As Election Day approaches, much of the nation must surely be experiencing Percent Fatigue.
The campaign took shape amid talk of the 99 Percent and the 1 Percent -- the divide delineated by Occupy Wall Street that speaks to how more and more of the spoils of the American economy have been flowing upward.
More recently, the 47 Percent joined the conversation, thanks to the now-infamous video of Mitt Romney telling campaign contributors in Florida that nearly half the electorate is comprised of deadbeats who mooch off the government.
Last week, two academics conjured up a handy new cohort, the 96 Percent, in a clarifying op-ed in The New York Times. They cited a Cornell University survey that found that nearly every American at some point in their lives makes use of government-furnished benefits, from federally guaranteed student loans and the mortgage interest tax deduction to Medicare and Social Security.
Permit me to inject one more label into the mix in an effort to bring this cycle to its necessary fruition: In the end, this election is about the 100 Percent.
That's the share of Americans who, in one way or another, depend upon a functioning government and who require an operative spirit of collective interest to address collective challenges. That's the percentage that will absorb the resulting disaster -- though in sharply varying degrees of comfort -- should the ideological extremists who have captured the Republican party manage to impose their vision on the nation.
That vision is no less than the dismantling of government as we have known it in the decades following the Great Depression, an event that featured an implosion of fortunes so comprehensive that it altered basic understandings about the role of the state in American society. It delivered the social safety net, not least unemployment insurance and Social Security, while strengthening the notion that a well-functioning market system requires regulators with authority to intervene in the public interest. It produced a rich legacy of public works, from hydroelectric dams to parks, whose benefits were distributed broadly.
Romney's bid for the White House -- the most intellectually vacuous, mean-spirited and (thankfully) ineptly run campaign in recent memory -- has boiled down to one central idea: The government is just an elaborate welfare dispensary for lazy, morally degenerate people who would rather feast on food stamps than work for a living.
In seeking to cast President Barack Obama as the supposed champion of this model, Romney has eagerly pandered to the libertarian fantasy that the best role for government is no role at all. He has played on the part of the American identity inclined to celebrate our frontier roots while in essence arguing that only losers need government services.
Romney's cynical campaign has been underwritten by the one constituency that would actually benefit from a crippled government: mega-corporations whose profit opportunities would be boosted in the immediate term by not having to worry about pollution limits, public health interests, labor codes or any other impediment to doing as they please. (And, yes, a handful of well-connected executives would profit handsomely, too.)
Actual human beings -- round up and call them the 100 Percent -- would take a hit, either via the direct weakening of services like public schools and public transportation, or indirectly through the fundamental degradation of American potential.
This is not to say that the government should shoulder every burden or seek to solve every problem. This is not to take away from the need for a vibrant private sector, which will continue to be the engine for economic growth and innovation. Rather, it is a simple statement of reality: Whoever you are and whatever you do, you could not do it without a little bit of government every now and again, libertarian fantasies notwithstanding.
Whatever your station, you are not better off in the long term if we allow the ranks of the officially poor -- now 46 million -- to grow while we weaken the social safety net. We are collectively less secure in an economy in which everyone must go it alone.
The entrepreneurs who have built their own businesses ought to take pride in having done so. But no business, not the corner delicatessen, not the largest Wall Street bank, can exist without the schools that have taught their workers how to read and do arithmetic. They could not function without the highways that enable their wares to be transported. They need the electrical grid, firefighters at the ready, and the courts that prevent someone else from merely ripping off their creations.
This all seems so obvious, yet it collides with the Republican narrative in which anything that can't be privatized isn't worth doing, and anything done by government is a waste of hard-earned tax dollars. This is the narrative that will have currency if the Republicans capture the White House.
The wealthiest Americans have long been retreating to fortresses of one variety another -- to gated communities in well-heeled suburbs, to private schools and exclusive social clubs. Perhaps this is the American future, one in which you either amass enough wealth to live inside a private land of plenty, or in which you find yourself staring at the wrong side of a fence, drinking toxin-laden water, sending your kids to crumbling schools and riding dilapidated public buses over pothole-strewn streets to jobs that pay too little to support your family.
Maybe that works for the people who can pay to get inside, some fraction of the 1 percent. Maybe they can still hire enough security guards to keep the disaffected at bay, effectively criminalizing joblessness and poverty while shipping the malefactors off to private prisons.
But what kind of future is that? Not just for the people on the wrong side of the fence, but for everyone else, too? How stable is such an order?
In a shocking new book, "Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress," University of Washington sociologist Becky Pettit finds that on any given day nearly two out of five young, African-American men who lack high school diplomas are incarcerated. Such men are today more likely to be in prison than employed.
She and other experts draw a straight line from the dearth of support for public works to these alarming levels of incarceration: Deprived of quality schools, large numbers of young black men drop out, ensuring high levels of unemployment. Many resort to the drug trade.
Among the 1 Percent, this reality tends to be either ignored or discussed as a misfortune confined to another realm and best addressed through charity, rather than in the context of future American security. That's a problem. How safe should anyone rationally feel knowing that millions of working-age, able-bodied men see criminality as the only viable route to sustenance?
More broadly, how are American businesses supposed to prosper if huge slices of the population are economically marginalized? How can free enterprise work if much of the population is so consumed with finding the money to educate children and ensure access to health care that they are afraid to spend on anything else? The government needs to play a role in ensuring that our most critical needs -- housing, health care, education -- are more broadly available. That's not socialism. That's what has long been the American way.
We are the 100 Percent, our fortunes collectively dependent upon a functional society.
Government is no panacea, but it is the best mechanism for attacking the collective problems that are left unaddressed by the marketplace.
Follow Peter S. Goodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/petersgoodman
Jim Carr and Lisa Rice: Governor Romney's Housing Plan: Playing Politics With the American Dream
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
The 1% want NO health care AT ALL for the 99%. This means that they'll get sicker sooner, die sooner, and then all their accumulated Social Scurity money goes into the General Fund.
That's the real reason for the assault on Medicare.
FY 2013 is here and it's 50 % of GDP.
AND 60 % of the Spending is Debt.
USA cannot survive on 1 % Growth and no Business Confidence in Future.
Debt Cliff can only be tamed by Growth and Jobs..............Private Sector Investment !
Very clear and apparent, DEMS (Harry, Nancy,Obama) cannot create Jobs.
Shake off Failure................send a new Team to Washington, DC.
Something Different, Please !
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
The U.S. is becoming an aristocracy run by predatory multinational banks & Corporations.
All these corporate CEO's care about is their annual "BONUSES", cutting taxes, and gutting regulations on labor, safety, & the environment.
These corporate PREDATORS are consuming our environment, human workers, and all the Earth's resources -- then spitting it out for personal profit.
They include Wall Street corporations (GS, JPM), oil companies,(BP, XOM) & Mining, Chemical & other multinational corporations. These corporate predators already OWN Washington & even the Supreme Court!
(for info Google: "Koch, Supreme court")
Wall Street is now putting a record $250 Million into the 2012 elections to BRIBE American politicians with "campaign contributions.
If we can't change this system which allows predatory corporations to give "UNLIMITED BRIBES" to our politicians, then middle class Americans are ultimately doomed to a 3rd world existence with the "multinational Corporate Elite" on top.
Mitt Romney represents the 1%, the new predatory bank & corporate Aristocracy.
He said would change Washington from the "Inside".
Sadly, this is the time he's REALLY telling the truth.
He would -- by turning Washington over to the KOCH brothers, Karl ROVE, Wall Street, oil, mining, chemical companies & other predatory multinational corporations.
Many of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.
so what's your point
It's never enough until you want the company owner on par with the workers. Why don't you buy a car and let me drive it for free for ever. How about some free rent too since you make more then me. That's the point. Rich people can be brought down then the greed will be directed to the govt. that has to impose a 90% tax on all to support the social programs.
The other article titled “The Unseen” concerns poverty in America. Today, long after Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and Reagan’s insistence that government was the problem, not the solution.
My thoughts are that racial prejudice travels from generation to generation, increasing in intensity with poverty.
The better-than-thou attitude toward those less fortunate is another form of discrimination. Some born with that silver spoon should have traded it for a heart and a good dose of compassion.
This never-ending war on poverty is a parasite that defeats some of the poor who never had the advantages of wealth. I understand poverty, grew up with it, minus the free food, housing and healthcare despised/resented by Romney. Mitt can have his money - he can "put it where the sun don't shine!" I wouldn't trade my life of early struggles for the easy life of Romney and his Mhitty attitude of superiority. He has portrayed a twisted comparison of the “have’s and the have not’s”, fueling serious debates of how we view ourselves.
Well said. F&F for a great post.
Ask them.
Ask any of them.
These contradictions will never leave the system. To pretend we are the 100% is a farce, it's like the south commenting to the slaves, "We are all from the south, we're in this together"
Rejecting one bad idea - like the ultra-rich getting all the breaks - doesn't mean we have to support another bad idea, like the federal government having a housing, healthcare, or education presence.
Gov't aid should NOT be the American way, it's just the easiest approach. Unfortunately, it only addresses a symptom, and it ultimately perpetuates the illness (greed, entitlements, government interference). Requiring the struggling middle class to pay for the sins of the greedy, and the harm they've caused is not the right thing to do.
Welfare on BOTH ends of the spectrum is breaking the backs of working Americans. At one end, people get their handouts in tax breaks, loop holes, and insider trading. Others get food stamps, section 8, and subsidies.
End it. Cut all corporate welfare immediately. Don't ask them to pay a bigger percentage than everyone else. Just their fair percentage, no loopholes. Five years later, phase out the rest of welfare. People will be surprised to discover how much smaller the population in need is, once things aren't lopsided to benefit the super rich.
Those who CAN'T do for themselves can continue to look to the charities, who have always championed them and contributed most to their relief with money, groceries, shelter, and support.
Add to that all the working poor who may work two or three jobs and still not earn enough to feed their families, thanks to the offshoring of millions of living wage jobs and then the banking crash that cost people their jobs, their healthcare, their life savings and pensions and home equity.
Name one civilized country that manages without a safety net for the most vulnerable of its citizens. You can't. And in countries where the government doesn't do that, we have groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood who step and provide whatever help the population needs, including setting up health clinics in every town. If someone's family is hungry, they show up with food. If your roof falls in, they have a crew there the next day to fix it.
Now, we can all pay reasonable taxes to make sure our vulnerable don't suffer the way people suffer in third world countries, or we can allow this to become a third world banana republican with perhaps dangerous groups providing needed assistance.
Most folks would be able to tell that the word itself is made up of: firstly, the word "social" which in ordinary talk means like: living together in communities: living together in organized groups, and "ism" is a tail of words that implies a system or principle of the subject word. So, Social - ism is, in true word interpretation, is a system or principle of living together in communities or organized groups....
The Constitution added the idea that such "living together" would involve folks paying taxes and sharing in the "general welfare" (Article 1, Section 8) of the "organized groups".
The majority of comments appear to recognize that to the extent that taxes are collected and shared for the "general welfare" (Constitution), folks in practice, work according to the ordinary language of social organization, or, if you like, "ism". Not really that bad at all.
If the semantics of the word still carries a brain block, then it is time that folks invent a new word that recognizes and accepts the fact that government is the instrument by which “living together in organized groups’ provides a civilized society because the “general” welfare of all folks is the major mandate of the government. The free market is a very effective but regulated tool of efficient government. Government is not the tool of unfettered free markets. Time to upgrade the semantics.
Every time us Canadians here GOP bad mouth our healthcare, society, etc because were socialistic in nature we feel sorry for our neighbours.
Canada (as a socialist country) and by the way we have a "conservative leader" is doing just fine. We have universal healthcare (everyone) from cradle to grave, strongest banks on the globe (regulations kept us from catastrophe) unlike the rest of the G20, strong academically (our kids can go to college or university here or internationally if they want. Even Stephen Hawkings is in Canada working on research. Why because we accept all nationalities, ideas, faith groups with a fairly "open immigration policy over the past 50 years." One party is holding the US back from its amazing potential. Join the rest of the G20 and become more "democratic, socialistic, liberals" in all your ways and all of your futures will be bright.
I know you hate it when people don't get along and would prefer that all of us just get along rather than play the 99% or 47% game. BUT YOU ARE WRONG. This isn't a game. We need to recognize when we're the sheep and the wolves are out to eat. Putting your head in the sand is not the solution my friend. WAKE UP!