Anyone who drives in Cleveland knows that the roads are in terrible shape, with potholes everywhere. One study says that forty-one percent of Cleveland-area highways and major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. It is estimated that “the nation’s roads and bridges suffer from a funding shortfall of $134 billion to $194 billion annually, just to maintain present conditions.”

It has become so bad that on my way to and from work, I have memorized which lane I should be in to for each stretch of road in order to minimize the severity of the bumps, though they cannot be entirely avoided. I see other cars, perhaps not as familiar as I am, suddenly swerving as they try to avoid holes.

Poorly maintained roads are just one sign of a community and nation that is running out of money to maintain basic services. It will be followed by less street lightning, dirtier streets, unkempt parks, and so on.

Soon all the people who demanded that their taxes be lowered will begin to complain about the terrible state things are in and demand that something be done. Without raising their taxes, of course.

The Plain Dealer business section yesterday had two news items right next to each other. One was that luxury car sales in the region were up by more than 50% during the first quarter of 2011 and the other was that a local business that provides private jets to wealthy travelers quadrupled its first quarter sales when compared to last year.

It’s nice to know that the tax cuts for the rich are paying off. All the people in the region who lost their jobs and homes due to the recession should be able to find plenty of jobs washing and cleaning the luxury cars and jets. That’s how trickle-down economic theory works, no?

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes about the fact that the top 1% of wealthy people in the US now rule the country and are ruining it.

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall.
…
Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
…
In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.
…
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Note that he does not ask if this state of affairs will cause riots in the streets in America like those occurring elsewhere in the world but when.

It is worth reading the whole thing.

Brad Reed describes one of the means by which the the rich pay absurdly low taxes.

But of course, these things are of no concern to the people with the serf-like mentality who think that the rich should be able to game the system to pay as little taxes as possible. These people will probably argue that these poor rich people are forced to adopt such stratagems because their taxes are too high so the solution is to reduce their taxes even more.

We tend to think that computers and automation will threaten only low-skilled workers. Paul Krugman argues that the opposite may be true, that the low-skill jobs that could be replaced have already been replaced, and that it is the high-skilled ones that are now at risk of elimination. It is actually harder to design computers to clean your house or take care of your garden than it is to do legal analysis.

Those middle-class people who have been misled into working against their own interests and supporting the oligarchy’s assault on the social safety net and public services because they think it affects only other people may want to think carefully about that.

The message that is being drummed into our ears every day is that America is broke and that the middle class and the poor are the ones who must bear the pain of solving the problem, because we must never, ever, raise taxes, even on the very rich.

In a speech in Wisconsin in support of the unions, Michael Moore says what I have been saying for sometime, that the problem is not that America is broke but that a greedy oligarchy is looting the country’s wealth.

“Let me say that again, and please someone in the mainstream media, just repeat this fact once. We’re not greedy. We’ll be happy to hear it just once. 400 obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.
…
The nation is not broke, my friends. There’s lots of money to go around, lots, lots. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits in their well-guarded estates. They know. They know. They have committed crimes to make this happen.”

As Jason Easley and Sarah Jones comment:

Moore did something brilliant. He shifted the narrative. Republicans want the Wisconsin story to be about the budget. Early on Democrats were focused on the issues of liberty and collective bargaining. Moore broadened the message and created a third narrative about how decades of pro-corporate and pro-wealthy economic policies have redistributed the nation’s wealth from the people to a small group of super-rich haves. This is the story that terrifies both conservative politicians and the network of billionaire wealth that owns them.

I am glad that someone of Moore’s prominence is getting that message out. We cannot expect the Democratic Party leadership to do so since they are part of the oligarchy.

Like most people, I had assumed that the shortfall in state public sector pension funds that is causing budget problems was because the states had not made sufficient contributions to the fund to met their promises. Paul Krugman says that he too bought that argument.

But a new study (pdf) by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that the shortfall emerged only in 2007 and is largely due to the financial crisis. As Baker says:

Most of the pension shortfall using the current methodology is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are today. This is by far the major cause of pension funding shortfalls. While there are certainly cases of pensions that had been under-funded even before the market plunge, prior years of under-funding is not the main reason that pensions face difficulties now. Another $80 billion of the shortfall is the result of the fact that states have cutback their contributions as a result of the downturn.
…
In sum, most states face pension shortfalls that are manageable, especially if the stock market does not face another sudden reversal. The major reason that shortfalls exist at all was the downturn in the stock market following the collapse of the housing bubble, not inadequate contributions to pension funds.

So the idea that the problem is caused by generous retirement giveaways by state governments to greedy unions is simply false. This serves to remind me that I should not trust any conventional wisdom that aligns itself conveniently with oligarchic interests that control the propaganda apparatus but should always ask for the data.

So Congress has passed and Obama has signed yet another continuing resolution to extend funding to keep the government running for another two weeks, until March 18, 2011. This is the fifth such extension. The previous ones provided stop-gap funding until December 3, then December 18, then December 21, and then March 4.

These ad-hoc actions are because Congress has still, six months into the fiscal year that began n October 1, 2010, not only not passed a budget but not passed even one of the twelve appropriation bills.

We will now be subjected to another tedious spectacle of wrangling as the March 18 deadline looms, which will likely result in another temporary extension.

How long will they keep kicking this can down the road? It is quite incredible that the world’s biggest economy is being run like a struggling mom-and-pop store, not knowing whether it can pays its bills from week to week.

Complicating things is the fact that this not the only contentious budgetary issue. There is also the debt ceiling of $14.294 trillion which is now predicted to be reached some time in April or May. Expect to see another circus around that issue. There is no doubt that it will be raised (because the oligarchy will demand it) but it is an issue that allows for a lot of demagoguery and who can resist that?

There is this odd notion that the public sector employees are living off the largesse of the rest of us, i.e., the taxpayers, and that they have used their union power to somehow pull a fast one. This is false. As David Cay Johnston points out, the pension benefits that unionized workers get is not something that is a gift to them from us. It is essentially deferred compensation that was negotiated with employers. In other words, part of the wages they were entitled to was deferred until their retirement.
[Read more…]

Susie Madrak points out how the biggest corporations are avoiding paying any taxes while the federal and state governments are demanding that ordinary people pay more. She also highlights the movement USUncut that highlights the tax inequities and is based on a successful UK model.