Harry Truman displayed a sign on his desk that said “The Buck Stops Here.” With the Bush administration, however, it seems that the buck refuses to stop anywhere — grossly misinterpreting intelligence or A-OKing torture will get you promoted to a nice Cabinet position.
Unaccountability is the new black, and not just with war and diplomacy. Corporate interests, as usual, have been eager to ride the Bush irresponsibility train.
The heyday of unaccountability is upon us, and it is rapidly killing what remains of the American Dream. Work hard, excel and attain unlimited success in a class-free, meritocratic America? Fat chance. According to Business Week, the percentage of children who rise from the class of their parents — 25 percent in 1978 — has now fallen sharply to 10 percent.
Talking about the death of upward mobility irritates those political and business leaders who are fighting to make class divisions more severe and more permanent. Rags-to-riches is quickly becoming a thing of the past, but don’t mention that — you’ll be branded a neo-Marxist and accused of trying to foment “class warfare.”
Class warfare? In the words of President Bush — Bring it on.
Of course class warfare makes politicians nervous; in that battle they realize they’d be the losers. Consider the patrician death matches of the past two presidential elections — Gore, Kerry and Bush all hailed from political families and reeked of old money.
From 1973 to 2000, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers fell 7 percent while the top .01 percent percent enjoyed a 599 percent increase. “Wal-Martization” has saturated the economy with soul-crushing, dead-end jobs that keep entry into the middle-class perpetually out of reach. Studies that show an effortless glide from low-wage jobs to high-wage jobs prove only one thing: social mobility in today’s America is defined by the ability of the guy now serving your chicken fingers at Cane’s to move onto a real job in ten years.
Conservatives are quick to call for moral responsibility from individuals, but never from corporations and their lackeys. There’s nothing moral about letting Wal-Mart and Exxon decide what is best for you, and there’s nothing responsible about the deterioration of democracy at the hands of an increasingly wealthy few.
“What would you do,” asks Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, “[if you] you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots?”
You might start by minimizing taxes on corporate profits and unearned income, such as capital gains to ensure that those with vast accumulations of wealth can continue accumulating with maximum ease. You’d repeal the estate tax — which used to encourage charitable giving — so that the Hiltons and Waltons of America can inherit even larger fortunes. You’d gut bankruptcy protections so workers are even more desperate and afraid.
You might also demonize taxes themselves, blasting “government handouts” while hiding the fact that America’s biggest welfare queens are actually corporations and their toadies. While you’re at it, hope for the actualized potential of future generations the concept of “being rewarded for merit” could use a few more nails in their coffins.
Other hot tips include: creating nifty tax shelters for the rich (they owe nothing to the society that allowed them to amass their fortunes, after all), continuing the Republican party’s century-long war against unions, and slashing programs that provide the education necessary for social mobility.
Take, for instance, Upward Bound, a college preparatory program for low-income students. Its funding in Bush’s proposed 2006 budget was dramatically slashed — to nothing at all.
“If I hadn’t gone through Upward Bound, I probably wouldn’t be attending an institution of higher learning today. To hear that the Bush administration plans to cut the program’s funding to $0 enrages me,” said Jeremy Baptiste, a music education junior. “The only result I can really see is a greater lack of education and an increase in apathy, the combination of which would definitely lead to higher crime and poverty among the already less fortunate.”
The Bush Economic Plan: reviving serfdom for the 21st century.