{"id":124496,"date":"2014-06-16T14:39:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T14:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=124496"},"modified":"2014-06-16T15:18:06","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T15:18:06","slug":"private-wealth-public-squalor-americas-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/private-wealth-public-squalor-americas-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Private Wealth, Public Squalor: America\u2019s Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert L. Borosage<\/em><\/p>\n

In the first six months of this year, Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block the Senate majority from\u00a0increasing the minimum wage<\/a>, providing\u00a0paycheck fairness to women<\/a>, and enabling those with\u00a0student debt to refinance<\/a>\u00a0at lower rates, paid for by insuring millionaires pay a minimum tax.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans joined Democrats to pass extension of\u00a0unemployment insurance<\/a>\u00a0and comprehensive\u00a0immigration reform<\/a>. But Republican House Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow either measure a vote in the House, despite likely majority support for both.<\/p>\n

Profits are at record heights and wages near record lows as a portion of the economy. CEO pay soars to new heights. The wealthiest 1 percent pockets nearly all of the nation\u2019s income growth, while typical household income continues to decline. We are five years into the official \u201crecovery\u201d that has yet to reach most Americans.<\/p>\n

Republicans clearly are willing and able to block President Obama\u2019s agenda to get the economy moving. So what is the Republican plan for widely shared growth?<\/p>\n

Repeal Obamacare? Really. Depriving millions of workers health care coverage that they have received for the first time will revive the economy?<\/p>\n

Lower taxes? But the rich and corporations are already making out like bandits. Why would giving them even more money make a difference?<\/p>\n

Drill, baby, drill? Build the pipeline? Energy efficiency is more competitive than offshore exploration or more drilling. But Republicans may have a long-term jobs agenda here: Accelerate catastrophic climate change and the extreme weather events will provide jobs in repairing the destruction. Mourning in America as a growth agenda.<\/p>\n

Go back into Iraq and stay in Afghanistan? Military Keynesianism \u2014 with the military serving as a stealth industrial and stimulus plan to boost the economy \u2014 served Reagan well. He doubled the military in peacetime, building a generation of weapons that we did not need, helping to lift the economy out of recession. But Reagan had the good sense to get out of the Middle East when the going got tough, invading the tiny island of Grenada instead.<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently delivered a\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0warning that slow growth \u2014 with accompanying high unemployment and stagnant wages \u2014 might be America\u2019s future. Lew suggests a range of measures \u2014 immigration reform, tax reform, infrastructure investment, education and training investment \u2014 that would make some difference.<\/p>\n

But truth-telling comes more easily when one is out of office rather than in it. Former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama advisor Lawrence Summers now warns about \u201csecular stagnation<\/a>,\u201d and calls for a massive public investment program to rebuild America as a possible remedy.<\/p>\n

A new reality is only beginning to creep into our political discussion:\u00a0America has too much private wealth and too much public squalor.<\/em>\u00a0We have staggering public investment needs: in building a modern, sustainable infrastructure; in education, from pre-K to affordable college; in public research and development; in a manufacturing strategy linking worker training with commitments to capture a lead in markets of the future, like the green industrial revolution that is already beginning to sweep the world. And we can afford this by raising taxes on the rich and forcing the global corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.<\/p>\n

It is hard to think of any other way out. But Americans faith in government has been eroded. They sensibly see Washington as corrupted, serving special interests and big money, not the common good. They want investment in areas like education, but worry the money will be wasted. Government and unions too often get the blame, even as extremes in private wealth and corporate profits fail to produce decent jobs or growth.<\/p>\n

This won\u2019t change with conventional politics. Where is our modern-day Huey Long, vowing to \u201cshare the wealth\u201d and invest in the common good?<\/p>\n

This work<\/a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.\u00a0Robert L. Borosage is the founder and president of the Institute for America\u2019s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the\u00a0Campaign for America\u2019s Future<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert L. Borosage In the first six months of this year, Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block the Senate majority from\u00a0increasing the minimum wage, providing\u00a0paycheck fairness to women, and enabling those with\u00a0student debt to refinance\u00a0at lower rates, paid for by insuring millionaires pay a minimum tax. Senate Republicans joined Democrats to pass extension of\u00a0unemployment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,52,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-124496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-money","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}