Re: [Marxism] Millionaire mullahs

[Rod Holt <rholt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't believe a word of it. The article is trash and does not 
represent the real world. Period.

Notice please the words of the second paragraph, "[the CPI] ... 
overstates annual inflation by about 1 percentage point." Really? Why 
don't you check "The State of Working America" published by the Economic 
Policy Institute? They publish these books every 2 years or so. Also 
check the Dept. of Commerce publication "Statistical Abstract of the 
United States." It comes out every year and it's available on line. And 
if you think that the CPI overstates the impact of inflation, check with 
anyone who is on Social Security.

The author is a rotten propagandist. He says, "There is an underclass of 
people who are born into poverty and live their whole lives that way, 
but it's much smaller than you might think. For most poor people, 
poverty is temporary." If you believe that, then "most people" are white 
college students. And remember what Isaac Newton said: What goes up must 
come down. What are the chances of dropping into poverty from the 
$100,000 per year group? Some retire, some die, some have just lost 
their jobs as stock brokers. Tut, tut.

Why doesn't the author give us a source of the U.S.Treasury report he 
sumarizes? I'd like to look at this select group of 14,351. He says, 
"Heavily represented in the bottom quintile are young people who have 
just graduated from high school or college and are living on their own." 
And also most -the majority-highschool graduates live at home because 
they're looking for a job. Check the Stat.Abstract to see the trend of 
more and more "retirees" working, more and more unemployed youth, more 
and more workers with only part time work, more and more college kids 
working part time (or full time) because their parents can't afford to 
send them (an unusual case 50 years ago). And a greater than ever 
percentage of jobs are in the "porly paid service industries," as every 
honest economist notes.

And the Hoover Institution is a right wing foundation if there ever was one.
      --rod
Sayan Bhattacharyya wrote:

> On 8/12/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > We have to acknowledge that those who
> > say things like Nader can't easily get on ballots here, and American
> > voters don't vote for them either when they do.  Iran is very
> > different from the USA, or rather the USA is very different from much
> > of the rest of the world.
>
>
> The following might explain why this is so:
>
> "A 1992 study done by the U.S. Treasury confirmed [..] [that] [a]fter
> tracking before-tax income for 14,351 taxpayers between 1979 and 1988,
> the Treasury economists found that of the taxpayers in the bottom
> quintile in 1979, only 14.2 percent (or one in seven) were still there
> in 1988. Meanwhile, 20.7 percent had moved to the next higher fifth,
> 25 percent to the middle fifth, 25.3 percent to the second-highest
> fifth, and 14.7 percent to the highest fifth.
>
> "Thus, a taxpayer in the lowest bracket in 1979 was about as likely to
> be in the highest fifth nine years later as to have stayed in the
> lowest fifth."
>
>  -- <http://www.hooverdigest.org/981/henderson1.html>
>
> If this is true, it might explain why voters in the USA don't vote for
> socialist candidates. Given these circumstances, what argument should
> be advanced to US workers to win them to socialism? (Of course, this
> is 2006, not 1992, and things have probably gotten a lot worse now.)
>
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