Don’t Worry! Be Happy!

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

I have marvelous news! Let’s give the rich three big ones! Hip-Hip-Hooray! Hip-Hip- Hooray!  Hip-Hip-Hooray! The rich are going to save our economy by consuming billions of dollars in goods! The rich may pay less of a percentage of their income than the middle-class in income taxes, but they are coming to everyone’s rescue in this recession by buying more “stuff!” What could be more patriotic than that?

USA Today reports that some rich Americans have decided it’s OK to buy “stuff” again. No doubt they have the capacity to bring us out of a recession. They have more money than God, and they pay less than their fair share of taxes than even janitors, secretaries, and cooks and servers in the fast food industry. USA Today reveals that five percent of the wealthiest now account for 37 percent of all consumer spending. I guess the one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27,342,212, can afford to spend a few bucks. Even those between one percent and 10 percent of the top earners (who make an average of $164,647) can afford a small trinket. The richest 10 percent now control over two-thirds of Americans’ net worth.

What are the rich buying in order to help the poor and middle-class get out of a slow growth economy, high unemployment with over 26 million workers sidelined, and foreclosed or extremely depressed home values?  Bikes, but they are not K-Mart $59.95 specials. The German makers of $80,000 PG-Bikes can’t keep up with demand. It’s powered by batteries and can reach speeds of 62 mph. After all, who wants to pedal?

Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille can’t keep Rafael Nadal RM 027 models costing $525,000 in his display cases. This model features titanium and carbon composites otherwise used in spy satellites. It also tells time. If you want something cheaper, Mille’s watches start at $50,000, but they have to be special ordered to avoid embarrassment at the counter while other customers purchase the RM038 Bubba Watson, also at $525,000. His marketing chief describes Mille’s watches as being “very personal” so with this watch you become “a member of a very exclusive club.”

Luxury Brand Consultant Jim Taylor: “Personal Embracement Of Luxury Is Back At 2007 Levels”

The rich are doing their utmost to save us. High-end grocer Whole Foods, which features gourmet “stuff,” had a 12.6 percent gain in 2010. Nieman-Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Tiffany had gains of over 10 percent (Nordstrom up 29 percent!) . The John Lennon-style grand piano by Steinway, which starts at $90,000, is flying out of music stores. Even customers who don’t play the piano buy them as investments! German automaker Porsche has already sold all of its $245,000 models and is now taking orders (600 so far) for the 918 hybrid Spyder with a sale price of over $630,000.  Porsche’s 2010 U.S. sales were up 29 percent. Porsche introduced the 911 GT2 RS sports car this year, selling all 500 they made in two months. But that’s nothing. Cadillac’s sales went up 36 percent. But (drum roll!) Rolls-Royce sales are up 171 percent. AutoNation, the leading luxury car dealer in the country, is spending $100 million to spruce up model showrooms for BMW, Audi, Land Rover, Infinti, Bentley, and Mercedes-Benz cars.

Vacation home sales, generally not affected by foreclosures or subprime mortgages, are up 40 percent in the ghettos of Palm Beach and up 14 percent in rural Hilton Head.

A study by Harrison/American Express indicates that the wealthy are no longer feeling guilty about spending money. Their stock market is going up and they have huge tax cuts for at least 20 months more. But how long will the U.S. poor and middle-class take this crap? The workers’ share of the U.S. economic pie has shrunk to 54.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the lowest in modern times. The workers’ share in the 1970’s was over 60 percent. Karl Marx’s prediction about unregulated free market capitalism is coming true. He predicted over 100 years ago that the voraciousness and viciousness of uncontrolled capitalism would cause bosses to invest more in technology than in workers, and the result would be unfair wage policies and worker revolts. Let’s look at the facts. Between 2007 and 2009 half the full-time workers who lost jobs and then found new jobs took serious pay cuts. Over 35 percent of these workers took jobs paying at least 20 percent less.

Research by Capital Economics reveals that U.S. corporations between 2002 and 2008 increased employment by 22.6 percent overseas and only 4.9 percent at home. Congress is about to cut retraining programs which will make the employment picture much worse. We are too stupid to follow Denmark’s lead. When Danish companies outsource jobs to other countries they are required to pay unemployed workers on a declining scale for two years–but only with the promise they attend retraining programs for jobs in industries showing higher domestic growth. It makes so much sense we will never do it.

Antoinette, Pitchforks, And Women And Children Last

I wonder how long it will take for the U.S. rich and superrich to have dark dreams of Thriftstore-clad unemployed poor and middle-class workers jabbing Armani and Dior-clad rich in their fatcat asses with pitchforks made in China. Better lock your gates and doors. The revolutions are starting all over the world. Arabs are finally tired of living on $2 a day. They don’t give a crap about democracy-yet. They want to be treated as human beings! They want to eat!  When food prices went up 25-40 percent in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, citizens already fed up with the corrupt rich stealing from them hit the streets. Iraqis are climbing the blast walls we erected in Bagdhad to separate the Shiites and the Sunnis. They want food, electricity, sewers, jobs, and water they were promised long ago. The rich-poor gap in India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries is increasing exponentially. How long will one billion Indians stay hungry?

Revolutions over hunger have been around for centuries. Queen Antoinette in breadless Paris screamed “Let them eat cake!” as she was dragged to the guillotine. The Russian people, tired of being starved, cheated, and murdered, finally captured Tsar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra in July 1918 and took them to Ekaterinburg, a little town in Central Russia. The Bolsheviks really didn’t know what to do with them but they were worried the “Whites” might try to rescue them from the “Reds.”  They took Nicholas and Alexandra, their five children, and four servants down to the basement of the house where they were imprisoned and shot them all, spattering the walls with their blood.

There was a time if a ship were sinking, the call for the lifeboats would be punctuated by the cry: “Women and children first!  Women and children first!”  The last titanic scene would be of drowning men waving goodby to their wives and children.  All of that is changed when it comes to a sinking economy now. 

With middle-class homes under water because of Wall Street fraud and greed, with 26 million unemployed and underemployed, with pensions decimated and 401Ks now 201Ks, what is the cry we hear across the water of our sinking free market ship from “The Best Congress Money Can Buy?” Why, it’s “The superrich and rich first!”  The superrich and rich first!”  The economic lifeboats are filled first with the richest passengers.  As the ship of state slowly sinks with all the women and children clambering to the stern, guide boats lead the lifeboats to the handsome yachts slowly circling the economic disaster. 

In those lifeboats are the Fortune 500 and Wall Street CEOs of multinational companies based in the United States. Quite a few billionaires and multimillionaires from Minnesota scrambled for seats in the lifeboats. I bet Stephen Helmsley from United Health Group, Inc. got one of the first seats. His income last year was $101,959,866.  I bet Daniel Starks of St. Jude Medical wasn’t far behind in the boat. He made $15,949,477. James Cracchiolo of Ameriprise Financial Inc. certainly had a righteous fight for a lifeboat seat. He picked up $10,224,454. And the Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel was seated right next to him because he earned $8,085,803 last year. George Buckley of 3M, who recently accused President Barack Obama of being “anti-business” and “Robin Hood-esque” if you can believe it, cleared a paltry $6,881,110. His seat in the Congressional lifeboat and the IRS yacht was a sure thing. Always threatening to move plants and other parts of the business to cheap labor overseas, he said Canada and Mexico were certainly more pro-business than the U.S. I wonder what the total income taxes of the Fortune 500 and the top 100 Minnesota CEOs would be if they paid the same rate of income tax as their secretaries, custodians, limo drivers, helicopter pilots, and line workers paid. We know it would be at least $80 billion for the year because that’s what the Bush tax cut cost the rest of the American people each of the last nine years.

What Happens When Women And Children Are Last In The Lifeboats

We now have 17 million people living on $11,000 or less, which is exactly half of the official poverty line of $22,000 for a family of four. In 2009, 14 percent or 44 million people were living in poverty , a jump of four million over 2008. The figure for 2010 will be a huge leap instead of a jump. More than 15 million children are poor. That’s one of every five kids. Maybe they would be better off it they were actually on a ship that sunk.

Texas is cutting Medicaid by 29 percent, a program crucial to the health of poor children. It is planning to cut 100,000 education teachers and workers. Texas is already 43rd in high school graduation rate–and evidently is trying to be 50th.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is worth $17 billion at last count and has six homes scattered around the world, plans to cut 4,700 teaching jobs and 17,000 slots from child care programs that prepare poor children to be school ready.

We now serve breakfast to 11.6 million schoolchildren in 87,000 schools. Over 80 percent of the breakfasts are free or sold at reduced prices. (My God,! Isn’t that socialism?) Nutrition experts are now estimating that these children will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents because of nutrition deficiencies. The French supply first-class, nutritious school meals to all students, rich and poor. (Yes, rich people do exist in France.)  By establishing early eating habits, even the devouring of broccoli, the French are among the most healthy in the world, living about three years longer than we do. They also have the best health care system in the world, paying less than half what we do for excellent universal care. In the U.S. 70 percent of teachers say they have students who come to school hungry. Will someone tell me how much hungry children learn?

The Republican War On Women

I see South Dakota Republican men passed another “Stupid Women” bill requiring females to have a 72-hour waiting period for abortions. The Republican House members of “The Best Congress Money Can Buy” just savaged the WIC program which helps poor women supply nutritious food for their babies. No lifeboats for the poor here. The House just voted to eliminate Planned Parenthood funds which supplied contraceptives and family planning for the poor. The U.S. now ranks last in infant mortality among the top 33 industrialized countries. Aren’t the rich embarrassed about anything in their avaricious, selfish greed? Well, the infants sank with the ship of state anyway. How quickly men forget that women hold up half the sky.

As they leave the yachts of their handlers, Republican governors are yelling: “We’re broke! We’re broke!”  In the wealthiest country on the face of the earth?  The top 10 percent are rolling in wealth. Last year the top 13 hedge fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. Yes that’s a “b!” One made $5 billion. They are taxed at 15 percent, thanks to “The Best Congress Money Can Buy.” If the taxable income of these 13 hedgers playing the Wall Street Casino, who don’t even make a single paper clip, were taxed as ordinary income like their secretaries and pilots are, these added revenues alone would pay salaries and benefits for 300,000 teachers. Are hedge fund managers playing economic roulette in the Wall Street Casino more important than teachers?

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