what's the solution to all this? Believe it or not, it's labor unions. Organized labor has been crushed over the past 30 years, since the Reagan administration's crackdown on unions. Currently, only 5 percent of private sector workers are unionized (versus 35 percent in the 1950s).
If organized labor can ever regain clout in America, more workers will be able to demand a living wage. And U.S. taxpayers will no longer be forced to subsidize corporate America's already sky-high profits.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Friday, November 01, 2013
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Progressive Music Classics. The Dead Kennedys' "Kill The Poor"
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By MARC McDONALD
Welcome to another edition of Progressive Music Classics.
Has any First World nation ever had more contempt for the poor than America does today?
Hating the poor has become as American as apple pie. Particularly since the Reagan era, we Americans have been taught from an early age that the poor deserve no sympathy. For a "Christian" nation, we seem to be clueless about Christ himself had to say on the subject.
What's bizarre is that many Americans, particularly the Rush Limbaugh crowd, are under this delusion that the poor are actually treated well in this country.
Supposedly, there are all these lavish, generous welfare programs out there to take care of all the poor. In fact, we Americans supposedly have such expensive programs for the poor that this is the real cause of our nation's titanic deficits.
No, not George W. Bush's $3 trillion war crime in Iraq. Not the insane mega-trillion-dollar cesspool of graft, corruption and fraud that is laughably known as "Defense Spending." Not Bush's trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the crooks on Wall Street.
No, the real reason America is going broke is that we're just too damn generous to the poor. The welfare states of Sweden, France and Germany have nothing on us.
Of course, there's only one problem.
All these supposedly lavish government welfare programs for the poor simply don't exist. Don't believe me? Ask a poor person sometime just how much he's raking in from the government. Odds are, he'll laugh in your face.
If the poor were really raking it in from lavish welfare programs, then they wouldn't be poor, would they? And the reality is that the ranks of the poor are growing rapidly in America. The current trend started under George W. Bush, (particularly after the economy essentially collapsed in 2008).
The fact is, until you've experienced true poverty yourself in America, you probably have little idea of just how much utter contempt this government has for people at the bottom of the economic ladder.
In fact, because of regressive taxes (like sales and gas tax), not only are the poor butt-f*cked daily in America, but they pay more of their income into taxes than "successful" rich people like Paris Hilton and Rush Limbaugh.
People like Limbaugh remind me of the likes of Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette. Although the quote is apocryphal, it's clear the rich and royal leech classes in France thought everything was fine and dandy in the late 18th century. I'd suspect they were so out of touch with the peasant class that the fury of the French Revolution took them by surprise.
Despite today's widening income inequality in America, I'd suspect a lot of the rich and powerful in this country give little thought to the growing ranks of poor. And they have little idea of the coming People's Revolution that will likely result someday.
After all, history has shown time and time again what happens when the rich gorge themselves while the peasants starve. It happened in England in the 1300s. It happened in France in the 1700s. It happened in Russia in 1917.
Don't think it can happen here? If so, you're kidding yourself. After all, America was born in a revolution.
Among the rich, there are a few astute observers (like Warren Buffett) who realize the current situation in unsustainable.
When Buffett argues that rich people like him aren't paying their fair share of taxes, I'd suspect it's not because he's a big fan of paying taxes. Rather, he's an astute money man and financial genius who realizes that if America goes broke and the nation's social fabric is ripped to shreds, then the rich are going to suffer with the rest of us.
But for now, the rich in America are living the high life. And they're doing it in large part with our tax dollars (see Bush's trillion-dollar bailout of the crooks on Wall Street).
America's rich have nothing but contempt for the poor. And, thanks to their stooges like Limbaugh, they've even managed to convince a sizeable (and gullible) portion of the American people to hate poor people as well.
In this brilliant song (the lead-off track on their 1980 album, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables), San Francisco punks the Dead Kennedys take this argument to its logical conclusion: since we Americans despise the poor so much in America, let's just kill them all.
.
By MARC McDONALD
Welcome to another edition of Progressive Music Classics.
Has any First World nation ever had more contempt for the poor than America does today?
Hating the poor has become as American as apple pie. Particularly since the Reagan era, we Americans have been taught from an early age that the poor deserve no sympathy. For a "Christian" nation, we seem to be clueless about Christ himself had to say on the subject.
What's bizarre is that many Americans, particularly the Rush Limbaugh crowd, are under this delusion that the poor are actually treated well in this country.
Supposedly, there are all these lavish, generous welfare programs out there to take care of all the poor. In fact, we Americans supposedly have such expensive programs for the poor that this is the real cause of our nation's titanic deficits.
No, not George W. Bush's $3 trillion war crime in Iraq. Not the insane mega-trillion-dollar cesspool of graft, corruption and fraud that is laughably known as "Defense Spending." Not Bush's trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the crooks on Wall Street.
No, the real reason America is going broke is that we're just too damn generous to the poor. The welfare states of Sweden, France and Germany have nothing on us.
Of course, there's only one problem.
All these supposedly lavish government welfare programs for the poor simply don't exist. Don't believe me? Ask a poor person sometime just how much he's raking in from the government. Odds are, he'll laugh in your face.
If the poor were really raking it in from lavish welfare programs, then they wouldn't be poor, would they? And the reality is that the ranks of the poor are growing rapidly in America. The current trend started under George W. Bush, (particularly after the economy essentially collapsed in 2008).
The fact is, until you've experienced true poverty yourself in America, you probably have little idea of just how much utter contempt this government has for people at the bottom of the economic ladder.
In fact, because of regressive taxes (like sales and gas tax), not only are the poor butt-f*cked daily in America, but they pay more of their income into taxes than "successful" rich people like Paris Hilton and Rush Limbaugh.
People like Limbaugh remind me of the likes of Marie "Let Them Eat Cake" Antoinette. Although the quote is apocryphal, it's clear the rich and royal leech classes in France thought everything was fine and dandy in the late 18th century. I'd suspect they were so out of touch with the peasant class that the fury of the French Revolution took them by surprise.
Despite today's widening income inequality in America, I'd suspect a lot of the rich and powerful in this country give little thought to the growing ranks of poor. And they have little idea of the coming People's Revolution that will likely result someday.
After all, history has shown time and time again what happens when the rich gorge themselves while the peasants starve. It happened in England in the 1300s. It happened in France in the 1700s. It happened in Russia in 1917.
Don't think it can happen here? If so, you're kidding yourself. After all, America was born in a revolution.
Among the rich, there are a few astute observers (like Warren Buffett) who realize the current situation in unsustainable.
When Buffett argues that rich people like him aren't paying their fair share of taxes, I'd suspect it's not because he's a big fan of paying taxes. Rather, he's an astute money man and financial genius who realizes that if America goes broke and the nation's social fabric is ripped to shreds, then the rich are going to suffer with the rest of us.
But for now, the rich in America are living the high life. And they're doing it in large part with our tax dollars (see Bush's trillion-dollar bailout of the crooks on Wall Street).
America's rich have nothing but contempt for the poor. And, thanks to their stooges like Limbaugh, they've even managed to convince a sizeable (and gullible) portion of the American people to hate poor people as well.
In this brilliant song (the lead-off track on their 1980 album, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables), San Francisco punks the Dead Kennedys take this argument to its logical conclusion: since we Americans despise the poor so much in America, let's just kill them all.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
As Hunger Rises In U.S., Millions Forced To Wait For Food Stamp Benefits
By MARC McDONALD
Feeding America, a non-profit food bank network group, reports that hunger is "increasing at an alarming rate in the United States."
Despite this, a recent review by The Associated Press found that dozens of food-stamp programs in 39 states left at least a quarter of applicants waiting weeks or months for food aid.
America is currently in the grip of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. With millions of ongoing job layoffs and a high jobless rate, it shouldn't be surprising that many American families are now finding it increasing difficult to afford even the basics, including food.
The cost of the U.S. food stamp program runs around $50 billion a year. That may sound like a lot, until you consider that it is nickel-dime chump change, compared with other government programs that primarily benefit the wealthy.
Take for example, Bush's bailout of the corrupt gangsters on Wall Street. That welfare-for-the-rich program is set to cost the U.S. taxpayers a cool $1 trillion.
Of course, even that pales in significance compared to the $3 trillion that the U.S. is flushing down the toilet in the fiasco known as the Iraq War (and the ever-growing costs of the fiasco known as the Afghanistan War).
For the same amount the U.S. spends in a few months in Iraq, we could fully fund the U.S. food stamp program for one year and ensure that no children go to bed hungry.
But then again, crony corporate pigs like Halliburton and Blackwater might then have to suffer a slight decrease in the billions they've reaped in closed, no-bid contracts in Iraq.
So while the Top One Percent of rich Americans continue to gorge themselves with a generous helping of our tax dollars, ordinary citizens continue to struggle as the U.S. economic crisis continues.
AP notes that currently, a record 40 million people (one in eight Americans) now rely on food stamps.
"The number of participating households increased by one-fifth in fiscal 2009, and many states' food-stamp rolls grew by a third or more" AP reported.
Feeding America, a non-profit food bank network group, reports that hunger is "increasing at an alarming rate in the United States."
Despite this, a recent review by The Associated Press found that dozens of food-stamp programs in 39 states left at least a quarter of applicants waiting weeks or months for food aid.
America is currently in the grip of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. With millions of ongoing job layoffs and a high jobless rate, it shouldn't be surprising that many American families are now finding it increasing difficult to afford even the basics, including food.
The cost of the U.S. food stamp program runs around $50 billion a year. That may sound like a lot, until you consider that it is nickel-dime chump change, compared with other government programs that primarily benefit the wealthy.
Take for example, Bush's bailout of the corrupt gangsters on Wall Street. That welfare-for-the-rich program is set to cost the U.S. taxpayers a cool $1 trillion.
Of course, even that pales in significance compared to the $3 trillion that the U.S. is flushing down the toilet in the fiasco known as the Iraq War (and the ever-growing costs of the fiasco known as the Afghanistan War).
For the same amount the U.S. spends in a few months in Iraq, we could fully fund the U.S. food stamp program for one year and ensure that no children go to bed hungry.
But then again, crony corporate pigs like Halliburton and Blackwater might then have to suffer a slight decrease in the billions they've reaped in closed, no-bid contracts in Iraq.
So while the Top One Percent of rich Americans continue to gorge themselves with a generous helping of our tax dollars, ordinary citizens continue to struggle as the U.S. economic crisis continues.
AP notes that currently, a record 40 million people (one in eight Americans) now rely on food stamps.
"The number of participating households increased by one-fifth in fiscal 2009, and many states' food-stamp rolls grew by a third or more" AP reported.
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