It doesn’t astound me that people are angry and bitter. What astounds me is that somehow the goodness of most people keeps them from taking to the streets in mass rioting. To wit:
A whole bunch of very powerful and wealthy financiers create an economic disaster and who suffers?
Citigroup, caught in the midst of the housing slowdown and tight credit market, reported a $5.1 billion loss on Friday and announced that it would cut 9,000 more jobs in the next 12 months.
The layoffs are in addition to the 4,200 announced in January, the bank said during its conference call. The company has more than 300,000 employees worldwide.
The bank’s first-quarter results reflected more than $16.9 billion in write-offs and additional loan loss reserves as Vikram S. Pandit embarked on a plan to reshape the company and clean up the mortgage mess in his first three months as chief executive.
I’m assuming that the leaders of Citigroup, including Robert Rubin (who, inexplicably was cited by Sen. Clinton as a person who should help us clean up the mess he helped create), are not going to be laid off. Actually, Mr. Pankit’s compensation in 2007, according to recent numbers compiled by The New York Times, was more than $3.1 million (and he’s a pauper in the CEO ranks–but that’s another story).
Or if you are a person willing to work hard just to make sure your family can survive–but, sorry, the policymakers and financiers have made a total mess of the economy–so there is no work for you:
Throughout the country, businesses grappling with declining fortunes are cutting hours for those on their payrolls. Self-employed people are suffering a drop in demand for their services, like music lessons, catering and management consulting. Growing numbers of people are settling for part-time work out of a failure to secure a full-time position.
The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy.
While official unemployment has risen only modestly, to 5.1 percent, the reduction of wages and working hours for those still employed has become a primary cause of distress, pushing many more Americans into a downward spiral, economists say.
Moreover, this slippage is a critical indicator that the nation may well be on the verge of a recession, if not already in one.
Is that a reason to be angry, furious and, yes, bitter?
And if you are one of the sea of people who are starving in the world while CEOs and hedge fund leaders rake in obscene money and politicians cater to and see themselves as part of the elite in one long, endless let-them-eat-cake celebration, wouldn’t you be angry, bitter and ready to revolt?
Haiti’s hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriska’s children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, "They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry."
That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
And…
"Why are these riots happening?" asked Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for donations. "The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you’re hungry you get angry quicker."
Trying to suppress anger and pretend like people who are bitter are simply malcontents is the oldest game in the book. I recall that during the debate over the 1993 budget, one senator after another rose to stick up for the benighted people they saw being unfairly treated. "I do not know how long we can continue that kind of class warfare," fretted Bob Dole, the Senate’s majority leader at the time.
Well, most people out in the street would have nodded their heads because we don’t want to hurt all those little people, do we? The problem: Dole was bemoaning those folks making more than $250,000 per year whose tax rate would go up to a rate still lower than at any time in the past sixty years under a proposed plan to have a slightly more progressive taxation system.
Douse the flames of anger, fury, discontent and bitterness–otherwise you’ll have a revolution on your hands.
