------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 5, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
MONEY FOR WAR, PRISONS AND THE RICH, BUT LA POOR HIT WITH "AUSTERITY" TRAVEL TAX
By John Beacham Los Angeles
Washington spent billions of dollars to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, impoverishing the Iraqi people so that mega-corporations could rebuild the country. Now Capitol Hill is giving this country's rich an enormous tax cut.
Meanwhile, here in Los Angeles, what do poor workers and their children get? An increase in their public transportation costs.
On May 22, the Los Angeles City Council passed an "austere 2004 budget" for the Metropolitan Trans portation Authority. It raises the monthly rail and bus pass fee by $10 a month--from $42 to $52.
At the council's decision, the meeting erupted. Angry community members, along with representatives from the Bus Riders Union and the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocate, forced the council members to retreat to their chambers.
During that retreat, the spirited Angelenos took over the microphone and denounced the rate hike as an undue burden on the city's working poor.
The day-to-day lives of the poor in Los Angeles are grim, and getting worse. The monthly fee increase is a tax on the poor that the roughly 250,000 workers who rely on public transportation should not have to pay.
In Los Angeles County, 18 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. And 14 percent of families in the county get by on less than $15,000 a year.
The proportions are much, much higher in poorer neighborhoods where official unemployment runs as high as 15 percent.
In Los Angeles, 23 percent of immigrant workers live below the poverty line. Now, in 2004, a family of four is going to have to pony up an extra $2,480--roughly $500 dollars more than in 2003--just to get around the city.
The MTA will make an estimated $15 million in 2004 from the rate hike.
This comes in a city in which the hospital system is a cruel parody of a health-care system for poor workers. Eighteen hospitals are on the chopping block.
The public education system is woefully underfunded. Tens of thousands of teachers are threatened with layoff.
In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the state of California cannot find the money to fund the most desperately needed social services for the most endangered of its population.
The working poor need better jobs, free health care, and free education-- not a rise in transportation costs.
So many who cannot afford the fare hike must travel on mass transportation. Thirty-one percent of those living below the poverty line in Los Angeles do not have access to a car.
Yet miraculously, the state of California has found the money in its 2004 budget to build more prisons and give raises to prison guards.
In Los Angeles alone, 3 million people over 16 are outside the labor force. Many are in jail, are racking up enormous college debt, or have simply been left out in the cold by the capitalist system.
There are an estimated 230,000 homeless people in Los Angeles.
When an estimated 350,000 people who are officially unemployed in Los Angeles are added to these shocking numbers, it provides a clear picture of just how cynical the capitalist system is: Billions of dollars spent on a war for empire. Tax cuts for the rich. More money for prisons. Less money for health care, education and jobs. And an increase in the cost of living for the working poor.
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