The $600 Miracle
These days, our feckless media is all abuzz with talk of the foreign stock market collapse, the burst of the housing “bubble”, the mortgage crisis and the dreaded recession. But fear not America. Uncle George and his rubber-stamp Congress have come together to announce with great fanfare a "stimulus package" to save our tottering economy.
The causes of our current crisis are nothing new to this country. First is the 30-year obsession by Republicans to the sacrosanct concept of free-trade and deregulation that has created a culture of greed and corruption in our corporate boardrooms. This has been done because the federal agencies that should be protecting the health and welfare of our citizens have gradually been stripped of their power or politicized and gutted.
In the past few years, banks and mortgage institutions have led the way with their irresponsible lending practices, only to find themselves burdened by losses in the billions of dollars. As a consequence, some of these corporations have had to go hat-in-hand to overseas sources to bail them out.
But perhaps an even more important, though seldom-mentioned factor in our current economic mess is the cost of the War in Iraq. Through fiscal year 2007, this trumped up and unjustified war has cost U.S. taxpayers $456,100,000,000, or nearly a half trillion dollars. Remember, this was the war that was going to “pay for itself” according to its architects.
To break this down to numbers we can understand, here are some other ways of looking at this enormous sum:
- $4,100 for every American household
- $1,500 for every American
- $3,400 for every taxpayer
- $11 million per hour
- $275 million per day
This amount doesn't even include the untold amount of money that has gone--and will go--into immediate and long-term medical and psychological care for military personnel affected by their involvement in the war. Nor does it include amounts for fiscal year 2008 and beyond; estimated at $150-200 billion per year for the foreseeable future. In fact, one of the current Republican frontrunners, John McCain, recently stated that "even if the United States were in Iraq for 100 years, it would be alright with me".
Remember, too, that this amount only includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is only a small part of the overall Department of Defense budget, which this year alone is $481.4 billion. One has to question why nearly 20 years after the Cold War ended, the majority of the Defense budget is still going to non-war spending. But that is another issue entirely.
What is appalling to me is that we Americans--who have been indoctrinated by the Republican Party since at least 1964 that Democrats are the "tax and spend" party--continue to swallow this line when the largest tax increases in history were instituted by GOP patron saint Ronald Reagan in the '80's and George W Bush the last seven years.
Now, our clueless leader and the Democratic and Republican sheep in Congress are falling all over each other trying to jump-start an economy that has been badly mismanaged--or should I say unmanaged--by this "CEO Administration". The President and Congress actually appear to believe the lies they're telling us that $600 will induce each of us taxpayers to go out and buy something--to buy anything.
I'm not sure if the President or Congress has discovered this fact yet, but since virtually all regulatory restraint was taken off the banking and credit card industry, the average credit card user is paying as much as 36% interest per year. That means adding more than 1/3 of the principal to the debt every single year.
Many economists predict that this vast mountain of debt will emerge as the next crisis in our looming recession. I wonder how many families will opt to purchase yet another consumer item during this time when their credit card debts are increasing and average incomes in real terms haven’t increased since the year 2000.
I truly fear that we’re being led down the path to our own destruction, and like lambs to slaughter, we don't even notice. Fear-mongering by this Administration continues to eat away at our Constitution in the name of "homeland security" to the point where we as a nation can’t seem to think critically any longer.
Besides critical thinking, common sense also seems to have disappeared from the plucky American attitude we grew up with. Perhaps 9-11 so traumatized the national psyche that we've yet to awaken to the real dangers that exist right here at home by people we’re supposed to trust.
I am hoping that this country isn't in its last days, because if things continue the way they’re going today, America really is going to be a much different place in the coming years.
And I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t want to live here then.
posted by mauiloa @ 4:03 PM
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