I'm a retiree, who'll work until I can't. I'm not an economist, but I have observed life through nine wars and for the last eight years, and have input into why we're in this financial mess.
Before I rant, recognize that I favor capitalism " regulated, understood capitalism.
While jobs were going overseas, and millions of Americans approaching or in retirement (including me) lost their nest eggs in the Enron and friends debacle, many corporations and the rich who run them were given Virtually Total Welfare " no responsibility being the first gift. They did not pay their fair share of taxes, and they expected the rest of us to give up stable health insurance, retirement plans, and decent salaries; to give up good schools, because they refused to fund No Child Left Behind fully and weakened local tax bases.
I wonder if they planned to make Americans uncompetitive to justify lowering salaries and moving to cheaper labor pools. (Melamine in your pet's food? China with children dying from the same compound. Life has become so cheap).
The powerful encouraged average citizens, for "patriotism's sake," to give up the lives and stability of our young people by sending The National Guard to wage a large part of two wars. Powers were so successful at equating patriotism with compliance that millions, sensing powerlessness, quit voting. Drugged by ads and gadgets, many were drunk on complacency. "Don't participate in Democracy, your vote hasn't been counted anyway." Even as many of us with Vietnam memories demonstrated, the establishment told us how chicken we were.
Oh, we were given our own welfare " GO SHOP!
Credit was easy, consequences light. Wait till the bill for that comes due after the big boy round of investment bank chaos.
Finally, the largely Republican Congress and Bush administration gave the financial sector the ultimate gift " leverage to the moon with no regulation (i.e. responsibility).
This gift fell on the middle class and on people who had never been required to have any education in financial management or economics. The rationale for that was as long as students could pass rudimentary tests, Americans had proof that our education system worked. No frills were needed, so once-required high school classes in economics, sociology and money management disappeared. People needed to consume goods and houses, not pay for them. Since workers were viewed as enemies of the bottom line, aiding them to be job ready or stable enough to responsibly own a home was unnecessary. They were schnooks to be swallowed.
The expectation from many ignorant home buyers was that experts knew what they were doing, and experts had the home buyers' interests at heart. The truth was that homes were sold when lenders knew people would default, so the houses would come back to the institutions to be resold to the next chump. Who cared? The real money was in leveraged mortgage packages, sold here and overseas.
Consumption is all. Pac man, munch munch that planet. Deny responsibility for environmental degradation; refuse to supply energy-efficient cars or alternative energy that would help not only workers, but the economy. Why invest in R&D when it's easier to sell consumers on gas guzzlers, claiming that's what they want. R&D takes away from the bottom line.
Incidentally, the same is true for the pharmaceutical industry, which spends countless millions on ads to "consumers" of products their doctors should deliver in line with their expertise, not advertisers' hype.
Who are the heavies that promote this craziness? Congress and the Bush Administration, as bought by foreign oil-producing nations and other large lobbies, and an electorate that has little awareness of the importance of their voice, and who, sadly, have opted out of the process. After all, to make sustainable or innovative ideas, goods, and communities requires effort and capital outlay, and we have been told only to consume, and our leaders urge us only to do that.
This attitude is also good for the Military Industrial Complex, making multiple billions not only to perpetuate Cold War technology, but to devise new machines for The War on Terror. There is terrorism; go figure what we have spent, not to learn about curing what causes it, but to blast it.
Has that worked in a cost-effective manner?
Is there enough blame to go around? You bet.
Now I, as an old American with ever-dwindling funds, am to pay these gargantuan corporations to bandage mismanagement and greed.
There go medical plans that make sense, education to actually equip citizens for a competitive future life; infrastructure improvements to home, bridge, highway; to rehab dwellings for what will be more homeless and to make green improvements to create jobs and soothe the planet.
There are some decent corporations, but overwhelming corporate arrogance astounds and sickens me.
I have no illusions that businesses, which have gotten us into this, will feel any desire or need to pay the economy back by helping society's well being. After all, that's not their job. They can leave the U.S. and be competitive anyway. Corporations aren't moral or ethical entities. Their job, legally qualified, is to make money for their stockholders who, like me, are now hit from all sides. What an exciting future for the USA. We don't need Osama. We've brought this terrorism on ourselves.
Elizabeth I. Riseden is a resident of Carson City.