"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
So wrote Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, the real name of French novelist Anatole France, the 1921 Nobel laureate in literature.
That quote was from a novel written in 1894.
It was a time of profound income and wealth inequality with most of the world's wealth concentrated in very few hands, just like today. The quote predated global economic depression and the world wars that bookended it.
It was written 50 years before America created Social Security and 70 years before there was a health insurance safety net for America's elderly called Medicare.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, the current majority, want to turn Medicare into something resembling a voucher system where a senior citizen is given a coupon, for example, and sent out into the insurance marketplace to fend for him- or herself.
The Medicare change would be made in 2022, when people who are now 55 reach retirement age, the proposal states. House budget writers see major cuts in Medicare as a centerpiece toward balancing the nation's books.
"We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem," the Republican bumper sticker reads.
No, I'm pretty sure we have a revenue problem, too.
That's in the form of low taxes on the top earners, who derive most of their income from investment and not wages subject to income tax.
The revenue problem also results from high unemployment because if people aren't working, there is too little money to support Social Security, Medicare, defense spending and the regulatory framework that helps us breathe clean air, drink clean water, send kids to school and pay teachers.
The spending problem is 10 years of war and the crashing of the financial system through massive real estate fraud that has resulted in the federal government borrowing 42 cents for each dollar it spends.
Here's our French sage again:
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
Ruelle Parker is president of the Sabine Area Labor Council, representing about 12,000 workers in eight counties in and around Southeast Texas. He's horrified by what he sees as more Republican enabling of increasing inequality.
"It seems like everything they come up with, they want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the sick, the elderly and working people," he said. "We have a responsibility as a nation to take care of people who can't take care of themselves."
Parker said he thinks corporate America would jump at the chance to return the labor force to pre-union days.
"No benefits, work 40 years, and you're gone," he said.
Parker said corporate tax breaks allow what could be American jobs to be sent abroad, no questions asked. Subsidies - borne by taxpayers - help huge oil companies earn billions in profit.
"You've got to hand it to Republicans," Parker said. "They've convinced people that if the rich get richer, it'll help everybody. They don't spend. They hoard."
It's been widely reported that $2 trillion is sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations because they don't want to spend it on equipment, buildings and hiring - all the things that make a market economy.
And here's our French buddy again, who might have been talking about the phenomenon to which Parker referred:
"If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Source: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com
So wrote Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault, the real name of French novelist Anatole France, the 1921 Nobel laureate in literature.
That quote was from a novel written in 1894.
It was a time of profound income and wealth inequality with most of the world's wealth concentrated in very few hands, just like today. The quote predated global economic depression and the world wars that bookended it.
It was written 50 years before America created Social Security and 70 years before there was a health insurance safety net for America's elderly called Medicare.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, the current majority, want to turn Medicare into something resembling a voucher system where a senior citizen is given a coupon, for example, and sent out into the insurance marketplace to fend for him- or herself.
The Medicare change would be made in 2022, when people who are now 55 reach retirement age, the proposal states. House budget writers see major cuts in Medicare as a centerpiece toward balancing the nation's books.
"We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem," the Republican bumper sticker reads.
No, I'm pretty sure we have a revenue problem, too.
That's in the form of low taxes on the top earners, who derive most of their income from investment and not wages subject to income tax.
The revenue problem also results from high unemployment because if people aren't working, there is too little money to support Social Security, Medicare, defense spending and the regulatory framework that helps us breathe clean air, drink clean water, send kids to school and pay teachers.
The spending problem is 10 years of war and the crashing of the financial system through massive real estate fraud that has resulted in the federal government borrowing 42 cents for each dollar it spends.
Here's our French sage again:
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
Ruelle Parker is president of the Sabine Area Labor Council, representing about 12,000 workers in eight counties in and around Southeast Texas. He's horrified by what he sees as more Republican enabling of increasing inequality.
"It seems like everything they come up with, they want to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, the sick, the elderly and working people," he said. "We have a responsibility as a nation to take care of people who can't take care of themselves."
Parker said he thinks corporate America would jump at the chance to return the labor force to pre-union days.
"No benefits, work 40 years, and you're gone," he said.
Parker said corporate tax breaks allow what could be American jobs to be sent abroad, no questions asked. Subsidies - borne by taxpayers - help huge oil companies earn billions in profit.
"You've got to hand it to Republicans," Parker said. "They've convinced people that if the rich get richer, it'll help everybody. They don't spend. They hoard."
It's been widely reported that $2 trillion is sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations because they don't want to spend it on equipment, buildings and hiring - all the things that make a market economy.
And here's our French buddy again, who might have been talking about the phenomenon to which Parker referred:
"If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Source: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com
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