The Scoop - http://www.bobharris.com/ To new subscribers: thanks for joining up. Yes, the column really is free, and you're encouraged to forward it to friends. That's how our readership grows. Thanks! bh THE SCOOP for May 10, 1999 ___________________________ Everyone's Getting Rich! And Other Common Sense � 1999 Bob Harris http://www.bobharris.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Everyone's Getting Rich! Or so screams the cover of [Money] magazine's May issue. On which planet, [Money] doesn't specify. Beneath the headline stands an upper-class white couple wearing blue and red -- literally embodying the American flag, intentionally or not -- on a lawn, crudely retouched into a literal field of green. The clear message: if you're not getting rich, you're an unamerican loser. But not to worry: inside are [Money's] top ten recommended stock investments. None of which will help much if you don't have tens of thousands of dollars lying around to invest. So who, pray tell, does common sense tell you "Everybody" is? Common sense, unfortunately, isn't. _________________ I'm driving down LaBrea in Hollywood with two friends a few months ago. In the course of a discussion of Clinton's shockingly steady popularity, one attributes it -- as is common -- to the terrific economy. So I respond that the economy isn't terrific at all. As a matter of fact, it sucks. (I'm a lot less articulate when I'm bonding with my male friends.) My friends express shock at such heresy. One of them is an honors graduate of Georgetown who, despite his education and effort, still struggles with two part-time jobs and barely gets by. The other is an actor who, after years of pavement-pounding, finally landed a small recurring TV gig, putting him in the upper two percent of income earners in his profession. He now lives in a one-bedroom apartment. He also qualifies for health insurance through his union, a luxury the vast majority of other dues-paying members don't receive because they don't make enough money. Even where we are -- a relatively nice part of town -- homeless people with shopping carts sit hopelessly in bus shelters near almost every stoplight. On our left we'll soon pass a grocery store well-known for unionbusting. On our right, the McDonald's we're approaching has 60-year-olds working behind the counter. At night, you can walk from where we are to a schoolyard where poor young men sell drugs and poor young women sell sex. If we hang a left and drive a bit, we'll pass the closed gates of several small specialty stores, followed by a strip mall anchored by the big box building supply store that drove the smaller stores out of business. Outside the big box, on weekday mornings, you can often see poor men, many with families, lining up, hoping maybe a contractor buying supplies will hire them as day laborers with no benefits or security. All of which is in plain sight. And still my intelligent, good-hearted, well-educated friends need a lengthy explanation. _________________ A recent Louis Harris poll discovered that only about half of all American adults can answer even the simplest economic questions. Here, try one: If the price of beef doubled and the price of poultry stayed the same, people would most likely buy: A. More poultry and less beef. B. Less poultry and more beef. C. The same amount of poultry and beef. (If you need me to tell you the answer, please remove your wallet, proceed to the nearest public space, and being hurling all your cash at total strangers. You probably do this every day without realizing it already.) Given 20 such questions, less than a third of Americans scored a C or better. Half of the adults and two-thirds of the high school students received an F. _________________ Here's some other stuff not enough people understand, the results of decades of policies and laws designed to benefit [Money's] concept of Everyone at the expense of everyone else: In the 1970s, the top 1% of households had about 20% of the national wealth. This was widely considered excessive. Today, the number is over 40% and climbing. Thirty years ago, about 10% of American households were broke, with a net worth of zero or less. Fifteen years ago, the number was about 15%. Today the number is almost 20%. Adjusting for inflation, blue-collar workers are making less than they did a quarter-century ago. The U.S. savings rate is now [negative] 0.5%, the lowest level since the early Depression. Most Americans have a lower net worth than they did 15 years ago, when this greatest stock market rally in history began. The bottom two-fifths of households have lost about 80% of their average net worth. The middle fifth has lost about 11%. The richest 1% of America owns more wealth than the entire bottom 95 percent combined, and the inequality is increasing. Twenty years ago, a typical big-time corporate CEO was paid about 40 times what an average worker received. CEOs today are paid almost 420 times as much. As CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch has eliminated 128,000 jobs. But GE stock has appreciated about 40-fold, even adjusting for inflation. So Jack Welch is paid $83.6 million. Meanwhile, after what economists will soon call the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, twenty percent of all American children now grow up in poverty. And [Money] can write "Everyone's Getting Rich!" in giant letters across the cover. We hear the idea so frequently these days -- often expressed by corporate media pundits with six- and seven-figure incomes -- we even actually believe it, though our own eyes might protest. Bathed as we are in ignorance and corporate propaganda, these numbers might seem stunning. How handy it is to have the real world around to check them against. _________________ One final note: It's about 3 am on May 10th as I write this. I just did the math. If you had bought this issue of [Money] when it hit the racks, and obediently bought 100 shares of all ten can't-miss picks, you'd be [down] two percent. During which time the Dow is up over six percent. Woops. Maybe even Everyone gets screwed sometimes. Cool. ___________________________ Bob Harris is a radio commentator, political writer, and stand-up comedian who has spoken at almost 300 colleges nationwide. To receive a free email subscription to The Scoop, just send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Much of the above data comes courtesy of the economic watchdog group United for a Fair Economy, whose reports you can read for yourself online at http://www.stw.org. ___________________________ Bob's Big Plug-O-Rama� (updated 5/10/99): The new book, [Steal This Book And Do Life Without Parole], is finally finished, with cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and a foreword by Paul Krassner. Yippee! Visit my fab publisher at http://www.commoncouragepress.com. http://www.bobharris.com is getting lots of traffic and will be expanding with a bit of a makeover soon. Thank you guys for your many suggestions, although that one involving a carrot and an inflatable pool toy I'm going to skip. Syndication of "This Is Bob Harris," the daily radio feature, is rolling along: almost 70 stations and counting, with a new station signing up every few days now. Call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They pay attention, honest. Cool and strange: my radio stuff is also broadcast in over 140 countries by Armed Forces Radio -- and during the Rush Limbaugh program at that! Partly as a result, this column now has regular subscribers in over 30 countries all over the world. Internet portal The Mining Company has a list of a dozen recommended political humorists posted at http://politicalhumor.miningco.com/msub14.htm. There you'll find listed Mort Sahl, Art Buchwald, P.J. O'Rourke, Dave Barry, Mark Russell, the Smothers Brothers, Will Durst, Mark Twain, Will Rogers... and me. I am humbled. OK, that's a lie. Actually, my ego is probably bigger than ever now. The Scoop is also available online in RealAudio at http://www.webactive.com/webactive/soapbox/monday.html Finally, Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) now carries The Scoop. I am honored to be associated with these people. They rule. ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/
