About Peter Radford

Posts by Peter Radford:

/ /

American Safety?

So Bush claims that American safety depends upon the struggle in Iraq. Here’s the link to the New York Times report of his speech:
In Prime-Time Address, Bush Says Safety of U.S. Hinges on Iraq

That’s pretty severe stuff. Our safety depends upon the war in Iraq. Convenient for Bush don’t you think, that the war he started, a war that had nothing to do with terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, and a war that distracted us from Afghanistan, is actually more important than all of the above. It’s as important as World War ll.

Well now. If that’s true why aren’t we gighting like WWll? Where’s the draft? Where’s the rationing of scarce materials? Where’s the … oh wait … he’s just playing politics with security again.

No big deal. What a monumental liar. What an incompetent fool.

/ , /

Minimum Wage Anniversary

A sad anniversary is coming up shortly: if Congress does not act soon the last few years will represent the longest period ever that the minimum wage has not been adjusted. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a report here: Nine Years of Neglect

This is grim reading. Since the last increase in the minimum wage food prices have risen 23%, housing costs have gone up 29% and medical care costs 43% more. So the value of the wage rate has been diminished drastically. Adjusted for inflation the minimum wage is now at its lowest value since the mid 1950’s.

This is what I mean when I rant against the Republican party: this neglect of the minimum wage fits a pattern of class warfare directed first against the poor, and when there is no more to be gained in that quarter, against the middle class.

It is shameful that something as simple as raising the minumum wage is treated with such contempt by the Republicans. Since Reagan they have systematically worked to undermine the social underpinnings of post war America. Their evident intent is to push the country back to the social conditions of the 1920’s. When, as the report states, the average CEO makes, before lunch on the first work day of the year, more than a worker on the minumum wage makes in an entire year, the country has its priorities wrong.

What happened to family values? Or was that just a sham? Don’t answer that … we all know already. The better question is: what do we do about it?

/ , / , , /

The Pension Crisis

I came across this article in the New Yorker and thought I should pass it along to you:The Risk Pool

As you know one of my current beefs is the demise of the middle class, and what I see as the Republican party attack on it.

This article explains at depth one consequence of the wrong headed notion that markets and private enterprise are necessarily better, i.e. more efficient, providers of services. In the case of pensions, and health care, that is simply not true. The American private pension system is failing as more and more companies renege on the deals they made with their workers years back. Now, after productivity gains and renegotiation of the original contracts the burden of paying pensions to all their retired workers is bringing down many of our largest companies.

The reason is simple arithmetic: as companies reduce their workforces, for either good or bad reasons, the base of employees available to support the retiree population is similarly reduced. Thus the profit per employee needed just to pay benefits to people who are no longer contributing to those profits grows. Sooner or later the burden reaches unsustainavble levels and the company is forced to adjust. If the company is still profitable it might attempt to what IBM did: simply stop some of its benefits. In other cases the company may be forced into bankruptcy.

Both the retirees and the current workforce lose when these adjustments happen. But the most damage is done to employees who are close to retirement: they might find themselves having to make up extremely large gaps in their planned retirement packages. Sometimes they may have to put off retirement altogether.

America is not facing this pension problem square on because it cannot face the inevitable: that the most effective way to fund pensions, and health care, is to spread the cost and the risk across the widest possible population. This means some form of nationwide plan. This is an actuarial fact, not a political statement. Any private plan cannot match the risk spreading capability that the entire population can represent, so, by definition, it will be less efficient at some point.

As the article points out the union leadership back in the 1950’s realized this. Shortsighted corporate management didn’t and has stuck us with the problem.

The middle class, which is so much under pressure from out of control costs in health care and now reduced pension prospects needs to wake up and force the issue onto the political agenda.

Before the costs reach astronomical proportions. So that would be now!

/ / , , /

Education and the Class System

America has so many social problems it’s hard to know where to begin. The Katrina disaster showed us the third world nature of our attitude toward poverty. And now there’s this news about education:Financial Aid and the Poor

All the evidence points to the fact that America is developing a class system based around education: each generation sees more and more of the nation’s higher education dollars spent on children whose parents were themselves college graduates. this leaves ever decreasing amounts for children of poor families where the parents had no such education.

The result is that the chances of moving up the economic ladder are being reduced: studies have recently shown that America has less upward mobility than most other western countries despite the legendary American Dream. This is damaging the aspirations of the poor and causing a permanent underclass to develop.

That will have serious political and social consequences down the line.

Meanwhile we need to shed the idea that discussions of class are somehow “un-American”. They are not. At least not if you’re poor.

/ , / , /

Economic Stagnation

I hate it when the headline writers try to be upbeat when the whole gist of the subsequent story is downbeat. The New York Times falls into that trap with today’s story about personal incomes: Census Reports Slight Increase in 2005 Incomes – New York Times

Now if you look quickly at the headline you’d think there is a pretty good story to tell. Not great, but definitely upbeat. The trouble is that’s not the case. The only reason that incomes rose at all in 2005 was the fact that people were working more and thus getting more hours worth of pay. Wages per hour actually fell.

This is just the kind of gloss that the Bush regime likes to put on its dismal record. After years of growth, productivity improvements, and profits, the average family in America is worse off than before Bush arrived on the scene. The distribution of incomes is increasingly skewed away from wage earners towards stockholders and towrads the very few at the top of the heap.

The Republican squeeze on the middle class is showing just the kind of results you would expect, and the middle class response is to work longer hours to try to keep up. It is not a triumph that incomes rose because we worked more hours. Those hours are lost to family time, to leisure, to community activities and to keeping informed. The American public already overworks. It has notoriously few holidays, and works ridiculous weekly hours.

No wonder no one has time to keep up with the news and to remain fully informed about the Republicans failure at economic management.

Then again maybe that’s part of the plan too!

«< 361 362 363 364 365 >»