Mark writes:
- Re: those greedy corporations - who do you think holds stock in
publicly held corporations? A lot of it is held by pension funds,
for both public and private sector employees. I don't know the %,
but a lot of pension $ are in the stock market. The idea that only
the very wealthy are invested in the stock market just isn't true.
It is true that pension funds hold 25 to 30 percent of financial
assets in the U.S. Yet the Congressional Budget Office estimates that
over half of corporate profits go to the wealthiest 1 percent of tax
payers. Only about 8 percent goes to the bottom 60 percent.
The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finance shows that the top
one percent of households owns 23 percent of all stock, the top five
percent owns half, and the bottom 60 percent owns only about 10 percent.
Investments in the stock market that have actually jeopardized the
pension assets of the not very wealthy. Think Enron. Think United.
- if our country headed down the economic road to perdition during
the Reagan administration, how do you explain the much-vaunted boom
years when Clinton was in the White House?
Recall that there was the First Bush Administration between Reagan
and Clinton. Recall that both Bush I and Clinton raised taxes. Recall
that Clinton was elected when the economy was weak and there was a
growing deficit. The idea that there was a six or seven year lag
between the end of the Reagan administration and the start of the
"much-vaunted boom years" in is a right-wing campfire story.
The 90s boom was about productivity growth, brought on by technology.
(There was also the matter of that stock bubble.) Those technology
investments were not a result of the Reagan years, because the
technologies did not exist in the Reagan years. Nor were the
innovations the result of some sort of free market revolution kicked
off by Reagan. The foundations for the technologies of the
information era were laid in the 1960s, mainly through government
sponsored research. The boom came because those technologies were
finally ripe, not because companies said, Hey, Reagan cut taxes so
it's finally safe to roll out all of those great ideas we've been
sitting on. The idea that innovation is financially driven is hooey.
Ask the computer garagistes.
But the other part of this is that income disparities grew from
Reagan right on through Clinton. CBO numbers show that the average
after tax income of the bottom 20 percent of households fell by $100
(inflation adjusted) from 1979 to 1997. The middle fifth gained
$3400, or about 10 percent over the same period. The top one percent
gained $414,000, or 157 percent. This is even with the Bush and
Clinton tax increases. Hence the need for a renewed commitment to
rebuilding the middle class through living wage requirements.
And to quote David Shove,
Huzzah! Socialism - we love it! Huzzah! Socialism - we love it! Huzzah!
Becca Vargo Daggett
Seward
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