THE SYSTEM ISN'T BROKEN
It's Working Exactly Like It's Supposed To

From UPI writer Cynthia Tucker:

The president's economy policy is working just as he planned it -- for the well-to-do. The stock market is bouncing back, sales of Rolexes and Range Rovers are humming right along, and compensation for CEOs is still in the stratosphere. Among the president's friends, there is little anxiety about the kids' trust funds. (Notice how well Halliburton has been doing since the invasion of Iraq?)

Bush's multibillion-dollar tax cuts largely benefited the wealthy while doing little to produce jobs for average workers. Conservatives fiercely defended the tax cuts as redress to rich capitalists who paid most of the taxes and who would create jobs if given appropriate incentives. They neglected to mention that many of those jobs would be created in other countries.

For the entire essay, click here.

I read an old joke in an essay on ZNet a few months back. It went something like this:

A liberal and a leftist are walking down the street one day. They turn a corner and encounter a homeless man begging for food. The liberal says, "the system is broken." The leftist replies, "the system is working exactly like it's supposed to."

Indeed, the American economic system relies on large numbers of people to be either poor or out of work. In fact, the conventional wisdom is that it is somehow bad for the economy if we have full employment--this would create upward pressure on wages which cuts into profits. A quick read between the lines shows that profits are the real goal instead of economic health for most of America. For as long as I've been paying attention, I've been hearing the so-called experts insist that the government must always give business what it wants; this creates jobs, and jobs are good. Jobs are good. It has now become completely clear, however, that giving business and the wealthy whatever they want does not always equal more jobs, and many of the jobs that are created are low-wage crap jobs. Bush's crazed economic policy is perhaps not so crazed: he's simply taking care of his own.

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