Economic
growth: reality or chimera
everyone is crowing about the 7.2% growth rate for the most recent
fiscal quarter, as if this is the arrival of our economy at its long-awaited
point of rebirth.
people are going further to attribute this to the "Bush Tax
Cut" and its benefits to ordinary citizens.
No one seems to be addressing some underlying facts which turn the
illusion into reality:
It is also dis-ingenuous to talk about "job creation"
when we have both an artificially sustained economic boom AND a huge reduction
in our real workforce capability through the numerous reserves and guard units
on active duty, directly pulled out of the jobplace. When these
individuals return to the work force, where will those people go who are currently
filling their jobs? Onto the unemployment lines.
The reality is that the Bush tax cut went over 90% to the very
high wealthy sector of the economy that already has more money than it can
spend, and thus, simply gets stuck away into offshore accounts and tax
advantaged investments. The few hundred dollars the average person
received was not even enough to pay for the increases in health insurance (if
they can afford health insurance), nor the increased gas prices for automobile
and household heating, nor the losses in their pension funds through corporate
fraud and mismanagement, much less to provide discretionary funds to fuel a
spending boom.
Every day we hear of more people feeling the real effects of this
"artificial prosperity" in the form of higher health insurance costs,
more people without insurance, rises in personal bankruptcies, layoffs by big
companies, more people suffering health problems like asthma, emphysema and
other environmental-related disease conditions, and of course more people being
injured or dying in the state of permanent warfare that we have now embarked
upon to prop up our fossil-fuel based economy.
And meanwhile, the ultra-rich are getting richer and storing up
their gains faster than anyone can count them. The gap between rich and
poor continues to accelerate. Not content with having more than they
could ever possibly use, the ultra-rich donate money like crazy to the Bush
re-election campaign so they can get more tax cuts, more special breaks, more
war-time economy benefits to their companies, more exclusions to the need to
act in a responsible manner, more corporate rip offs, etc. etc.
The press ignores these realities in order to act as cheer-leaders
for this enormous deception. How does the public debate take place when
no one is willing to talk about the real issues in public?
Santosh Krinsky