September 08, 2004 News & Views » News Feature

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Are you better off today? 

If you're a billionaire, the answer is a resounding yes!

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In addition, the productivity claim is nothing but myth. A recently released study shows that the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Germany and Norway have sped past the United States in productivity -- and all of them treat workers far better than American employers. More vacations, health care for everyone, a real social safety net.

The average worker in the Netherlands is 6 percent more productive (even with legal dope smoking), but works 59 days less per year than the average American worker, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC.

Workers in Norway -- one of the countries Boortz loves to deride as "socialist" -- are 31 percent more productive.

The same report notes that most European countries have only about half the poverty of the United States -- even though we have the highest per capita income. (Seventeen percent of Americans -- and 22 percent of our children -- are destitute.)

What's more, that disparity is accelerating. In the 1960s the wealthiest one-fifth of Americans had about 3,000 percent more assets than the poorest one-fifth. Now that spread has more than doubled -- the richest have more than 7,500 percent more wealth than the crumbs left for the "other" America.

And how do the talk show blowhards spin that? They claim the wealthy are under attack. Boortz's perennial crusade is a national sales tax to replace the income tax -- a nostrum that would shift the burden even more to the middle class. As the Congressional Budget Office reported a few weeks ago, under Bush there has been a steady increase in the percentage of taxes paid by workers, while the wealthy increasingly dodge the government's bills.

Boortz blames the victims. "I'm tired of hearing about the poor," he smugly fumed recently. "To hell with them. [They got] the sum total of decisions they have made. They got what they deserved."

Oh.

The radio ignoramuses also repeat the lie that there are hardly any poor in America, when every study shows the opposite.

And the rich? Well, the largest single source of income listed on the Forbes 400 is "inheritance." Forty-eight out of the 400 "got what they deserved" by doing nothing but being born. Many others aren't listed under the inheritance column, but the source of their wealth is nonetheless daddy.

As with the Iraq war, the Bush administration conceals the assault on America's middle class behind mountains of mendacity. The Bush administration has declared that sending jobs offshore is good for business. (Whose business? India's and China's?)

And, in a report signed by Bush in February, a lame attempt is made to gloss the three million manufacturing jobs that have evaporated in this country. Bush declares that slapping a hamburger on a bun at McDonald's is a "manufacturing" job, not a service sector gig. (Shades of Reagan, who declared that catsup was a "vegetable" in order to shave money spent on poor kids' school lunches.)

And, as we learned in recent weeks, Bush's economic "recovery" is one of the shortest-lived in the world's history. After a few months of lukewarm job creation, with the talk show chorus chanting hosannas to Bush, only 32,000 jobs were added to America's economy in July -- 12 percent of the administration projection. Moreover, all of the jobs created in the last year are barely sufficient to offset population growth.

Think of that as the GOP plots how to lift more money from your wallet. The Bush Cabinet members averaged more than $140,000 each from the $2 trillion in tax cuts over the last three years. More than half of those cuts went to the nation's wealthiest 1 percent. Did your share even pay for a dinner at a fast-food restaurant? A cup of coffee?

I'm always amused at Bush's posturing at being a Christian. The Bible I read has Jesus warning that the wealthy will find it hard to get into heaven. He fed the multitudes, he didn't cheat them.

And I'm not the only one who has noticed the Republican hypocrisy -- invoking Christ to instill hatred of minorities and gays in the nation, and to justify a war for profits and political gain, while ignoring Jesus' message of love and giving. A few weeks ago, while Bush was vacationing in Kennebunkport, he attended a Sunday service at St. Ann's Episcopal Church. Unbeknownst to Bush's handlers, a guest minister, Martin Luther Agnew Jr. from Shreveport, had been selected to deliver the sermon.

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