Thursday, July 3, 2003
From the Real to the Abstract
Today's neo-liberal-dominated perspective on progress insists that globalization has helped the US achieve two decades of unprecedented financial prosperity. Yet social, fiscal, cultural, political and ecological indicators confirm that the world’s “richest” nation is experiencing a steady 20-year...
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Wednesday, July 2, 2003
From Education to Incarceration
Since 1980, US prison outlays have increased at a pace six times that for higher education. States spent roughly $25 billion during the 1990s on prison construction while annual operating costs for state and federal prisons surpassed $30 billion. In 1973, the US imprisoned 350,000 people nationwide....
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Tuesday, July 1, 2003
From Rank-and-File Employees to Management Employees
In 1980, US money managers held $1.9 trillion in assets. By 2000, they held more than $17 trillion, 48% of that due to tax incentives for employee benefit plans, now the nation’s largest annual fiscal expense. While those tax-favored funds were under the control of plan fiduciaries, the pay gap...
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Monday, June 23, 2003
From Job-Holders to Wealth-Holders
The largest tax now paid by 80 percent of Americans (90 percent of Generation X) is the Social Security payroll tax, a hugely regressive “flat tax” imposed at a fixed 15.3 percent on all earnings up to $80,400. Social Security entitlements are now the largest single “asset” for a majority of...
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Sunday, June 22, 2003
From the Common Good to Exceptional Greed.
In 1980, the total federal debt was $909 billion. By 2000, it topped $5711 billion, enroute to a projected $6526 billion by 2003. Fiscal capacity is a public asset held in trust and available for any purpose to which policy-makers agree – education, health care, environmental restoration, military...
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Friday, June 20, 2003
From the Personal to the Financial.
Both markets and democracies are based on the universally appealing principle that people should have an influence on forces that have an influence on them. Today’s remote-control, finance-dominant, globally-attuned economic model would strike Adam Smith, the father of free enterprise, as a freak of...
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Thursday, June 19, 2003
From Personal Freedom to Financial Freedom
The free enterprise component of democracy is founded on the sensible notion that free markets provide an opportunity for free people to freely express their free choices and thereby enjoy the dignity of self-determination, democracy’s most treasured freedom. Though terrific in theory, the map fails...
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Sunday, June 15, 2003
From Diverse Cultures to Monoculture
The dominance granted financial values is reflected in a neo-liberal metaphor that guides policy-making worldwide, commonly stated as the goal of ensuring a “level playing field” as the ideal policy environment so that the forces of finance can operate unimpeded by the distractions of public policy....
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Friday, June 13, 2003
From Welfare to Warfare
UNDP identifies six core ingredients as minimal conditions for a decent life: safe drinking water (1.3 billion people lack access to clean water), adequate sanitation, sufficient nutrition, primary health care, basic education (one in seven children of primary school age is out of school), and...
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Saturday, June 7, 2003
From Law-Abiders to Law-Evaders
Financial experts report that at least $5 trillion (and possibly $15 trillion) is hidden in tax havens, ensuring that many among the most well-to-do can harvest the benefits of globalization without incurring any of the costs. If WTO rule-making identified the owners of those funds, held in an...
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