Pension battle becomes new front in the class war
- From: alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Alan)
- Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 17:44 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=E3246D18-92CD-2B
32-40EB5FD680BED6E6
Slowly but surely, pension issues have become the new front in the class war
being waged on ordinary Americans. And what is particularly disturbing is
politicians and media pundits who constantly portray those who have managed to
secure decent pensions as greedy and evil. Big Money interests want us to
believe that workers who earn a decent pension are evil - as if retirement
security is something we shouldn't all aspire to. We saw this during the New
York City transit strike, where the political Establishment tried to pit the
working class against itself and deflect attention from the real culprits,
essentially saying the transit workers were evil for having banded together to
secure decent wages/pensions, and that they should just accept economic
persecution like other workers are forced to accept. And we are now seeing it
again in the debate over state public pensions.
In this USA Today story about how politicians have refused to adequately fund
public pension commitments, Alaska Republican state representative Bert Stedman
calls for massive cuts to state worker pensions, claiming "If we don't act now,
we're going to have social conflict in the future between the haves and the
have-nots ? those with government pensions and those without." That's exactly
the frame the right-wing wants us to see these issues in: the supposedly evil
"haves" are those workers who secure a decent retirement, and they are the ones
supposedly harming the "have-nots." Not surprisingly, this exact frame is
parroted on Fox News, most recently with Neil Cavuto hosting a show shamelessly
regurgitating the concept that workers with decent retirement benefits are evil.
Because let's be clear - when conservatives berate so-called "class warfare"
they are berating any effort by the middle class to better itself, but are fully
in support of having the economic elite wage a class war on everyone else, or
using their power to manufacture a class war between the poor and the middle
class.
But really, what a lie it all is. Beyond the fact that this line of reasoning on
pensions actually asks us to treat pension cuts as a virtue and secure
retirement as evil, there are the actual economic realities of what's actually
going on. For instance, one paragraph before the Alaska Republican made his
ridiculous comment, USA Today noted that "average annual benefits for retired
state and local workers grew 37% to $19,875 from 2000 to 2004." That's right -
we're actually expected to believe there is a crisis because between 2000 and
2004 the average state/local workers' annual pension grew from $14,507 (just
above the poverty line) to $19,875. Worse, we're expected to believe that these
people earning less than $20,000 a year in their retirement are the evil "haves"
who are hurting the have-nots. And we're led to believe that state governments
who made these pension promises can't possibly be asked to make good on them
because it would cost too much - even as states continue to give away hundreds
of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to already-wealthy multinational
corporations (see Wal-Mart and Goldman Sachs for two good examples).
Of course, we're not expected to actually look at the real "haves" who are
destroying this country - the executives who have run their companies into the
ground, slashed workers wages and benefits, all while pocketing massive bonuses
for themselves. Just look at yesterday's New York Times story about United
Airlines. As the company has secured $4 billion in wage/benefit cuts from
workers, 400 of its top executives who ran the company into bankruptcy are
giving themselves roughly $500 million in bonuses. Same thing with Delphi - as
the company demands massive wage/benefit cuts, the Wall Street Journal notes
executives who ran the company into bankruptcy have crafted a plan to give
themselves "as much as 10% of the restructured company and $90 million in
bonuses."
These are the real "haves" who are destroying this country - not government
workers who earn, on average, less than $20,000 in annual retirement benefits.
These are the real "haves" who are being allowed to wage a merciless class war
on ordinary Americans. And every time you hear a politician blame ordinary
citizens for the country's economic decline remember that what they are really
doing is trying to deflect attention from the behavior of their Big Money
campaign donors who are the real cause of our problems.
http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=month&month=1&year=2006
Alan
http://unitedeuropeanworkersunion.blogspot.com/
http://theoriginalfirebird.blogspot.com/
http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/
http://lordcerneabbas.blogspot.com/
http://veloceraptor.blogspot.com/
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
.
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