Guest
11-02-2008, 10:32 PM
A friend of mine sent me this letter from one of his high school classmates from the class of 1957 at a high school in Greenwich, CT. The writer's conclusion is that he's going to vote for Barack Obama. But that's far less important than his thought process on why he made that decision. Read it and see what you think. Some will say he writer sounds like a socialist. Maybe he does lean in that direction. But the important thing is why he thinks the way he does, which is explianed quite well in his letter....
I've decided to vote for Barack Obama. Let me tell you why.
Nothing worries me more about the US than its current concentration of wealth and glorification of greed. The last 30 years have seen the greatest redistribution of wealth in history, and it is a grave threat to the future of the country.
When we were young, the juxtaposition of extreme wealth and poverty was the hallmark of a third world country. Largely thanks to inheritance taxes and progressive income tax, both the US and Europe had achieved a remarkable level of social equity. Executive salaries were a large but reasonable multiple of ordinary wages. There was a huge and fast increasing middle class, and a single wage or salary provided middle class families enough income to live comfortably and buy many of the products being generated by a robust manufacturing economy. Most of us were beneficiaries of that economy.
There was plenty wrong with our society. Segregation was rife in the South, and not unknown in the North. There were still lynchings when we were very young. But most white Americans were doing well and gaining ground. Their children were going to college in record numbers without incurring crippling debts.
All that began to change in the early seventies with a concerted effort to reverse what some regarded as an "excess of democracy". That movement got into high gear under Reagan, and accelerated under Clinton and both Bushes, to the point that the US now has one of the greatest wealth gaps on the planet. Greed has been glorified above almost every other value, and excessive wealth is heralded as a sign of grace rather than a critical indicator of societal dysfunction.
Yet there is abundant evidence that extreme inequality denotes a failing society, for a variety of reasons. Once the basic requirements of food, water, clothing and shelter are met, more wealth does not bring more happiness. The satisfaction or happiness coming from possession depends not on the absolute amount of stuff or money that you have, but on how you perceive your lot compared with a societal norm. Even for those whose ego is entirely tied to what they own, the goal is not to satisfy any real need but only to have more than certain other people, or than anyone else. At some point money ceases to be a means of survival and/or a tool for creative endeavor and becomes just a counter in an all-consuming game of Acquire.
Even more importantly, inequality destroys both the social and physical health of communities and nations. "However rich a country is, it will still be more dysfunctional, violent, sick and sad if the gap between social classes grows too wide. Poorer countries with fairer wealth distribution are healthier and happier than richer, more unequal nations." Review of Unhealthy Societies By Richard G. Wilkinson http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1538373,00.html#article_continue
(http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1538373,00.html#article_continue)
Those who rail against making taxes more progressive also fail to recognize both that the current system has already redistributed the wealth from the vast majority to a few, They also fail to acknowledge that the affluent get the much greatest benefits from government, and that it is therefore just that they pay the greatest share.
In recent decades, most people have at best treaded water economically, and many have sunk. The "rising tide" has not lifted all boats, but only luxury yachts - and the bigger they are the more they have been elevated. The majority have lost ground economically. Only the top 10% has done well, and the gain has been greatest the higher you look. The top 1% has done very well, the top .1% has done even better, and the top .01% have gained most of all.
This has not been an accident. It has been the direct result of government policies of cutting taxes on the rich, privatizing potentially profitable government services, increasing handouts to the wealthiest - from massive tax cuts to agribusiness subsidies to bank bailouts, and outright theft such as that at Enron, and the billions that have gone missing without a trace into the black hole of corporate (Halliburton, CH2M Hill et al) controlled Iraq. Even now, Goldman Sachs is allocating $7 billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses - more than the $ 6.1billion the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its bail-out plan. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1081624/Goldman-Sachs-ready-hand-7BILLION-salary-bonus-package--6bn-bail-out.html
Unless it is repaired, and soon, the fraying social contract will destroy American society. Most bankruptcies are precipitated not by sloth but by medical bills. Many parents are both working multiple jobs and yet having trouble making ends meet. Now, millions are losing their homes. What happens to "family values" when both parents are at work most of the time, and when they lose their homes? Some regard poverty a mark of moral turpitude, but millions work long hours in conditions that would overwhelm most of us, and still they are only one illness or mistake from financial ruin. As we Paulies should know better than most, there are also many whose affluence has much less to do with anything they have done than with what their parents gave them and left them.
Higher education is getting more and more expensive and for most people comes with a huge burden of debt, yet more than ever the future of a nation depends upon the education of its people. China,India, Korea, Japan and many other countries know this full well. The future will belong to them.
This has all happened in our time. I am ashamed that like most of the rest of our generation I have done little to resist, let alone prevent the triumph of greed and the debasement of American democracy and social values. I believed in progress and I thought the age of Dickens was far behind us. As I see the bankruptcies and foreclosures, and the burgeoning number of people living on the streets, I realize how wrong I was in thinking we had escaped the world of Boz.
More than fifty years after the "triumph" of the civil rights movement, racism is still rife. The integration of blacks and Latinos may be wide, from sports to universities and some corporations, but it is as shallow as a tidal flat. A huge proportion of people of color still live in ghettoes where the world is defined by guns and drugs, which have been conflated by eighty years of an insane and largely race-based drug prohibition. Very few whites used marijuana in the thirties or forties or fifties. Alcohol was our drug of choice. Its prohibition practically created organized crime, and it was sensibly repealed. The prohibition of other drugs has had similar results on a much larger scale, but we insanely persist in their prohibition. Largely because of that, over a quarter of black males spend part of their lives in jail, and many more die young and violent deaths.
Affirmative action is a reasonable response to centuries of slavery, lynchings, and discrimination. Like other actions of big bureaucracies, be they government, GM or Microsoft, it has probably not been effected perfectly. Like strikes and other social actions, it has inevitably hurt some innocent bystanders, like Tom Bartlett [refers to another classmates reflection of how he could never get tenure as a professor because he was a white male].. That is unfair and sad, but not as unfair or sad as a lynching, or as millions of lives lost to violence, degradation and poverty. There might have been better responses; it would be useful to hear of some.
Obama is not perfect. He has reneged on his promise to rely on public funding, and despite all the money he has raised from ordinary people the core of his financing comes from many of the same corporations and wealthy people who brought us Bush. He has been silent on some important issues, and he has embraced a troubling number of the Clinton team who were complicit in the ongoing deregulation that led to the current meltdown. But at least he knows how many houses he has, and he seems to be sincere about modifying the policies that have redirected the bulk of America's wealth, and much of that of the rest of the planet, to the top of the financial heap.
I've decided to vote for Barack Obama. Let me tell you why.
Nothing worries me more about the US than its current concentration of wealth and glorification of greed. The last 30 years have seen the greatest redistribution of wealth in history, and it is a grave threat to the future of the country.
When we were young, the juxtaposition of extreme wealth and poverty was the hallmark of a third world country. Largely thanks to inheritance taxes and progressive income tax, both the US and Europe had achieved a remarkable level of social equity. Executive salaries were a large but reasonable multiple of ordinary wages. There was a huge and fast increasing middle class, and a single wage or salary provided middle class families enough income to live comfortably and buy many of the products being generated by a robust manufacturing economy. Most of us were beneficiaries of that economy.
There was plenty wrong with our society. Segregation was rife in the South, and not unknown in the North. There were still lynchings when we were very young. But most white Americans were doing well and gaining ground. Their children were going to college in record numbers without incurring crippling debts.
All that began to change in the early seventies with a concerted effort to reverse what some regarded as an "excess of democracy". That movement got into high gear under Reagan, and accelerated under Clinton and both Bushes, to the point that the US now has one of the greatest wealth gaps on the planet. Greed has been glorified above almost every other value, and excessive wealth is heralded as a sign of grace rather than a critical indicator of societal dysfunction.
Yet there is abundant evidence that extreme inequality denotes a failing society, for a variety of reasons. Once the basic requirements of food, water, clothing and shelter are met, more wealth does not bring more happiness. The satisfaction or happiness coming from possession depends not on the absolute amount of stuff or money that you have, but on how you perceive your lot compared with a societal norm. Even for those whose ego is entirely tied to what they own, the goal is not to satisfy any real need but only to have more than certain other people, or than anyone else. At some point money ceases to be a means of survival and/or a tool for creative endeavor and becomes just a counter in an all-consuming game of Acquire.
Even more importantly, inequality destroys both the social and physical health of communities and nations. "However rich a country is, it will still be more dysfunctional, violent, sick and sad if the gap between social classes grows too wide. Poorer countries with fairer wealth distribution are healthier and happier than richer, more unequal nations." Review of Unhealthy Societies By Richard G. Wilkinson http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1538373,00.html#article_continue
(http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1538373,00.html#article_continue)
Those who rail against making taxes more progressive also fail to recognize both that the current system has already redistributed the wealth from the vast majority to a few, They also fail to acknowledge that the affluent get the much greatest benefits from government, and that it is therefore just that they pay the greatest share.
In recent decades, most people have at best treaded water economically, and many have sunk. The "rising tide" has not lifted all boats, but only luxury yachts - and the bigger they are the more they have been elevated. The majority have lost ground economically. Only the top 10% has done well, and the gain has been greatest the higher you look. The top 1% has done very well, the top .1% has done even better, and the top .01% have gained most of all.
This has not been an accident. It has been the direct result of government policies of cutting taxes on the rich, privatizing potentially profitable government services, increasing handouts to the wealthiest - from massive tax cuts to agribusiness subsidies to bank bailouts, and outright theft such as that at Enron, and the billions that have gone missing without a trace into the black hole of corporate (Halliburton, CH2M Hill et al) controlled Iraq. Even now, Goldman Sachs is allocating $7 billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses - more than the $ 6.1billion the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its bail-out plan. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1081624/Goldman-Sachs-ready-hand-7BILLION-salary-bonus-package--6bn-bail-out.html
Unless it is repaired, and soon, the fraying social contract will destroy American society. Most bankruptcies are precipitated not by sloth but by medical bills. Many parents are both working multiple jobs and yet having trouble making ends meet. Now, millions are losing their homes. What happens to "family values" when both parents are at work most of the time, and when they lose their homes? Some regard poverty a mark of moral turpitude, but millions work long hours in conditions that would overwhelm most of us, and still they are only one illness or mistake from financial ruin. As we Paulies should know better than most, there are also many whose affluence has much less to do with anything they have done than with what their parents gave them and left them.
Higher education is getting more and more expensive and for most people comes with a huge burden of debt, yet more than ever the future of a nation depends upon the education of its people. China,India, Korea, Japan and many other countries know this full well. The future will belong to them.
This has all happened in our time. I am ashamed that like most of the rest of our generation I have done little to resist, let alone prevent the triumph of greed and the debasement of American democracy and social values. I believed in progress and I thought the age of Dickens was far behind us. As I see the bankruptcies and foreclosures, and the burgeoning number of people living on the streets, I realize how wrong I was in thinking we had escaped the world of Boz.
More than fifty years after the "triumph" of the civil rights movement, racism is still rife. The integration of blacks and Latinos may be wide, from sports to universities and some corporations, but it is as shallow as a tidal flat. A huge proportion of people of color still live in ghettoes where the world is defined by guns and drugs, which have been conflated by eighty years of an insane and largely race-based drug prohibition. Very few whites used marijuana in the thirties or forties or fifties. Alcohol was our drug of choice. Its prohibition practically created organized crime, and it was sensibly repealed. The prohibition of other drugs has had similar results on a much larger scale, but we insanely persist in their prohibition. Largely because of that, over a quarter of black males spend part of their lives in jail, and many more die young and violent deaths.
Affirmative action is a reasonable response to centuries of slavery, lynchings, and discrimination. Like other actions of big bureaucracies, be they government, GM or Microsoft, it has probably not been effected perfectly. Like strikes and other social actions, it has inevitably hurt some innocent bystanders, like Tom Bartlett [refers to another classmates reflection of how he could never get tenure as a professor because he was a white male].. That is unfair and sad, but not as unfair or sad as a lynching, or as millions of lives lost to violence, degradation and poverty. There might have been better responses; it would be useful to hear of some.
Obama is not perfect. He has reneged on his promise to rely on public funding, and despite all the money he has raised from ordinary people the core of his financing comes from many of the same corporations and wealthy people who brought us Bush. He has been silent on some important issues, and he has embraced a troubling number of the Clinton team who were complicit in the ongoing deregulation that led to the current meltdown. But at least he knows how many houses he has, and he seems to be sincere about modifying the policies that have redirected the bulk of America's wealth, and much of that of the rest of the planet, to the top of the financial heap.