This is the definition of perversion (the dictionary tells us that something perverted is "deviating from what is considered right or acceptable; wrong , improper, etc. or corrupt, wicked, etc."). The real unemployment rate is around 16 percent, millions of people are struggling partly because of the behavior of the people running the financial system, people we bailed out with our tax money but, no matter, Goldman Sachs is sitting pretty:
Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money, will report blowout profits from trading on Tuesday.
Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank’s rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation’s financial industry was shaken to its foundations.
That is perversion.
48 million Americans do not have health care and millions more pay immoral prices for inadequate health care and yet most of the political leaders of the country do not have the spine to eliminate the immoral health insurance industry and put in place a single-payer health care system. Instead, we’re left to argue about whether the richest people should pay a surtax to underwrite a part of the costs of the inadequate system being proposed. Yes, the wealthy should be paying more in dues but it that is money better used for other needs.
That is perversion.
And, indeed, what would a fairer share of payment of dues go for? How about at the state level where California is in a deep hole. How did that happen? Well, part of the whole is due to huge tax breaks going to big corporations:
The business tax cuts enacted as part of the September 2008 and February 2009 budget agreements will cost the state $8.7
billion in lost revenues between 2008-09 and 2015-16 after taking into account the revenue gain from the suspension of net
operating loss deductions and limits on tax credit usage imposed in the September agreement…The massive, permanent tax cuts enacted as part of recent budget agreements will exacerbate California’s persistent budget troubles, requiring deeper cuts in public services or potentially larger tax increases for California’s families to make up for lost revenues.
That is perversion.
It’s pretty easy to see where the problems are–and where the solutions are if we want to take on the elephants in the room: the massive transfer of wealth into the hands of a few and the unwillingness of our political leaders to challenge the powerful economic interests who are destroying our livelihoods and our communities.
