May's Lowdown

May 2010, Volume 12, Number 5

Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer

We're not in a recovery * Wall Street honchos don't really earn much * Wealth is not being "redistributed" to poor people

Facts--not myths--about our economy

The Dow Jones Average is above 11,000! Corporate profits are up! Wall Street has paid back its bailout money! Executive pay is soaring! Bonus money is flowing! Productivity is increasing! Job creation is on the rise! The Great Recession is over--America's economy is whizzing once again!

Yeah, whizzing on you and me. Forget the Dow Jones Average --whatabout the Doug Jones Average? How are Doug and Deb doing? They measure their economic condition not by what's in their stock portfolio, but by what's in their stockpot. It's not the fluctuation in the price of T-bills that keeps the Joneses awake at night, but the inflation in their electric bills, the stagnation in their wages, and the deflation in the value of their house.

It's a myth that practically every American is personally attached to the Dow Jones rocket. In fact, half of us own no stocks at all, even through a mutual fund. And the majority of those who do own stocks have only miniscule holdings and pay no attention at all to the variations of the daily Dow. Indeed, the richest 1% of Americans own 90% of all stocks and bonds in our country.

Broad ownership of corporations is just one of the many "facts" we're fed in our economic diet that are myths, half-truths, deceits...or outright lies. To help read between the lies of the current economic "news" you're getting, this issue of the Lowdown probes into a few of the statistics and assumptions that are being spewed out by pundits, politicos, and other Powers That Be.


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DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE


Meg Whitman's Corporate Media Campaign

Dennis Beatty predicts accurately that Meg Whitman plans to abuse the "infirm," but Arnold [Schwarzenegger] has already dealt a deathblow to many of the disabled by eliminating Denticaid entirely, so that American mouths now resemble those of India, and slashing the miniscule "entitlements" of Supplemental Security Income dependents (i.e., the handicapped). The average SSI allotment now approximates the mean rental cost of housing, which undoubtedly has swollen the disabled homeless population, at least in California. As inflation escalates in coming months, starvation in America may become the best-kept corporate media secret.

Lew Amack
California Bar #177774
President
MedicoLegal Advocates
2037 Woods
Monterey Park, CA 91754-5913
(310) 774-0000, (323) 264-1500
J.D., U WASHINGTON
M.D.-PhD. (Biol.) program, U ILLINOIS
National Boards in Medicine, 6/82
M.B.A., CAL. STATE

-- posted by LAlawMedMBA at 6:32am, May 27, 2010
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DISTURBED

I am here watching the "European Debt Crisis" unfold and looking for a reason to laugh in an effort to keep from crying. A collection of subsidized multi-national oligopolies does not a free market make. The conservative line just floors me. Meg Whitman is out here in California with millions to throw away on a campaign for governor. She has that supply side trickle on em message down. In essence, she wants to bust up unions, cut wages and benefits, and abandon the poor, the elderly, and infirm. I mean this woman, the darling of the backroom boys who gave us Richard Nixon and Augusto Pinochet, is the living incarnation of the Pre-Christmas scrooge. Her message is cut taxes for the rich and invite business leaders in to write the state's policies to their advantage. With demand collapsing in almost every corner of the world, I just don't see how giving the rich additional money to stash in off shore tax evasion havens is going to turn this economy around. I mean the Fed has the money spigot wide open at 0%, so it seems to me from a supply side perspective, if there was demand out there to be served, it seems like the Fat Cats would have no trouble financing an operation, especially with commodities in free fall. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that it is time for some trickle up Demand Side Economics. It seems to me that a jobless recovery is no recovery at all, and that we need to pursue policies that promote full employment at living wages that will allow ordinary people to live a sustainable dignified well funded life.

-- posted by Dennis Beaty at 2:06am, May 26, 2010
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