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Nipawin - Thursday, April 18, 2002 - by: Mario
deSantis |
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"Tax cuts are a crucial part of my administration's
overall economic growth agenda, to create more high-paying jobs."
President George Bush, April 2002
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tampering
with
the law
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Criminal suspect Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
is a billionaire copycat who preaches economic growth in Italy by breaking down the
right of people to work and by subordinating workers to the law of the Free Market
as preached by the US big corporations and their fortunate sons. Silvio Berlusconi
has been tampering with the Italian justice system to have his criminal charges either
overturned or dismissed as per new legislation or dismissed as per the statute of
limitation. |
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labour
legislation
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Berlusconi is still in power and joining shoulder to
shoulder with President Bush in his fight against terrorism, he wants to tamper with
the labour legislation so that corporations have the flexibility to fire employees
with no just cause. |
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big
lie
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I want to provide Silvio Berlusconi with an understanding
that the American Free Market is a BIG LIE and as a consequence I am going to mention
some social and economic statistics which contradict the perception of the United
States has creating wealth for all of its citizens. We must take notice of the faults
of the Free Market so that we can change our economic environment and therefore balance
our economic growth with our social growth for all of our citizens. |
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- The Free Market has privatized governments along with the social system and
as a consequence corporations have become more important than people. People are
not full citizens anymore as they have become essential consumers to sustain Corporate
America. In 1953, if you count only income taxes, individuals and families paid 59%
of federal revenues and corporations 41%, according to The Statistical Abstract of
the United States. By the latest confirmed figures in the Abstract, the corporate
share has dropped from 41% to 20%, while that of individuals has increased from 59%
to 80%. The overall
lower taxes paid by the corporations become more dramatic when we understand
that corporations avoid taxes by setting offshore head offices and by other widespread
legal, illegal or criminal schemes.
- The US has the worst
record on poverty in the industrialized world - a poverty level which
is twice as high as England's. Tens of millions of people are hungry every night,
including millions of children who are suffering from discase and malnutrition. In
New York City 40% of children live below the poverty line.
- It is my understanding that the US
incarceration rate is the highest in the industrialized world. As of the
end of 1999, 6.3 million Americans were under some form of judicial supervision:
on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole.
- The top 1% of United States households have more wealth than the entire bottom
95%. Between 1983 and 1995, the inflation-adjusted net worth of the top 1% of households
swelled by 17%. Nine years into the longest peacetime expansion in U.S. history,
average workers are still
earning less, adjusting for inflation, than they did when Richard Nixon
was president.
- In 1998 the top-earning one percent had as much income as the 100 million
Americans with
the lowest earnings. On an inflation-adjusted basis, the median hourly
wage in 1998 was 7% lower than in 1973 - when Richard Nixon was in the White House.
The pay gap between top executives and production workers grew from 42:1 in 1980
to 419:1 in 1998 (excluding the value of stock options). According to the Bureau
of Labor statistics, the typical American now works 350 hours more per year than
a typical European. More than 65 million anti-depressant prescriptions were written
in 1998. Parents spend 40% less time with their children today than they did thirty
years ago. The United States Census Bureau reports that the pretax median income
was $1,001 higher in 1998 than in 1989. For the decade of the 1990s, that's an average
annual raise, adjusted for inflation, of $111.22, or 0.3%.
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References: |
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Pertinent articles in Ensign |
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[1]The
50-Year Swindle, by Ben Bagdikian, April 2002, The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/April%202002/bag0402.html |
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[2]How is free the Free Market? By Noam Chomky, Professor of Linguistics
at the University of Cambridge, Massachussets, USA http://www.oneworld.org/second_opinion/chomsky.html |
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[3]When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten, second
edition, page 304 http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/corporat.htm |
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[4]Shifting Fortunes. The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap. 1.Overview:
The Growing Wealth Gap by Chuck Collins, Copyright 1999 Holly Sklar and
United for a Fair Economy http://www.ufenet.org/press/archive/1999/shifting_fortunes_report.html |
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[5]Ownership Statistics: Why a Shared Capitalism is Needed...
Site managed by Jeff Gates and Christopher Mackin, Shared Capitalism Institute http://www.sharedcapitalism.org/scfacts.html#Call1 |