[NV Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] A real 'Ownership Society' would share wealth, protect retirement (Kevin Zeese, CounterPunch)

Fri Feb 18 00:07:57 PST 2005

>
>
>Share the Wealth...Protect Retirement
>Creating a Real Ownership Society
>By KEVIN ZEESE
>
>CounterPunch, February 16, 2005
>http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese02162005.html
>
>
>President Bush has called for creating an
>"ownership society." In a true ownership society
>--where all Americans share a piece of the
>economic pie --there will be secure retirements,
>a more vibrant economy and more entrepreneurs
>creating things we cannot even imagine.
>
>President Bush is using the phrase "ownership
>society" as a way to sell Social Security
>privatization. He is misleading. He's not
>creating a real ownership society and a Social
>Security fix is really not urgently needed. The
>Social Security fund is secure until nearly the
>middle of the Century. With one change to Social
>Security, it would be protected throughout the
>Century and beyond. Currently, 6.2 cents out of
>every dollar of salary is taxes for Social
>Security up to $90,000 --a limit put in place in
>2003. This is a flat tax that is particularly
>burdensome on low and middle income workers. By
>lifting this ceiling and taxing all income,
>Social Security will be secure and the U.S. will
>take a small step toward correcting the tax
>imbalance created over the last two decades where
>the wealthiest have gotten huge tax breaks while
>the rest of us have paid more of the cost of
>government. (Why shouldn't income from wealth be
>taxed at least as heavily as income from labor?)
>
>However, securing Social Security is not enough
>to fix retirement. Pension plans and savings are
>the two other legs of the traditional retirement
>stool and both have been undermined in recent
>years. Savings by Americans is at a low while
>families struggle each month to pay their bills
>under an increasing debt load. Indeed, in the
>first quarter of 1999 the national savings rate
>turned negative for the first time since the
>Great Depression. At the same time, companies
>have broken long-standing pension promises to
>their employees and retirees undercutting the
>'economic fabric' of retirement security of
>millions of people. Congress needs to take action
>to prevent corporate raiding of retirement plans.
>
>
>We can fix retirement with policies that share
>the wealth of the country in a more equitable
>way. The United States needs to face up to the
>unfair division of wealth among its citizens. The
>financial wealth of the top one percent of
>households now exceeds the combined wealth of the
>bottom 95 percent. The wealth divide will
>continue to worsen as the top 1 percent's income
>equals the income of the bottom 100 million
>income earners. The ratio comparing the salary of
>CEO to worker which was 42 to one in 1980 is 420
>to one today. This, along with a financial market
>that only loans money to those who have the
>resources to pay it back, ensures that the rich
>will get richer and the poor will get poorer.
>
>Americans rarely are able to move to a higher
>economic class than they were born in. That is
>one reason why the median financial wealth of
>African-Americans (net worth less home equity) is
>$200 while that of Hispanics is zero. The
>percentage of black households with zero or
>negative net worth is 31 percent --double that of
>whites. Our economic policies are creating a
>lower class that cannot escape being poor and is
>a drag on the economy and a cause of many social
>ills.
>
>There is a crisis in retirement and the division
>of wealth -- by solving the latter we solve the
>former. This division needs urgent attention, but
>the political donor class will have to be
>challenged to correct the rules that have created
>this imbalance. Two decades of trickle down
>economics shows it results in the wealthiest
>soaking up more wealth --more wealth than they or
>their heirs can spend --without trickling down
>much for anyone else.
>
>When the Social Security system was being put in
>place President Roosevelt was spurred along by an
>alternative that was being put forth by Huey
>Long, a populist Democrat from Louisiana who
>stood on the side of the common people against
>Big Business and Wall Street. Long put forward a
>plan entitled "Share the Wealth" as a response to
>the greed of the wealthiest in the 1920s --the
>last era to have a rich-poor divide as wide as
>ours. His share the wealth plan would ensure that
>all Americans had a stake in America, more
>entrepreneurial capitalists were created and all
>had a secure retirement with their piece of the
>largest economy in world history.
>
>Long was not alone in these types of views.
>Thomas Jefferson included in his draft of the
>Virginia Constitution of 1776 a provision that
>every person of voting age "neither owning or
>having owned 50 acres of land shall be entitled
>to an appropriation of 50 acres." Even leading
>free-market advocates like F.A. Hayek and Milton
>Friedman recognize that everyone"s freedom and
>security is enhanced by a guaranteed minimum
>income and that government providing that is not
>inconsistent with "the preservation of individual
>freedom."
>Long's plan was a variation of a concern raised
>by Plato who argued that a republic is endangered
>when its policies allow personal wealth
>disparities to exceed five to one. Long's plan
>allowed for a one hundred to one ratio. When Long
>announced his plan in a 1934 speech the public
>reacted strongly and Roosevelt took notice. Long
>ridiculed the New Deal as the same Old Deal where
>wealth and ownership remained concentrated in the
>hands of a small percentage of the population.
>
>Long proposed that a capital levy be placed on
>fortunes over the one hundred to one ratio and
>that a commission with leading capitalists,
>people like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew
>Mellon, be appointed to determine best how to
>share the wealth among the public. His hope was
>that the surplus wealth levy would result in the
>creation of a corporation that issued stock to
>the people in an equitable way determined by
>Congress much like occurs in Alaska where each
>year since 1982 Alaskans receive their share of
>the oil wealth as part of the Permanent Trust
>--which has become an economic engine for the
>state. We need to share the wealth so that all
>Americans would share the wealth of the country.
>
>When he conducted the first modern polls used by
>a president, Roosevelt became concerned. He found
>that Long had support not only in the south but
>outside his home region especially in the mid
>west. Long's political threat encouraged
>Roosevelt to create Social Security, place new
>taxes on the rich, increase the inheritance tax
>and put in place a graduated corporate income
>tax. Roosevelt moved to steal Long's thunder.
>
>The rich-poor divide is back and no elected
>official is facing up to it. By placing a capital
>levy on extreme wealth --perhaps over $500
>million --and sharing the wealth all citizens
>will be able to participate in an ownership
>society. This will provide Americans with capital
>that can be used for creative entrepreneurship,
>savings or investment.
>
>For real ownership to occur, the purchase of
>corporate stock must mean something --stock
>holders given power to make decisions for the
>company they own --through votes. Broad-based
>corporate ownership will help control the unfair
>CEO-employee pay ratio, the destruction of
>pension plans and the theft from small investors
>--even corporate investment in a sustainable
>economy aware of environmental costs. Indeed,
>pension plans invested in the market should
>result in those whose money is invested having
>ownership control of those companies.
>
>For a real solution to the retirement issues that
>we face we need to move to a society with broad
>ownership and shared wealth. As James Madison
>warned: "the day will come when our republic will
>come to impossibility because its wealth will be
>concentrated in the hands of the few. When that
>day comes we must rely on the wisdom of the best
>elements in the country to readjust the laws of
>the nation to the changed conditions." The day
>has come when the wealth divide has become so
>great that laws must be put in place to bridge
>the chasm --or we have before us the roots of our
>undoing.
>
>
>Kevin Zeese is a director of the Campaign for
>Fresh Air and Clean Politics in Maryland and can
>be reached at kzeese at freshaircleanpolitics.org.
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand