Thurmond Family Values

This just in from the “You can’t make this stuff up” desk at the Associated Press: Strom Thurmond’s ancestors owned Al Sharpton’s ancestors.

It is almost poetic that flip sides of the coin have this old link. I am just sad that this, along with the black daughter, didn’t come up while Strom was alive. I would have liked to have heard Strom’s reaction to all this. Heck, I would have loved to get them all in the same room together.

In fact, there are discussions underway to see if there is any “shared ancestry.” Wouldn’t that make a great “Maury” episode? I know I would watch.

I think my final word on this is that America’s treatment of the race issue has been disgraceful. Even in an era of legal equality, hard feelings persist. On one side you have the dying out of the Strom dinosaurs (Crackersaurus Rex) and their heirs who exploit the issue of racism in subtle and disgusting ways, and on the other are grandstanders like Reverend Al.

All kidding aside it is a shame that this didn’t happen while Strom was alive. Maybe something this wild could have helped facilitate dialogue.

Bush-doctor

President Bush has announced his plan to use “market forces” and tax incentives to fix our nation’s healthcare system.

I try very hard not to just reflexively reject everything that this president says. However, with just under two years left, sometimes I think I could get away with it and nobody would notice the difference.

The president’s plan would give a tax deduction on privately purchased health insurance.

Does anybody in his administration know anything at all about what it means to be poor?

While the idea of tax incentives to help with poverty isn’t the dumbest idea in the world, there are a couple of things that need to be remembered.

First of all, poor people don’t have a lot of disposable income. They struggle with every paycheck to make ends meet. Poor people can’t wait all year to get a lump sum back on their taxes. They need the money in each paycheck.

Secondly, if you make it work somehow so that the money intended for health insurance is included in each check, i.e. each check is slightly larger, you create a new dilemma. The average poor person now has the funds available to improve their lives in some material way or buy health insurance.

This may sound silly, but the choices could be quite tempting. Imagine if you were a single mother who could get a two bedroom apartment rather than squeezing into a one bedroom place with the extra money. Imagine if the extra money provided enough money to buy groceries, or car insurance so that you could get to work. Suddenly that extra cash in your pocket creates a lot of new challenges.

What we need to decide as a society is this: Is healthcare a right or a privilege?

If it is a privilege, then we can just stop worrying about it. We can let the free market disperse it like Garth Brooks CDs or Silly Putty. We can all agree that it is a good thing to have, but nothing you are entitled to. We all agree that it would be nice if everyone could own a home, but we don’t lose any sleep over the fact that this is not how it works out.

If we decide that healthcare is a right, then we need to address it as such. The free market works well for portions of it, but markets are not the best mechanism to distribute something that we all have a right to.

Simply put, the free market is what got us into this mess with healthcare in the first place.

Bush’s proposal on healthcare seems about as well thought out as his National Energy Policy. If one were cynical you might be inclined to think a bad idea like this is being advanced for the same reasons the energy policy was: to enrich certain interests at the expense of the nation.

But, you’d have to be pretty cynical to believe that.

The Ghost of Jimmy Carter

A curious thing has happened in the world of Bush appointees. There are the beginnings of concern being expressed about growing wage inequality.

“Families earning more than $103,100 a year saw their share of aggregate income rise to 48.1 percent in 2005, from 46.5 percent a decade earlier, according to Census Bureau figures. Middle-income families earning between $45,000 and $68,300 saw their share of aggregate income decline to 15.3 percent, from 15.8 percent in 1995.”
--From a Bloomberg report

Of course, Federal Reserve Chairman is quite coy about explaining why this is a problem and why it is growing.

“Understanding the sources of the long-term tendency toward greater inequality remains a major challenge for economists and policy makers,'' Bernanke said.

So, as I have to do so often, it is time for the old Sane One to bail out the Bushies with a simple and truthful explanation:
America grew to immense power and wealth in the 20th century because of the size of our middle class. The egalitarianism that grew from an economy that allowed most people who worked hard to become homeowners is what we all look back on nostalgically as “the American Dream.”

The simple truth of how average slobs could own a boat can be summed up in four words: Unions and Progressive Income-taxes.

Alright, I cheated, one of the words was hyphenated, but I stand by my statement. The American worker organized and demanded a greater share of the economic pie. Organized labor brought about pensions, high wages and benefits. To this day union employees have significantly higher wages than their non-union counterparts.

If you look at income distribution in America you will see that there is a huge shift when Reagan destroyed the income tax system by dropping the top rate from 75% to (and I might be off on this number, but I am pretty sure I am close) 32%.

With that quick drop in taxes the wealthy were able to start hogging more and more of the wealth generated in the economy while the tax burden was shifted more toward the middle class. This double whammy has crushed the average middle class worker. I would add that the abolition in the estate tax (invented by Teddy Roosevelt) has only exacerbated the problem by allowing the wealthiest Americans to pass on more of their wealth than ever before. (For proof of why we need to discourage this sort of idle-wealthy class I call your attention to Paris Hilton)
The popular answer, purported by those who have a vested interest in keeping their lion’s share of the nation’s wealth, is that education will even it all out.

This is foolishness.

Education will help some, but there are others who will never succeed with education.

Further more even if those at the bottom do start earning more, there is still the problem that those at the top are continuing their over-accumulation. It also subtly blames those at the lowest end of the economic ladder for their lot in life, and subtly promotes the virtue of those at the top for their place.

We have to make a decision as a society. We have to decide if we want to let the economic system do whatever it wants, no matter what the consequences, or if we prefer to intervene to bring about a more favorable outcome.

If we leave people to their own devices, look at Mexico, because that is our fate.

If we decide we want to restore balance to the distribution of wealth then we need prudent action to constrain the excesses that are occurring now.