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	Why let the rich hoard all the Toys? by Nicholas D. Kristof New York Times   Imagine a kindergarten with 100 students, lavishly supplied with books, crayons and toys.   Yet you gasp: one avaricious little boy is jealously guarding a mountain of toys for himself. A handful of other children are quietly playing with a few toys each, while 90 of the children are looking on forlornly — empty-handed.   The one greedy boy has hoarded more toys than all those 90 children put together!   “What’s going on?” you ask. “Let’s learn to share! One child shouldn’t hog everything for himself!”   The greedy little boy looks at you, indignant. “Do you believe in redistribution?” he asks suspiciously, his lips curling in contempt. “I don’t want to share. This is America!”   And then he summons his private security firm and has you dragged off the premises. Well, maybe not, but you get the point.   That kindergarten distribution is precisely what America looks like. Our wealth has become so skewed that the top 1 percent possesses a greater collective worth than the entire bottom 90 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.   This inequality is a central challenge for the United States today and should be getting far more attention in this presidential campaign. A few snapshots:   • The six heirs of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, own as much wealth as the bottom 100 million Americans.   • In 2010, 93 percent of the gain in national income went to the top 1 percent.   • America’s Gini coefficient, the classic measure of inequality, set a modern record last month — the highest since the Great Depression.   This dismal ground is explored in an important and smart new book, “The Price of Inequality,” by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. It’s a searing read.   “We are paying a high price for our inequality — an economic system that is less stable and less efficient, with less growth,” Stiglitz warns.   The problem is not that the rich are venal or immoral, and I buy into the Chinese mantra of the reform era: “To get rich is glorious.” But today’s level of inequality is unusual by American historical and global standards alike, and, as Stiglitz notes, evidence is mounting that inequality at the levels we’ve reached stifles growth and employment.   As I see it, the best way to create a more equitable society wouldn’t be Robin Hood-style redistribution, but a focus on inner-city and rural education — including early childhood programs — and job training. That approach would expand opportunity, even up the starting line, and chip away at cycles of poverty. If the cost means forcing tycoons to pay modestly higher taxes, so be it. The economy wouldn’t suffer.   After all, the United States enjoyed strong growth in the 1950s when we were a more egalitarian country, even though the top income tax rate in that decade was always more than 90 percent.   Indeed, it was only in 1987 that the top income tax rate dropped below 50 percent in the United States. So the 15 percent rate that some tycoons pay because of the carried interest loophole is a recent, er, entitlement.   On this issue, Americans seem by intuition to be flaming lefties. A study published last year by scholars from Harvard Business School and Duke University asked Americans which country they would rather live in — one with America’s wealth distribution or one with Sweden’s. But they weren’t labeled Sweden and America. It turned out that more than 90 percent of Americans preferred to live in a country with the Swedish distribution.   Perhaps nothing gets done because, in polls, Americans hugely underestimate the level of inequality here. Not only do we aspire to live in Sweden, but we think we already do.   It’s also troubling that a considerable share of wealth today comes from the plutocratic version of welfare.   Mitt Romney, for example, became rich in private equity, as did many barons of finance. They’re smart, entrepreneurial and hard-working business executives. But private equity exists largely because of tax advantages for corporate debt that amount to a huge subsidy.   Likewise, the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington estimates that four major tax breaks that encourage excessive corporate pay cost taxpayers $14.4 billion last year. And 26 chief executives received more in pay last year than their companies paid in total federal corporate income taxes.   Often the best route to wealth isn’t competing in the marketplace but lobbying Congress for a tax break. That’s why there are six lobbyists for every member of Congress from the health care industry alone.   All this inequity would be unconscionable if it unfolded in a kindergarten. It should be more offensive when it defines our nation from womb to tomb. Visit the related web page
	The truth about Conservatism by Linda McQuaig, Laura Flanders Grit TV   Ironically, in the now-famous video that seems likely to define his political career, it could be said that Mitt Romney was speaking truth to power.   Of course, “speaking truth to power” is a phrase normally used to describe courageous souls who risk their own hides to take a principled stand challenging those in power — not exactly what Mitt was doing.   Rather, assuming he was speaking privately to like-minded multi-millionaires, the Republican presidential candidate told the $50,000-a-platers what they wanted to hear: that he hasn’t any intention of helping the 47 per cent of Americans too poor to pay income tax. “My job is not to worry about those people.”   With this truthfulness caught on tape he has exposed the cynicism and greed that lies at the heart of what is now called “conservatism” that he may have inadvertently begun its undoing.   Once upon a time, “conservative” could be used to describe people — Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Stanfield, Joe Clark — who had a vision of society in which a privileged elite dominated but also had a responsibility to less fortunate citizens and to the broader “public good.”   But about 30 years ago, a new breed of “conservative” slithered onto the political scene. Stealing the moniker of conservatism, this new breed embraced the inequality of traditional conservatism (driving it skyward) while unburdening itself of the responsibility for others and the public good.   This new breed has proved itself to be self-centered, greedy and indifferent to the public good.   John Kenneth Galbraith cut to the essence when he described this “modern” conservative as engaged in “the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”   Vast sums have been spent on pricey think-tanks to develop pseudo-sophisticated theories about how the benefits of modern conservatism will “trickle down,” in the hopes the public won’t notice the benefits are actually gushing up.   There never was intellectual honesty or coherence to modern conservatism, which is why Romney could cast half of Americans as freeloaders for failing to pay tax while using the Cayman Islands for his own massive tax avoidance schemes — the full details of which remain better hidden than the torsos of the Royal Family.   Modern conservatism — or neo-conservatism — has infected Canada too, coming to fruition under the Harper majority government, which has intervened aggressively on the side of corporations against working people, and dismantled vital environmental protections in order to enrich energy mega-corporations.   But could the Romney video finally allow the public to grasp the depth of cynicism not just in Romney but in the wealthy donors, who make up the backbone of the conservative movement? Despite their vastly privileged lives, they seem resentful of the freeloading lower orders, some of whom can be seen on film rushing about in white gloves dutifully serving the wealth creators.   Such pull-back-the-curtains moments are rare. Another intriguing one came to light recently in the discovery of letters written by multi-billionaire Charles Koch in 1973 when he was trying to lure Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian guru of modern conservative economics, to accept a post at a Koch think-tank in California.   Koch, a key funder of the Tea Party and Romney’s campaign (with a pledge to spend $400 million defeating Obama), has been obsessed for decades with dismantling the U.S. Social Security system — America’s central social program — and has been instrumental in getting it on the Republican hit list.   Yet in letters (recently reported in The Nation), Koch eagerly informs Hayek that he’ll qualify for Social Security and related medicare benefits, so the medical costs connected to his gall bladder surgery will be covered.   Koch even sends Hayek a government pamphlet explaining how to apply for Social Security benefits — benefits that Koch has worked tirelessly to deny to millions of ordinary (freeloading) Americans.   It’s time we stopped treating modern conservatives as proponents of a legitimate political philosophy and started treating them as greedy profiteers who — at least until now — have pulled off the biggest heist in modern times.   Nov 2012   Austerity: A Violation of Human Rights, by Laura Flanders.   A noble little park opened in New York City last month: Four Freedoms Park. In recognition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address to Congress in 1941, “the Four Freedoms” are core requirements for humane political and economic existence:   “For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy,” said Roosevelt. “The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all. The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.”   The “four freedoms” FDR named (which would eventually be incorporated into what became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), were freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The last of those FDR defined as “a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.”   Human rights standards aren’t only for international actors, says economist Radhika Balakrishnan. We could do with some good human rights lawyers in the budget debate in Washington. Balakrishnan is the director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University. She is also co-editor of Economic Policy and Human Rights: Holding Governments to Account.   “Looking at the election we have just been through, if we had been looking at this from a human rights lens, every candidate would have to have spoken about poverty,” Balakrishnan explained, because governments have obligations to the most vulnerable in the society.   The United States hasn’t ratified many international human rights accords, but it has signed some. Under those, humans have rights and governments have duties, among those the duty to use the “maximum available resources” to realize the basic human rights of its people.   “All of these discussions that are taking place as ‘you’re for the rich or you’re for the poor’ can be addressed in a very different way,” reflects Balakrishnan.   Austerity as a human rights violation? It certainly puts a different angle on things. We spoke as the Center was about to kick off its 16 Days Campaign, a concentrated season of activism on violence against women. http://cwgl.rutgers.edu/   To watch my conversation with Professor Balakrishnan in full and to find out why the Federal Reserve needs human rights observers, watch this.   http://blip.tv/grittv/radhika-balakrishnan-austerity-is-a-human-rights-violation-6445432
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