The Rake Magazine

Tag: economy

  • The Well-Lubricated Fall of the Middle Class

    All praise be to the cyclopean gods of old for finally
    bringing the nigh interminable local and national Democratic nomination process
    to a close. For while sentences involving Andy
    Rooney, sodomy and bestiality    , not to mention flag
    lapel pins     and innuendo involving sniper fire,
    roll comfortably off the tongue of B-grade actors on late-night Cinemax, they
    do not serve as a substitute for effective political discourse.

    As a result, now that the maddening cacophony of berserk
    liberals has gone silent, however briefly, we must rush to place weightier
    issues on the table of public discourse. for not even the ancient eldritch
    power of the elder beings from out of time and space, combined with the cosmic
    might of Allah and Yahweh, will be able to hush the yowling
    dissonance     that will ensue once the battle for the nation’s
    soul     between Republican and Democrat begins in earnest.

    Donkey shows
    aside, the upcoming elections come at a time when a veritable shit-strewn minefield
    of problems is facing America’s
    middle class. To be clear, these problems do not include:

    • Middle
      Eastern terrorists come to spread plague, rape our women and blow up
      landmarks while screaming the Xena battle cry to
      the heavens.
    • Godless
      foreigners come to spread plague, rape our women and steal our jobs whilst
      inflicting gastrointestinal discomfort on us all by introducing new foods
      to the American palate.
    • Compact
      fluorescent light bulbs       come to spread plague, rape our women, and
      poison our children with trace amounts of mercury.
    • Homosexuals
      seeking same sex marriages come to spread plague, rape our men and trigger
      the long-feared rash of man/horse romantic entanglements.

    What these problems do include is rising food costs,
    skyrocketing energy prices, tightening credit markets, miniscule raises, and
    falling home values, all adding up to an increasingly brutal struggle to stay afloat. In
    fact, between the first quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2008, after
    adjusting for inflation, wages for the middle class have essentially stagnated — increasing only .6 percent. And since the start of this year, wages have
    actually fallen behind inflation. Of course, that should come as no surprise –
    drivers throughout the country have found themselves spread-eagled at the pump,
    caught in the caustic grip of high-octane fossil fuels and whispering "I wish I
    could quit you" whilst sadly caressing the pump handle.

    So has this to do with the upcoming election? Everything, of
    course. America’s
    strong middle class is constantly cited as the primary reason for our country’s
    profoundly powerful and stable economy. They are the yellow sun to the United States’
    Superman. The Astro Glide to the country’s Jenna Jameson. The Blackwater to its
    Iraq
    security policy. Unfortunately for the middle class, most members of that
    demographic lack super strength, do not get to aid in the profligate banging of
    porn stars, and don’t possess the fully automatic weapons necessary to enforce
    real change. And with the illusory gains of the last few years almost
    completely wiped away, America’s
    middle class is under threat of extinction.

    On the campaign trail, our candidates for the Senate, the
    Oval Office, and every other elected office in the land put forth ideas for
    healthcare reform, bringing the troops home and winning the War on Terror.
    However, in their desperate hunt for sound bites and applause lines they’re
    missing the true scope of the problem. The economy has grown dramatically for the
    last six years, but that growth has largely left everyone but the wealthy
    behind. As a result, the middle class is becoming an even more narrow slice of
    the population, a trend that has accelerated and become ever more visible since
    the housing bubble burst. And as that slice shrinks, the country loses ground
    to its global competition.

    This lost ground means fewer students can afford college,
    thereby limiting the qualified workforce in the country. Our buying power
    suffers, forcing other countries to replace us with more valuable trading
    partners. Crime rates rise and neighborhoods become blighted toothless
    creatures, with boarded-up gaping wounds where families once dwelled and
    half-staved children roving through Longfellow, Kenwood and Linden Hills like a
    biblical swarm of feral locusts devouring all in sight and ruling their new Lord of
    the Flies kingdom     with brutal efficiency.

    So while Democrats cheer on a message of change and Republicans
    bask in McCain’s Zen-like balance of maverick reputation and stay-the-course
    policy, neither side offers a full-blown strategy for heading off the impending
    class wars. And if this problem isn’t addressed, the rise of micro-nations
    within once peaceful neighborhoods will only be the beginning. The Chinese, no
    longer content with their near-monopoly on American lunch buffets, will buy up
    real estate at fire sale prices, satisfying the Communist nation’s long-held
    fascination with robot superweapons by collaborating with the Japanese to use
    the newly acquired land as a testing ground for an army of giant robot
    pandas    . If this horrific future comes to pass, not only will America become
    a former superpower, but no one’s lucky bamboo will be safe from the
    predations of these nuclear-powered Socialist creatures
    of mass destruction    .

  • It's Wages, Stupid!

    I’ve been watching this debate raging on my television screen over how America got into this economic mess. Am I the only person out there who understands why? It’s wages, stupid!!! Our nation’s No. 1 export is jobs, and every job that leaves drives wages down on a half dozen other jobs that don’t leave. Combine that with the fact that the super rich are taxed at a lower percentage rate than people who actually work for a living. It was Warren Buffet himself who recently reported that he pays about 17 percent income tax, while his secretary, whom he pays $60,000 a year, pays 33 percent.

    Do you want to solve our fiscal crisis? It’s simple: People who "EARN" eight to nine figure incomes need to pay 50 percent or higher income taxes.

    Now, before you kick down my front door to see if I have a "commie flag" hanging in my living room, consider this: People who "make" tens or hundreds of millions, or even billions, per year don’t "EARN" that money by working a day at a time, as you and I do. It is procured through control of savings, stocks, bonds, and other ways of monopolizing financial resources both here and abroad. My point is this: the working class people are being squeezed by high taxes, stagnant wages, and run-away inflation. Letting local bazillionaires keep 100 percent of the profits they make by shipping our jobs and industrial base over seas is just going to enable them to do more and more of the same.

    Ronald Regan once said, "A rising tide raises all ships." That may be true, Ron; unfortunately, they’re all going to China! If the rich won’t bail us out with more jobs and higher wages then they are going to have to do it with higher taxes. After all, they have all the money!

    T. J. Posthumus, Morristown, MN
    Letter

  • Minnesota's Own Nero

    Oil is hovering around $115 a barrel, the lowest price of
    gas in the Twin Cities is $3.18, foreclosures are still a-rising, and yet, in her latest column,
    the Star Tribune’s Katherine Kersten
    believes all we need to weather the storm of inflation, diminished access to
    credit, and skyrocketing healthcare costs is a shit-eating grin and a positive attitude.
    Allow me to add a hefty supply of recreational pharmaceuticals to the list,
    because these days I’d love to have some of whatever Kersten is smoking. A few
    wise British men once said, "Life’s
    a piece of shit, when you look at it,"     and that certainly applies in the
    current economic climate.

    Kersten’s premise seems to be that we can take notes from
    our parents and grandparents – those stalwart souls who grew up during the
    Great Depression and maintained a positive attitude despite the slings and
    arrows of daily life. And why yes, she’s right – life would be far more
    craptastic if we were faced with a worldwide economic disaster compounded by a
    severe drought shortly after a global conflict that caused the deaths of more
    than 20 million people. However, what Ms. Kersten failed to mention in what was
    likely supposed to be a feel-good piece meant to evoke images of fluffy bunnies
    and ponies prancing through verdant fields before she vomits forth more Powerline
    talking points    , is that those bunnies and ponies are taking turns crapping
    all over the bank accounts of the average Star Tribune reader.

    You see, while no, we aren’t staring at a nigh-complete
    collapse of financial markets at home and abroad, we are looking at what is
    potentially the beginning of a long, slow, inexorable slide into poverty for
    the middle class. The last thirty years have seen a gradual widening of the gap
    between middle and upper class workers, of course, with C-level pay packages
    growing more and more whacked out every year. In addition to his $10 million
    pay package, CEO George Buckley has a harem of gold-painted succubi
    at his beck and call. NWA CEO Doug Steenland’s stock options are worth
    millions, but the value of the midgets who function as his office furniture is
    incalculable.

    The most egregious omission, however, the one that makes me
    believe the chemicals in Kersten’s home perm
    have seeped into her brainpan and taken up residence, thus blocking rational
    thought altogether, is her complete and utter obliviousness to the fact that
    many people in the state, and even the country, believe that life will actually
    be worse for their children than it was for them. And there’s no improvement in
    sight. The developing world is demanding resources, driving up prices for all,
    and that same developing world is placing increasing pressure on wages by
    competing for jobs and businesses that happily obey the cow god in
    return for reduced costs and delicious curries.

    This is a dramatic reversal from the norm in this country,
    where the wealth of one generation is traditionally built on by the next. And
    they’re feeling pessimistic for good reason – the middle and lower classes have
    been largely left out of the economic boom of the last decade. Real income has
    been largely stagnant due to rising healthcare, food and energy costs, and the
    heightened lifestyle of many middle-class Americans was funded by credit –
    which has dried up in the face of falling real estate prices. For the first
    time in nearly 80 years, the country’s middle class is shrinking and the best
    advice Kersten can muster is to act like Stepford wives? I suppose it makes
    perfect sense to grin and bear it when we’re already getting thoroughly
    buggered by the folks who’ve reaped the rewards of the massive economic
    expansion of recent years whilst we hear how great life is in these United States.

    What’s truly galling is the patronizing attitude. While it’s
    obvious things could be worse – N’Sync has not yet reunited,
    after all – we’re coming off an economic boom that actually set the stage for
    the recession by encouraging a middle class that hasn’t seen any real
    improvement to their lot in life in nearly 20 years to heavily leverage the one
    asset that could provide ready amounts of cash, their homes. Now that bill is
    coming due and we’re supposed to chuckle turn those lemons into
    lemonade    ? I’d say no one is stupid enough to take that approach, but the comments on Kersten’s blog
    belie that.

    So there are really two options at hand. One could get angry
    that the number of children in Minnesota
    below the poverty line has increased by 30 percent since 2000. Or get downright
    pissed off that your paltry 2.5 percent pay increase is dwarfed by the average
    3 percent increase in healthcare costs, not to mention the nigh 50 percent
    increase in energy prices in the last few years. Or, like Ms. Kersten and her screaming
    hordes, you can lay down and take it, shouting "thank you sir, may I have
    another!?" all the while. Though how she manages to enunciate through the ball
    gag    , I’ll never quite figure out.

  • Fiscal Lubrication

    For those of you lulled into complacency by auspicious
    recent events such as Britney’s brief
    flirtation     with lucidity, it’s important to note that, not only is the
    entertainment industry still pumping out fucking loons
    at a heretofore unheard of pace, but our politicians are providing ample
    evidence of a world view so profoundly divorced from reality that it’s likely
    only a matter of a few short days until Gov. Pawlenty declares "Blame it on the
    Rain"     our state song and Speaker of the House Margaret Kelliher declares her
    undying love for Michelle Bachmann’s fabulously taut ass. In other words, take
    heed, Minnesota denizens, for the Oh Shit meter has gone from a subdued puce to
    an alarming ochre.

    And what has triggered these dire portents? What could
    possibly be serving as the harbinger for yet another pending apocalypse? The
    answer is disarmingly, deceptively simple – nothing more, or less, than the
    overwhelming demonstration of the profound stupidity endemic to all levels of
    our representative democracy.

    These portents have appeared at a furious pace as of late. John McCain’s assertion that Purim is
    the Jewish Halloween    , thus disappointing a highly influential voting block
    as they continue a hallowed tradition of offering a big "Fuck you" to yet
    another culture that tried to annihilate them, was only the beginning. And Dick
    Cheney’s apparent pleasure at providing a big
    "Fuck you"     to the American public as polls indicated two-thirds of
    Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq was just a cherry on top of the mountain of asshattery displayed whilst our policy-makers grandstand and
    pontificate on how best to take advantage of the economic reaming the average
    American feels
    they are about to receive    .

    To address the assembled citizenry’s fervent desire for
    fiscal lubricants to ease the anticipated pain, Obama and Clinton
    have released their economic stimulus and oversight plans. McCain, of course,
    is standing pat, toeing the GOP line as he has for the last few years and
    stating that the check going out to taxpayers in May, not to mention the tax
    breaks for businesses that will surely convince them to invest in added
    infrastructure while consumers aren’t buying anything, is plenty to arouse the
    economy and stimulate a good old-fashioned consumer orgy.

    What baffles me, however, is that the plans put forth by
    these august candidates are, for the most part, predicated on becoming
    president despite all three having plenty of legislative power. And since statistically, recessions are generally over within a year to a
    year and a half, meaning any fiscal policy levied after scoring the presidency
    won’t take effect until January of 2009. Much like downing the morning after
    pill nine months after the condom breaks, that’s long after it could possibly
    do any good.

    Then you might think to yourself, "At least our local
    legislators, staunch realists like Marty Seifert and the Iron Range’s Tom "The
    Sex Hog" Saxhaug, are carefully balancing Minnesotan needs against the harsh
    reality of the budget deficit threatening our government services and
    benefits". If you were harboring such thoughts, you may want to relieve
    yourself of them via repeated
    blows to the cranium     with a blunt object, since you’d be laughably wrong. To
    address the state’s approximately $1 billion deficit, GOP legislators offered a program
    of cuts to higher education, dips into the state’s rainy day fund, and
    bizarrely, a token tax cut to make Minnesotans feel better about the panty raid
    Gov. Pawlenty proposed on the state’s health care access fund and budget reserves. DFLers universally
    derided the deficit fix, calling the proposal shortsighted and damaging. House
    Majority Leader Tony Sertich went so far as to say, "Everyone knows people from
    Eagan are twats. And Tim Pawlenty is a twat among twats. The alpha and the omega of twats, if you will."

    One might imagine the DFL, after such an ideological salvo,
    would come back with a solution to the state’s budget woes. A solution that
    would salvage programs to salve the economic doldrums afflicting our state’s
    citizens whilst securing Minnesota’s solvency for the biennium and beyond.
    Sadly, it seems we’ll sooner see Michelle Bachmann in an Amsterdam donkey show
    than have a budget proposal that actually addresses the real issues facing the
    state. The budget that the DFL’s greatest financial minds came back with dips
    even further into the rainy day fund. And while the $23 million in extra
    education spending is nice, the proposal doesn’t provide any details on the
    program cuts necessary to cover that spending. Nor did they make any attempt at ensuring solvency in the next biennium. Much like the Pawlenty
    administration and inflation, reality and the DFL have never quite meshed.

    Frighteningly enough, the group we must look toward for
    fundamental change in our fiscal policy is the Bush administration. They’ve
    bailed out Bear Stearns despite outcry from left and right, thus avoiding a
    repeat of the market crash that triggered the Great Depression. And we’ve
    already seen some small changes – allowing the Federal Reserve and treasury
    some additional oversight of investment houses and mortgage originators. But
    more meaningful changes, changes that will allow the hand of government to wrap
    itself around the balls of America’s financial system and give a great tug when
    necessary are not yet forthcoming. Can an administration that has spent the vast
    majority of its time in Washington on a ranch in Crawford, TX or up its own ass
    aggressively move to create meaningful legislation? Can a man whose sole method of
    reassuring the public that the economy is in good hands consists of letting us all know
    the government worked over the weekend     actually trigger substantive change?

    Yeah, I know. We’re fucked. But I, for one, welcome our new
    Chinese overlords, and will enjoy receiving the benevolent treatment afforded
    all China’s provinces    .