A contrast fit for a Dickens novel

August 30, 2005

Two important news items, one important message.

First up is the latest poverty statistics from the Census Bureau.

The nation’s poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent of the population last year, the fourth consecutive annual increase, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. The percentage of people without health insurance did not change.

Overall, there were 37 million people living in poverty, up 1.1 million people from 2003.

The last year the number of people in poverty dropped was the last year of Clinton’s presidency. It’s been getting worse since. We also learned today that the number of people without health insurance went from 45 million last year to 45.8 million this year.

All of this contrasts nicely with the second news item, by way of Think Progress, about the concerns of those at the very top.

Conservative and business groups bent on permanently repealing the federal tax on multimillion dollar estates are mounting an intensive advertising and lobbying campaign this week that’s designed to influence a Senate vote early next month.

Three anti-tax groups and a business coalition plan to broadcast ads in key states, aimed at about a dozen moderate Democratic and Republican senators whose votes will determine the outcome. “We’ve never been this close before,” says Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth.

One of these days, there will be “an intensive advertising and lobbying campaign” to address the needs of families living in poverty, right? Right?

CB,
There will be an intensive campaign once those with the money realize that it isn’t in their interest to have a disease-ridden, ignorant, and impoverished workforce. All these problems might have been acceptable to manorial lords in the 12th century since there were serfs aplenty, but such a workforce and such conditions that they must exist in breeds all kinds of inefficiency in a modern economy–thus impairing profits.

So the trick is to convince them that keeping their money to themselves will cost them in the long run. Clearly, they don’t feel that way; a sort of ‘me’ generation for the wealthy, I guess.

  • There will be an intensive campaign once those with the money realize that it isn’t in their interest to have a disease-ridden, ignorant, and impoverished workforce.

    These are the same people who vote for Bush, outsource jobs overseas, and want to destroy social security.

    They won’t be happy until they are the masters and we are the slaves… and they won’t be happy then either.

  • I heard somewhere on the radio during the night (Ray Taliafero out of SF’s KGO?) something to the effect that the nations’s major CEOs make something like 430 times what their average employee makes, that it was up from something like 361 times just a year ago. Don’t quote those figures, but they were of that magnitude. I haven’t been able to verify anywhere this morning, but then I haven’t looked very far either.

  • One of these days, there will be “an intensive advertising and lobbying campaign” to address the needs of families living in poverty, right? Right?

    Ahhh…but who would fund it? The rich? Ha. Ha. Ha.

    Nate, you around? You okay with protecting mult-million dollar estates from giving part of thier value to help the overall community while the number of people below the poverty line continue to rise? hey, man, don’t worry we’re not talking about taking 100% of the estate, all we’re talking about is going back to the taxation rates under Clinton. Top rate of 38% instead of 35% IIRC.

    C’mon Nate, help us understand why its more important to give 3% more to the extremely wealthy while letting more and more people fall into poverty.

  • Ed,
    Your post got me thinking on something related to what you wrote, though maybe OT…

    How much wealth have tax-free evangelical religious organizations hoarded? A have a hunch that many of these GOP-front organizations have fleeced up staggering sums. Certainly a far cry from the days when Peter was a hunted apostle.

    We might count the US Catholics, too. I just did a tour of a Franciscan monastery in DC (the one over near Catholic University) and Francis of Assisi would not have recognized this wealthy crew.

  • And I forgot to add from my tour, the quips of our tour guide at the Catholic monastery were no different from the talking points one would hear from evangelicals.

  • …the nations’s major CEOs make something like 430 times what their average employee makes, that it was up from something like 361 times just a year ago.

    Ed, you heard right. According to this report, the average CEO made 430 times the salary of the average production worker in 2004. This up from from 301-1 in 2003 and 109-1 in 1990.

  • Rising poverty, No health insurance, can’t you tell how much these highly religous and moral leaders care about us.
    Right here in MN Northwest Airlines are breaking the unions, cutting everyones pay while the big shots loot the company of millions.

  • Think of it this way.

    For each year since the final one of Clinton’s second term, a greater entrepeneurial stimulus has been applied than in the year before.

    (Can I have the Cato Institute gig? Can I? Can I?)

  • CB, read the book I sent you, and imagine a better world where these very issues are dealt with in a very satisfying way. Yeah, I know it’s fiction, but consider it political Prozac.

  • Okay, President Lindsay, I’ll bite: What book? (I could use some political Prozac ’bout now…)

  • Anyone want to guess how many of the almost million new families in poverty voted republican. Pretty high I bet.

    It’s no wonder the poor keep getting poorer and keep getting dumped on, they keep voting against their own self interests. They are the ones stuck in poverty and the ones sacrificing their children, yet they love GWB.

    I feel very sorry for anyone who doesn’t have the opportunities we have, but please, wake up and quit supporting your economic demise (directed at poor republicans).

  • You are right on Scott
    The number of poor people who vote rethug and against their own interest far out numbers the people who gain from the rethugs. One would hope some day they would wise up.
    But then we would still have Diebold

  • One would hope some day they would wise up.

    One would hope that the Democratic party, if one’s still around, might take it on as a major task to EDUCATE those poor people regarding their class interests. I realize that most Democratic decision makers these days are themselves richer than Croesus, that Democratic candidates fear rocking any boats lest their campaign funds dry up, and that all Democrats cower when they hear the accusation “class warfare” … nevertheless, they could at least pretend to have some purpose other than being GOP-lite.

    I still keep coming back to the phrase I learned here (and wish I knew whom to credit for it) that, given even a little education, there aren’t enough people who are rich enough or mean enough to elect a Republican.

  • Ed,

    I was suprised by the figure for 2003. Seemed
    too low, but I guess there’s been some bouncing
    around since 2000, probably because of the
    recession and stock market bubble burst. Here’s
    a source for historical figures:

    http://www.inequality.org/ceopayedit2.html

    Briefly, they show 45 for 1980, 96 for 1990
    160 for 1995, 236 for 1996, 305 for 1997
    399 for 1998, 450 for 1999, and 458 for 2000

    From another source, I found the ratio in
    1965 was 25. I also found that ratios are
    far, far lower in other industrialized nations,
    in the low double digits, like 10-25.

    I remember at my company when I started
    in 1964 the ratio was about 15-1.

  • ScottW,

    Anyone want to guess how many of the almost million new families in poverty voted republican. Pretty high I bet.

    Pretty low I bet. More accurately, I bet a very low number of the almost million new families voted.

    And that’s a shame.

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