By Annabel Park
Let's choose reality over ideology. Trickle-down economics (aka supply-side economics) is a failure. This economic theory/political ideology is a myth that has poisoned this country. It led not only to the worst income inequality in America since the great depression, it essentially led to the financial crisis of 2008.
Since the collapse, we have witnessed morally bankrupt Wall St. executives lavish themselves with multi-million dollar bonuses after receiving bailout money from taxpayers. At the same time, we witnessed millions of Americans, taxpayers who paid for that bailout, hit skid row without even a "thank you" or "sorry" from Wall St or Washington.
Here are some startling facts about America today:
- $135 billion was paid in compensation to 25 Wall St firms in 2010.
- In addition to the $700 bilion in bailout, $9 trillion was disbursed by the Federal Reserve in overnight loans to major banks and Wall St firms including foreign banks during the financial crisis with little oversight. This was done without any oversight or input from Congress. You can try to track the combined trillions we have spent to bail out major American and foreign firms here. Even the Supreme Court just ruled for more transparency on details.
- 44 million Americans are on food stamps.
- More than 25 million Americans are now either jobless or underemployed.
- 25% of our nation's children live in poverty.
While you wrap your head around those numbers, consider this child's description of her hunger:
It's like a black hole. And sometimes when I don't eat, my stomach, you can hear it's like growling. You can hear it.
This is not a third world country. This is America in 2011.
No wonder Michael Lewis wants to know why there is no social revolution.
If you had told me in early 2009 that all these big Wall Street firms would be back even bigger and paying big bonuses and essentially socializing their losses but their gains privatized and that the American people put up with it — that’s the incredible thing — is that there isn’t a social revolution.
Here is the real bottom line: survival. We must correct the destructive political and economic path we are on right now. We can no longer afford to have this debunked and outdated ideology drive our policy-making.
If we continue to maintain policies that benefit multi-national companies and the richest 1%, we're just not going to survive. If we continue to allow ideology, partisanship, and the election cycle to determine our policies, we're not going to survive.
The reality of our struggles, worries, concerns, needs, and well-being must drive policy-making.
Elizabeth Warren stated the problem starkly on the Daily Show:
It is simple. This is America's middle class. We've hacked at it and chipped at it and pulled on it for 30 years now. And now there's no more to do. Either we fix this problem going forward or the game really is over.
She does not mince her words. You can watch her explain this in detail here.
In a recent column in Time magazine, Fareed Zakaria warns all of us that we must think long-term about our future:
Washington is likely to make across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending, where there is much less money and considerably less waste...But reducing funds for things like education, scientific research, air-traffic control, NASA, infrastructure and alternative energy will not produce much in savings, and it will hurt the economy's long-term growth. It would happen at the very moment that countries from Germany to South Korea to China are making large investments in education, science, technology and infrastructure. We are cutting investments and subsidizing consumption — exactly the opposite of what are the main drivers of economic growth.
We are currently on a path to divest in our future and further undermine economic growth. This means more children experiencing black holes for the foreseeable future.
It seems Washington is currently incapable of self-correction because we have a broken system corrupted by money.
Bill Moyers resigned from PBS and he is now shouting it loud and clear to the world.
Everyone knows millions of Americans are in trouble...Why isn’t government working for them? Because it’s been bought off. It’s as simple as that. And until we get clean money we’re not going to get clean elections, and until we get clean elections, you can kiss goodbye government of, by, and for the people. Welcome to the plutocracy.
It is truly time to evict Wall St and K Street out of Congress and reclaim our government.
How do we do that?
We need institutional fixes and we need an informed and engaged citizenry ready to find ways to resist the current system of power.
Close power- and wealth-grabbing loopholes. Our system has lost intregrity in part because it is riddled with legal loopholes that are exploited by the ruling elite. Along with tax loopholes, Citizens United is a giant loophole in our campaign financing laws undermining the integrity of our system. Too-big-to-fail is a giant loophole in our financial system that guarantees eternal life for companies if they're simply big enough. It doesn't matter how financially and morally bankrupt they are, if they're big, we're going to cover their losses.
These loopholes are used to hide accountability and culpability. They are exploited to attain more wealth and power and create more loopholes of disappearing accountability.
This isn't to say all regulations are good. It is an exhortation to stop worshiping at the altar of deregulation.
In order to change the power structure, we must close loopholes and reform three areas of our politcal and financial system.
- Campaign finance
- Regulating Wall Street
- Tax code
Every time you see a power- and wealth-grabbing loophole, we must think of the "black hole" of hunger experienced by millions of children. These two holes are directly connected.
Remember, the Declaration of Independence says our "unalienable rights" are "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," not "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Maximum Profit."
We need to close the loopholes exploited by Wall St and the wealthy few for their bottom line (profit and power) and lift our children out of the black hole of hunger.
The American people are too-big-to-fail. The only sensible path forward is to invest directly in the American people instead of believing and pretending to believe that it will trickle down if we give it away to Wall Street.
How is this an American value? AIG is too-big-to-fail, but 25% of our children can go hungry. I don't know about AIG, but our children are definitely too-big-to-fail. We the people are too-big-to-fail.
According to the Federal Reserve, most of that money was supposedly paid back. Great! Now lend us $9 trillion in low-interest emergency loans. Seriously, the Federal Reserve should give us emergency low-interest loans that they gave to Wall St and foreign firms. Even a fraction would help stop our children's growling stomachs. If that isn't an emergency, what is?
The most heinous part about the myth of trickle-down economics is that it makes the victims blame themselves for being poor, unemployed or even now days, a public sector worker!
Not seeing the corrupt system, the victims focus on what they believe to be their personal failures instead of focusing on the failures of this system. Their hunger and desperation to just survive then turns into self-loathing, depression, even suicide.
Our Mubarak. We must get ourselves and our fellow citizens to take a step back and look at the whole thing: this corrupt political and financial system with giant loopholes of accountability for the rich and black holes of hunger for our children. That is our Mubarak. That is what has to go.
They have money, but we are many. Despite our current broken system, we have power — more than we realize — as voters and as consumers. We are an essential part of this broken system. If we resist, there will be consequences to the rest of the system.
Our system is broken in part because as citizens, we have been disengaged from the process. The owner of this House has been away too long and now there are corporate squatters. It's time to remove them.
The more united we are, the easier it is for us to aggregate our voices and our impact and restore self-governance to We the People.
Make the truth go viral. Once institutional actors know that they cannot deceive, manipulate and misguide the American people, it changes the game.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.- Martin Luther King, Jr.
With emerging web technology and the democratization of media, we have the power to get the American people to:
- Wake up to the reality that we are on a destructive economic path driven by the interests of the wealthy few. Nobel prize-winning economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, have been doing their best to sound the alarm bells. Even Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, has said the trickle-down rhetoric dominating discussions about tax cuts is demagoguery.
- Wake up to the reality that we can and must do something about it, and, that if we make the effort, we will win. They have money, but we are many.
- Wake up to the reality that our strength will come from unity and resolve. We must not submit to the divide and rule tactics deliberately designed by political strategists to distract us from the real struggle, win elections and maintain a dysfunctional two-party sytem.
- Wake up to the reality that "there is a war going on for your mind." Our profit-driven mass media misinforms and disinforms the American people on a regular basis to manufacture consent. Our mass culture is a product of an ancient bread-and-circus tactic designed to delude us into "taking comfort in celebrity culture" and suppress demand by the people for real economic security, fair opportunity and democracy.
We're all part of an interconnected online and offline social network. We can all help make the truth go viral.
Together, we can make sure that we not only survive these hard times, but pave the way so that our children, our grandchildren, the next generation, can thrive.
Join us for the first action of our campaign: Coffee Break to Save America.
