“The Politics Of Greed”: It Is Really Important That We Get This One Right
In his op-ed titled Here’s What We Want, Bernie Sanders wrote this:
What do we want? We want an economy that is not based on uncontrollable greed, monopolistic practices and illegal behavior.
Throughout the primary, Sanders has talked about the need to eliminate greed — especially the kind exhibited by Wall Street. That is a sentiment that is embraced by all liberals — especially in an era when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee espouses exactly the opposite.
But the question becomes: what is the role of politics (or government) when it comes to eliminating greed? It is the same question we would ask Christian conservatives who want to eliminate what they consider to be sexual immorality. And frankly, it is similar to questions about how we eliminate things like racism, sexism and homophobia. These are questions about the overlap of politics and morality with which we all must grapple.
At one point during the primary, Hillary Clinton was challenged by members of the Black Lives Matter movement. She said something that goes to the heart of this question.
Look, I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not gonna change every heart. You’re not. But at the end of the day, we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own God-given potential: to live safely without fear of violence in their own communities, to have a decent school, to have a decent house, to have a decent future.
It is really important that we get this one right. Just as we don’t want a government that tells us who we can/can’t have sex with, we need to realize that we can’t have a government that calibrates how greedy one is allowed to be. I don’t think that is what Sanders was suggesting. He went on to say this:
We want an economy that protects the human needs and dignity of all people — children, the elderly, the sick, working people and the poor. We want an economic and political system that works for all of us, not one in which almost all new wealth and power rests with a handful of billionaire families.
That echoes what Clinton said about racism. What we want from government is a focus on lifting up those who are affected by things like greed and racism — in other words, to level the playing field.
Personally, I believe that greed — like racism and sexism — are learned. Short of informational campaigns that attempt to educate the public, we can’t legislate a change of hearts. What we CAN do is create laws that legislate against the abuses that stem from greed — like fraud and the monopolization of our economy — just as we created laws to combat segregation and discrimination. Otherwise, it is up to movements like Moral Mondays to organize people around their shared values.
By: Nancy Letourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 24, 2016
“It’s All About Bucks,The Rest is Conversation”: Mitt Romney And ‘Envy’ Versus ‘Greed’
The 2012 presidential race is shaping up as a battle not just between candidates, but over which of the Seven Deadly Sins is most offensive to voters.
On the one side, we have envy, which GOP front-runner former Gov. Mitt Romney identified as a distasteful by-product of income inequality—or, Republicans argue, the “class warfare” provoked by Democrats. The United States “already has a leader who divides us by the bitter politics of envy,” Romney said after winning the New Hampshire primary. The line was obviously meant to undermine Obama’s 2008 pledge to bring people together, as well as to cast restless middle-class and poor people as possessing un-mannerly envy.
On the other side, however, we have greed, and that is a Deadly Sin that may haunt the eventual Republican nominee. The Occupy Wall Street movement may be dismissed (unfairly) by some as a bunch of Starbucks-sucking, whiny kids who won’t look for jobs, but it is undeniably true that a broad swath of Americans is getting more than a little resentful at the fact that the very wealthy have come through the recession quite profitably, while the low-and-middle income workers are still struggling. Many of those who managed to keep their jobs are working at lower pay and reduced benefits, further aggravating the situation.
According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, about two-thirds of the public now believes there are strong conflicts between the rich and poor. The percentage has grown by 19 points since 2009, suggesting that voters are growing far more aware of the economic division as the election approaches. The Pew report notes, even more notably:
…in the public’s evaluations of divisions within American society, conflicts between rich and poor now rank ahead of three other potential sources of group tension — between immigrants and the native born; between blacks and whites; and between young and old. Back in 2009, more survey respondents said there were strong conflicts between immigrants and the native born than said the same about the rich and the poor.
How much political capital can a candidate gain by dismissing the unemployed malcontents as immorally envious? It’s a risk, especially this year.
We all feel envious sometimes, and most of us are not proud of it (which is a good thing, since pride is another one of the Seven Deadly Sins). But that sort of envy comes from feeling ungraciously jealous when a friend gets a promotion or a new car or a charming boyfriend. Feeling resentful of Wall Street investors and bankers who made terrible economic decisions that affected the entire national economy—then continued to be extremely well compensated despite the failures—is not jealousy. It’s a reaction to what many Americans see as a basic question of fairness.
Americans are aspirational; this is why even those who will never in their lives amass $1 million still oppose the estate tax. And there is a strong sense in this country, among liberals and conservatives alike, that enterprise and creativity should be rewarded, financially and otherwise. What gets missed in the silly verbal jousting, in which President Obama has been declared a “socialist” and enemy of free enterprise, is that Wall Street itself wasn’t willing to submit to the uncertainty of capitalism. They wanted to privatize the profits. But they wanted to socialize the risk. And it was 401K holders and middle-class workers who bore the brunt of that bad risk.
There was a time when Americans could chuckle good-naturedly at the line in the movie Wall Street that “Greed is good,” and even agree with it, somewhat. But that was when envy was about who had the bigger car. The enviers now are the ones who have no health insurance and are losing their houses to foreclosure. And they vote.
Insurance Companies: Guarding Health Is Not Their Business, But It Is Ours
If for one moment anyone has the notion that for-profit health insurance companies are in the business of guarding the health (or wealth) of policyholders, that notion ought to be quickly dismissed in favor of the truth. For-profit health insurance giants guard profits.
I arrived outside the WellPoint annual shareholders meeting in a hotel in Indianapolis yesterday to be greeted by more guards (and some armed) than I have seen surrounding President Obama at times. Apparently just the prospect of having some of the legal shareholders question the business practices and ethics of the WellPoint board and CEO Angela Braly was very scary for the company and its elite leaders.
Some of the shareholders have in recent years put forward a resolution supporting WellPoint’s return to its non-profit roots. After last year’s meeting, the resolution earned 9.6 percent or 30,000,000 shareholder votes. The current leadership doesn’t like that nor do they like the efforts of the shareholders who keep challenging them.
One shareholder asked Ms. Braly at yesterday’s tightly controlled and guarded meeting, as a sort of speakers’ “shot clock” counted down her speaking time, “Tell me, Ms. Braly, could you please explain what you do that warrants a salary ($13.5 million annually) that is more than 375 public school teachers in Indiana earn?” Braly’s answer was a classic. No shot-clock running for the CEO as she explained that the board sets her compensation and it has to be competitive with the other comparable giants in the insurance industry. It is a breathtaking demonstration of greed and hubris.
I wondered how we have allowed this country to amble onward to the point where 1,275 Americans who carry health insurance go bankrupt every single day (if the courts stayed open seven days a week) while an insurance company CEO like Angela Braly pockets $140,000 for her day’s salary. Every day.
That’s quite a lot of money that doesn’t go to healthcare. That’s quite a lot of money for one person to earn in one day. That may be why such scary guards are needed outside WellPoint shareholder meetings – they wouldn’t want CEO Braly to have to mix it up with any of the policyholders or others who might question too directly what value the for-profit health insurance industry adds to the U.S. healthcare system. I also wondered how much money those guards cost. And the shot clocks to keep pesky questions to a minimum? And how about the pro-Angela and pro-profit softball questions planted in the room?
WellPoint, like the other major insurance giants, can claim the best profits ever this year. Times are good at the top. Things are not so good for millions of Americans who want for decent healthcare within a system that provides a progressively financed, single standard of high quality care. Medicare for all would be nice. The American Health Security Act of 2011, S915/HR1200 as offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-WA, provides a model for moving forward. Public financing (yes, a single payer system) coupled with public and private delivery (not a single provider). No insurance giants paying huge board compensations and CEO salaries. No armed guards protecting the profit.
Outside the City Market in Indianapolis, in the rain and with no need for guards, the advocates of healthcare sanity gathered – and I was thrilled to be among the Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan. We affirmed our commitment to the work ahead and to one another. We sang. We are shareholders in a society that values more than profit – we value behaving justly and humanely, and we’d like a healthcare system that reflects that.
Forgive my repetition of the theme, but health insurance is not healthcare. Health insurance is a financial product. Health insurance is a financial product sold to protect health and wealth which may well do neither. Health insurance is a defective financial product for millions of people who made what we felt were responsible decisions about protecting ourselves and our families from financial or health disaster with health insurance products that have loopholes and flaws big enough to leave thousands dead every year and hundreds of thousands bankrupt.
I will never have the salary or earnings of insurance CEOs like WellPoint’s Angela Braly. That’s OK by me because I’ll also, I hope, never need guards to keep those I have harmed and those I would harm from questioning me about why. But, my life and the lives of my loved ones, my neighbors and my friends are surely as valuable in terms of access to healthcare in America in 2011. The day will come.
By: Donna Smith, CommonDreams.org, May 18, 2011
The Republican “Need for Greed” Meets the Fockers
The bet was audacious from the beginning, and given the miserable, low-down tenor of contemporary politics, not unfathomable: Could you divide the country between greedy geezers and everyone else as a way to radically alter the social contract?
But in order for the Republican plan to turn Medicare, one of most popular government programs in history, into a much-diminished voucher system, the greed card had to work.
The plan’s architect, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, drew a line in the actuarial sand: Anyone born before 1957 would not be affected. They could enjoy the single-payer, socialized medical care program that has allowed millions of people to live extended lives of dignity and decent health care.
And their kids and grandkids? Sorry, they would have to take their little voucher and pay some private insurer nearly twice as much as a senior pays for basic government coverage today. In essence, Republicans would break up the population between an I’ve Got Mine segment and The Left Behinds.
Again, not a bad political calculation. Altruism is a squishy notion, hard to sustain in an election. Ryan himself has made a naked play for greed in defending the plan. “Seniors, as soon as they realize this doesn’t affect them, they are not so opposed,” he has said.
Well, the early verdict is in, and it looks as though the better angels have prevailed: seniors are opposed. Republicans: Meet the Fockers. Already, there is considerable anxiety — and some guilt — among older folks about leaving their children worse off financially than they are. To burden them with a much costlier, privatized elderly health insurance program is a lead weight for the golden years.
This plan is toast. Newt Gingrich is in deep trouble with the Republican base for stating the obvious on Sunday, when he called the signature Medicare proposal of his party “right-wing social engineering.” But that’s exactly what it is: a blueprint for downward mobility.
Look at the special Congressional election of next Tuesday. What was supposed to be a shoo-in for Republicans in a very safe district of upstate New York is now a tossup. For that, you can blame the Medicare radicals now running the House.
And a raft of recent polls show that seniors, who voted overwhelmingly Republican in the 2010 elections, are retreating in droves. Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin says the Ryan plan is a “watershed event,” putting older voters in play for next year’s presidential election.
Beyond the political calculations, all of this is encouraging news because it shows that people are starting to think much harder about what kind of country they want to live in. Give the Republicans credit for honesty and showing their true colors. And their plan is at least a starting point compared with those Tea Party political illiterates who waved signs urging government to keep its hands off their government health care.
When the House of Representatives voted to end Medicare as we know it last month, it was sold as a way to save the program. Medicare now covers 47.5 million Americans, but it won’t have sufficient funds to pay full benefits by 2024, according to the most recent trustee report. Something has to be done.
Many Republicans want to kill it. They hate Medicare because it represents everything they are philosophically opposed to: a government-run program that works and is popular across the political board. It’s tough to shout about the dangers of universal health care when the two greatest protectors (if not creators) of the elderly middle class are those pillars of 20th-century progressive change, Social Security and Medicare.
For next year’s election, all but a handful of Republicans in the House are stuck with the Scarlet Letter of the Ryan Plan on their record. Soon, there will be a similar vote in the Senate. It will not pass, but it will show which side of the argument politicians are on.
There is a very simple way to make Medicare whole through the end of this century, far less complicated, and more of a bargain in the long run than the bizarre Ryan plan. Raise taxes. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but most American pay less taxes now than anytime in the last 50 years, according to a number of measurements. And a majority of the public now seems willing to pay a little extra (or force somebody else to pay a little extra) to keep a good thing going. Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush raised taxes, by the way.
Given a choice between self-interest and the greater good, voters will usually watch out for themselves — unless that greater good is their own family. For Republicans intent on killing Medicare, it was a monumental miscalculation to miss that logical leap.
By: Timothy Egan, Opinion Writer, The New York Times, May 17, 2011
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