to Rjastrebski@peoplepc.com
Scarpia accurately describes the nature of the corrupt inhumane sadistic
tyrrants who are forcing their will on the world.
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Minnesota who was assasinated before the 2002
election by the conservative white trash that rules
this country so they could take control of the
senate and ram their agenda down the throats of
the american people
Missouri who was assasinated right
before the 2000 election on behalf of
criminal conservatives who have taken
over our government in order to pass
legislation on behalf of criminals in the
energy and healthcare industries and
force their ideology on the world. Their
agenda is to have an income distribution
like Latin America. Watch the movie
Seven Days in May.
defrauded the government billions of dollars via
Tenet Healthcare. I meant to say HCA
Healthcare. See article below. After pulling off
such a successful scam the senate criminals
decided he was worthy to be their fearless leader.
the article reads as follows," Policy as well as culture plays roles in determining the type of inovation a
society produces. For much of the last century for example, many of the most important innovations in
medicine occured in Europe, where pharmaceudical companies grew naturally from a well established chemical
industry. Now the vast bulk of medical inovation occurs in the US. That is because the pharma industry has
shifted from innovation based on chemistry to that based on biology. But just as important,the drug industry
has been finanially incentivised to produce medicines for the US market where they have been far freer to
set pricing free from government interference......Yet Mr. Nagao thinks that , in the US as well as in
Japan, curiousity and the human need to discover are far bigger motivating forces than money..
In Cuba, several world class discoveries in vaccine technology have been made with little evidence that
they have made their inventors rich.
On one occasion at least the motivating force was neither money nor social harmony but a direct order
from Fidel Castro.
The workings of innovation, apparently, are just as mysterious as the discoveries themselves."
Why do I cite this passage. Because the drugs co say they need to rob the american people in order to
innovate. If Wagoner at GM had any guts he would push for national healthcare with cost controls in order to
take most of the profits out of healthcare so american industry could compete. Rather than confront the
healthcare criminals this country puts them in charge of the senate and instead opts to cut 25,000 workers
at GM and benefits. Thats because we have a currurt ruling class afraid to take a stand against the
healthcare criminals for the benefit of the people.
Texas Pacific was stealing French technology(probably with CIA backing). Why do the French dislike
americans?
Considering the performance of the stock market since bush's election one would think conservatives would
want his head.
Its been downnhill all the way for European growth rates since the passage of the Lisbon Agenda in 2000.
Now statistics like that should mean something to these conservative crackpots. It means to them its time
to fuck things up even more with more liberalization. Italy should have been raising taxes on the wealthy and
increasing spending on the poor to increase demand in the economy and cut their deficit. The tax cuts
Berlosconi gave the rich went right down the drain. The poor spend their money right away and the economy
gets a direct stimulous. And its the humane thing to do. Instead conservatives cut aid to the long term
unemployed so they starve at the same time they ship jobs to China and make labor markets more flexible.
The US forced Germany to cut benefits for the long term unemployed against the wishes of almost all
Germans. Every change the conservative crackpots have forced on Germany since they went into recession in
1995 has been against the wishes of almost all Germans. Do these conservative assholes ever question
themselves. At least Bush's father finally came out and called Reaganomics vodoo economics. I'd have Robert
Kuttner tell you what to do in Europe.
The Europeans taking action against Italy for their braking the EU rules will only make matters worse.
With regards to the tax brakes and the price gouging of the energy companies; where is my share of the
loot.
Privatizing French Telecom=Dumb. Just raise taxes on the wealthy and increase spending to create jobs for
the unemployed. The EU wants to make it harder for the French to help ailing companies. And they wonder
why they voted against the EU. The EU wants to cap the amount of money EU countries can pump into their
poorer regions. In other words they are telling the Germany government not to spend money in parts of east
germany where there is 25% unemployment. The Government in Brussels is a joke. I'd blow it up. I suppose
I differ with Robert Kuttner on subsidizing ailing industries. I think every country has a right to subsidize
one national industry for most products. (The US Picking up the bension benefits of United is like bailing it
out.) And then you just manage trade. America would never buy Airbus even if cheaper. It would buy from
the US own airplane manufacturer, Boeing. And Europe would buy Airbus, even if Boeing was cheaper. After
privatizations in countries like Russia and Mexico you now have private price gouging monopolies with no
competition. Alitalias recent bailout proves they havn't lost their minds.
I think GM should buy that engine from VW that goes 100km on 3 litre of gas and put it in one of their
SUVs and ask the oil co to pay for it.
The criminal who fixed the vote in Florida for Bush is running for the senate. She should be tried for
treason. Instead she will be a republican senator. The only thing these criminals know how to do is reward
special interests and criminals. Not one thing for the benefit of the people.
I think Bush should put preasure on Bolivia to nationalize their energy industry. These energy companies
should be shut down if they can't do business fairly.
"The Great Depression proved capitalism doesn't work" Noem Chomsky
Yesterday our conservative masters had the French Socialist party have a sham vote that expelled anyone
that supported the "No" vote on the EU Constitution evicted from the party. So thats how the parasites get
these leftist parties full of conservative crackpots. It's so pathetic it's funny.
Lonestar has gotten a license to start banking in Germany. Now Lonestar will start collecting reparations
from Germany for the war.
Financial Times, p2, June 6
Fabius ousted as split widens within French Socialist Party
By Martin Arnold in Paris
.The split in France's opposition Socialist party,
deepened over the weekend when it purged its executive committee of the rebels who defied the party line
by campaigning for a No vote in the referendum on Europe's Constitution.
Laurent" Fabius, the former prime minister and unofficial leader of the No campaign, was on Saturday ousted
as deputy leader of the Socialists with a dozen of his supporters who campaigned against the treaty.
Their eviction from the party's leadership deepens the rift that has mixed ideological differences and
personal ambitions and divided the Socialists since December, when 59 per cent of its members voted to
back, the constitution.
Francois Hollande, party leader, has been severely: weakened by his failure to ] control the dissidents and
to read the changing mood, as I opinion shifted sharply] towards a 'No vote amid anxiety over the rise of'
liberal policies in Europe. '
, By ousting the rebels, Mr Hollande hoped to create "a homogenous leadership" ahead of a party congress
'brought forward by six months to mid-November; when it will. chose its candidate and manifesto for the
2007 presidential eleetions.
However, Mr Hollande's decision to put the eviction of the rebels to a ballot ". approved by 167 out of 307
votes was contested, by senior figures On both sides of the diVide, _
Henri' Emmanuelli, a Socialist MH who campaigned vigorously for a No,
said: "It is a dark day for the Socialist party. It is incomprehensible, at the moment the government has
"'become a sad spectacle, to see the leadership close 'in on itself, excluding those "who are in tune with
leftwing people."
Mr Fabius claims to represent the views of leftwing voters better, as 6O per cent
of them voted No in last month's referendum. He is widely expected to build' a base of support to mount; a
challenge for the leadership of the party in 'November.
But othens question whether Mr Fabius will be able to resolve' the ideologial dilemma facing the party. His
campaign relied on' an opportunistic rapprochement of the maintream Socialists with the extreme left - an
uneasy partnership that would' be difficult to bring to power.
The criminals got there man at the SEC and in the White House. Bush/Cheney's friends want the tax payers
to compensate them for all the hard work they have been doing blowing up refineries and raising prices. They
have had to work hard trying to find things to do with all those profits so they deserve more tax breaks to
build a refinery rather than blow them up.
I saw the latest star wars last night. Why are the political events in that movie parallell to the political
events of the day. Rumsfeld is Darth Vedar, Bush and Cheney and cronies are Seiths(spelling)
I have perfect confidence that our conservatives master will force policies on Europe that will throw them
into depression. They may already be on their way down. After forcing policies on SE Asia that impoverished
a billion people and on the former soviet union that impoverished 90% of their population what makes one
believe they won't hesitate for a moment to bankrupt Europe with out questioning their rightiousness. As
Colin Powell said when describing Bush and Rumsfeld, "they're fuckin crazies".
Berlusconi, the gangster running Italy, blamed Italy's depression on the Euro's high exchange rate and the
European Central Bank's monetary policy, not on the trickle down policies he's implimented in Italy. The value
of the Euro and the monetary policy of the EU hasn't helped but his trickle down policies are what put Italy
in a depression. I do believe that a great depression in Europe will benefit American tourists traveling in
Europe. An Italian Villa on the Italian Riviera will become more affordable. Europeans need to realize that
that is all that their US master are concerned about. The Italian welfare ministers plan to bring back the
lira is the first sane thing to come out of the gangsters administration. It may be that gangsters are only
good at managing a casino economy, not a real economy(but the need a real economy to feed off of). Trickle
down economics has as its objective the creation of a casino economy. The stock market is their favorite
casino and all conservative policies are designed to enrich those gambling on the stock market. Conservative
attempts to liberalize the EU is simply to make it into a casino economy; one giant Las Vegas. But when the
economy collapses no one has money to gamble. I liked the lira because the way it was denominated made me
feel rich. I would walk around with a million lira in my pocket. I would definitely bring it back.
Bush's nominee to take over at the SEC would warm the hearts of the criminals who ruled this country in
the 1920 leading up to the great depression. Herbert Hoover couldn't have picked a better candidate to not
regulate the securities industry. William Donaldsons resignation means the criminals will have they way
whenever they wish to rob investors. This will hasten the demise of capitalism so I applaud Bush's decision.
It was decisions like that of FDR to put Joseph Kennedy in charge of the SEC to help restore confidence in
the system that saved capitalism and fueled so much resentment toward the Kennedy clan that the criminals
are still trying to exterminate them. Did you really think John Johns plane crash was an accident? So I
applaud Bushs appointment and suggest you hide your hard earned dollars in a mattress. I also commend the
Heritage Foundation for their support for a "No" vote on the EU Constitution. The new SEC chair, Cris Cox,
is the man who in 1995 sponsored legislation that curbed the ability of investors to sue compnies that steal
their money. Mr Cox also is apposed to oversight of the governance of mutual funds, new rules governing
stock trading and Hedge Funds. I remember reading a few weeks ago about a jewish guy in Canada who ran a
hedge fund there. After stealing all the investors money he fled to Israel. These are the type of guys Mr.
Bush seeks to help with Mr Cox's appointment. My only question is where are these criminals going to invest
all their money? Maybe they will buy more bull dozers to demolish Palistinians homes. For the readers that
don't know, it was my idea that the jews build the security wall in Israel. For some reason I thought it
might make it harder for Israeli soldiers to shoot Palestinian children when they get bored. Mr Cox
represented Orange County california where his friends in the Hedge Fund industry bankrupted the county.
Now he has a chance to say thanks to the industry on behalf of the people he supposedly represents. He
also championed the repeal of the Estate Tax, Capital Gains Tax and the Dividend Tax. In other words he
has eliminated the taxes on people who do nothing and moved them to the working class. He has made it
imposible for the victims of corporate fraud to sue. With such appointments Mr Bush has shown his desire to
go down in history not only as a president who stole two elections, but one willing to do for america what
Herbert Hoover did in the 1920s.
The parasires are now forcing Japan into a new round of cuts in social security, pensions, healthcare,
unemployment benefits. They get off by making people suffer. They believe it makes them better. I
wouldn't be surprised if the whole worlds gets together and nukes the US like had to be done in Shakespears
Richard the third in order to get rid of a corrupt dictator.
The US will be making Angela Merkel their new dictator in Germany. She supported the war in Iraq. Maybe
she will make her US bosses happy rebuilding the German military so we can once again hear the stupendoes
thunder of Panzer divisions moving at attack speed or dive bomber diving for a target. The Texans will give
them some targets such as some US puppet dictator who fails to obey.
Now we have Jean Claude Trichet, US appointee to head the European Central Bank, telling the Europeans to
consume at the same time he is backing every form of legislation to cut wages, pensions and social welfare.
Poor fellow, I'm sure he was picked because he does as he is told.
The conservative criminals had their dictator in the Netherlands force budget and welfare cuts in order to
throw the country into recession and toture the poor. Then they expected the people to vote yes for another
US appointed dictator for Brussels with the same mandate. The US conservative crackpots didn't want to go
through the trouble of fixing the elections in every country in order to have a leader to carry out their
wishes. They wanted the EU so they would only have to have one dictator to do their dirty work for all of
Europe. It costs the american tax payers additional funding to the CIA to have to be assinating political
candidates in so many different countries. The EU was devised to save the CIA money on political assinations.
The British will take over the presidency of the EU starting July 1. Their agenda is to force the
recommendations of the Barroso Commission on Europe. Their agenda will be to end state aid, deregulate and
open up Europes service market and common fiscal rules where only government spending for the benefit of
the wealthy is allowed.
The people rejected the EU constitution because they reject globalism and the effect it will have on their
standard of living when it drives wages to te lowest common denominator in the world and forces governments
to cut all spending for the benefit of the people in the name of competiveness. Eliminating government
expenditure on social welfare doesn't make a country more competitive, its simply the ideology of the
crackpot conservative dictators. The dictators believe this will benefit the minority of shareholders. Robert
Kuttner has written on the negative effects of globalization.
When the Euro was being established in Europe I didn't quite understand how monetary policies were to
reflect economic conditions. Economic conditions vary from country to country and often from region to region.
The conservative trickle down policies of Italy have not only thrown Italy into recession but even before that
Southern Italy was always in recession and should have had their own monetary policy. I'd scrap the Euro
and go back to the old currency regime before the system comes crashing down. When traveling in Europe I
liked all those different currencies. You know, you save some as souvenirs.
Many German people are not aware that their country is still owned and occupied by the US. Most
inhabitants of the world do not realize it. At least not the way most Iraqis are cognizant of their lack of
real democracy and the nature of the US Empire/dictatorship. Like here, most election outcomes in supposed
democracies are predetermined through various subterfuge; either rigging the voting machines as DeBold did
in the last presidential election, controlling who receives the necessary funding to get elected and media
exposure. If politicians enter the race or are elected and do things not to the liking of the masters they
are usually destroyed by trumped up suits filed through the justice system (ie. Monica Lewinsky) or the
constant repetition of trivial detail in a negative manner by the media controlled by the masters. How many
times did we here the scream of Howard Dean played by the media until his poll numbers dropped off. Or
how many times did we here about Clintons alleged affair. Bush and Cheney have done real criminal acts and
taken the country into a war of aggression to steal another countries oil but little if anything is in the media
like the constant 24/7 repetition of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Clinton wasn't doing what he was told
whereas Bush must be following directions. After Clinton cut welfare, Aid to Women with dependant Children
and capital gains for the wealthy the media stopped casting his every word in a negative light and his poll
number surged making him one of the contries most popular presidents. As Shaw said in his Revolutionists
Handbook "The Populace Cannot understand the Beauracracy:it can only worship the national idols" "The art
of government is the orgnization of idolotry" "The beauracracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy of
idols, the democracy,of idolitors." Sunsequently the media can make the people love the president when he's
doing bad things and hate him when he tries to do good. I wouldn't be surprised is they put Hillary in office
and then get her to pass legislation that gets rid of all taxes for the wealthy and grants taxpayer handouts
to those in the top income bracket.
I havn't been following the Iraq war but I will go on the record saying we should pull out and let the chips
land as they may. The constitution the US has forced on Iraq is simply an instrument for US business
interests to steal Iraqi resources and force trickle down on them. See the article on my previous 2/3
webpage called "Bagdad Year Zero-Pillaging Iraq". After WW2 the US helped countries like Japan and
Germany establish democratic socialism. This is no longer the US objective anywhere in the world. It's
trickle down economics for the benefit of a few foreign shareholders over the interests of that nations
people. These policies make democracy a joke and benefit few. Chomky has written books on the effects US
policies have on foreign economies since Ronald Reagan's was elected.
Here's an example of what I mean. A labor government in England would never join in a war of agression
unless Tony Blair is a US puppet dictator.
It is impossible for Schroders socialist administration to pass Hartz 4 legislation in Germany unless they
were forced to do so by the US. A socialist government would never cut benefits for the long term
unemployed to 300E. The objective of the socialism is to make sure everyone has enough to live a quality
existance. These are the policies of our sadistic crackpot conservative dictators. This is simply the policies
of the ignorant and inhumane. Same people who had Clinton cut welfare. Hitler had more morals that those
who forced this cut on the longterm unemployed. There are reasons for long term unemployment that seldom
relates to the motivation of the long term unemployed to find jobs. You could start by eliminating payroll
taxes and replace them with wealth taxes, capital gains taxes or corporate taxes. Payroll taxes increase the
cost of hiring additional employees. Your ideology won't let you do that so you are simply making the situation
worse. Welfare payment increase aggregate demand and every moron knows the principal cause of the lack of
jobs is lack of demand in the economy.The other major reason people don't take jobs is that they don't pay
enough to live on. High tax and spend Japan and Sweden don't have employment problems. It's that simple.
The ruling parasites can't comprehend things so simple.
A May 28 commentary in the Financial Times leads me to believe the conservative crackpot dictators will be
backing a women named Angela Merkel to be the next German chancellor. She has no political talent other
than a proven willingness to do as she is told by her US bosses. The CIA had previously used the German
justice system to bring down the CDU party with slush fund scandals. (notice we don't here about Bill Frist's
personal slush fund-we will if he doesn't do as he is told). It apear the US bosses wish to have a German
chancellor from the CDU to mix it up a bit. With the slush fund scandal they hope they have taught the CDU
to obey as they did to Bill Clinton will Monica Lewinsky. Angela Merkel supported the Iraq war and supports
liberal economics. She doesn't give a damn about education or healthcare or anything important to the
majority of Germans. She only cares about forcing structural adjustments on the German economy for the
benefit of foreign shareholders. I expect the US might continue to force Germanies prize indistries like
Mercedes to buy more failing US firms like Dodge/Crysler. First they forced Mercedes to list on a stock
exchange so they could control it to serve their interests.
US leaders shouldn't have any allusions concerning their behavior. Stop deluding yourself into believing your
trying to do the right thing or promote democracy. The US is going to force structural adjustments on
Germany in order to destroy the power of organized labor, and lower the standard of living of the 80% of
Germans that are member of labor union in order that shareholders can make more money. It's that simple.
The rich are rich because the poor are poor. Your doing evil. Do I have to start quotings GB Shaws writing
explaining the moral justification for equal incomes? It also is good economic sense. The two countries with
the least unemployment problem in the world are also the countries with economic policies that seek to
minimize income inequality; Sweden and Japan. If the US wishes their appointed dictator for Germany,
Angela Merkel, to address the unemployment problem in Germany they should try to make Germany more like
the Swedish economy Robert Kuttner describes in his book "The Economic Illusion"
It appears the masters have have chosen the women they wish to head up their puppet dicatorship in
Germany. Their objective will be accomplished even if its over the dead bodies of those who stand in the
way. That is how it has been since the Reagan revolution. The cold war is over. The US dictators no longer
feel obliged to give the people real democracy. If Angela Merkel gets elected and doesn't do as she is told
she may end up like other US backed dictators, namely Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega.
Germany has basically had zero growth since we started forcing conservative economics on them. It is said
the country has averaged 1% a year since 1995. Not enough to keep up with population growth so basically
they have been in recession since the conservative tide began in 95. If more economic adjustments are
implimented I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't launch a 1930s type depression that pulls down all of
Europe. National socialism did pull germany out of the great depression better than any other economic
system. Then Herr Hitler went nuts and started to impose his will on the rest of the world as the US is
doing now. Some might think that forcing structural adjustment and shock therapy on other nations that
impoverished a billion people in SE asia and 90% of the people of the former Solviet Union as the US did
during the 80s and 90s is just as bad as what the Axis powers did trying to conquer the world. Our master
refuse to learn from their failed economic experiments and persist in destroying the lives of whole nations.
Putting Angela Merkel in charge of Germany to further force trickle down economics on Germany will lead to
a depression in all of Europe.
Lonely in the Middle
By Lou Dobbs
COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM HAS been the catch phrase of George W. Bush since the presidential
campaign of 2000, but those two words must now ring hollow to the more than 100 million Americans who
make up our middle class. There is nothing conservative about our rising record budget and trade deficits.
There is nothing compassionate about the president's idea of Social Security reform, the rollback of
coverage for ever more costly healthcare for working Americans, or the most recent assault on the middle
class: the new bankruptcy reform bill that Bush signed into law last week.
It's ironic that Congress approved the bankruptcy bill to impose fiscal discipline on the middle class when the
federal government last year ran up $412 budget deficit and a $617 billion trade deficit. President Bush’s
temerity in signing this legislation was'the ultimate hypocrisy in a town already very well credentialed. Add
to that hypocrisy the House of Representatives vote to permanently repeal the estate tax for the wealthy
as Congress further rent the middle class's social safety net.
Compassionate conservatism? The new barkruptcy law was virtually written by the credit card companies and
banks, making it far more difficult for American families to erase their debt. The credit card firms are not
exactly struggling. Their profits, in fact, have risen steadily over the past decade.
Personal bankruptcy filings fell nearly 4 percent to 1.56 million in 2094, down from a record high a year
earlier. But these aren't just lazy debtors taking advantage of a broken system; these are working men and
women who have faced hardships and financial failure, and tried to avoid bankruptcy court. A recent Harvard
study shows that nearly half of all personal I bankruptcies in this country are caused by costly illnesses and
medical bills. And surprisingly, more than three quarters of the debtors who sought court protection from
creditors had some health insurance coverage at the onset of the illness that triggered bankruptcy.
"Do we run the country for the people, or do we run it for nameless, faceless banks or international
corporations?" asks Harvard Law School Prof. Elizabeth Warren. "That was the issue way back as far back
as the Depression. The ultimate decision was we run it for the people. . . . And now we have made a
complete turnabout: We not only don't invest in the middle class, we drain away from the middle class. We
tax them harder; we leave them with bigger risks like never before in history. And we take away the last
shred of a safety net-bankruptcy. It's war on the middle class."
Bipartisan attack. It's now a war being prosecuted by both political parties. Neither party in Congress is
looking out for the interests of the middle class. Not surprisingly, every Republican in both the Senate and
the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bankruptcy bill. Seventy-three Democrats in the House
as well as 18 in the Senate joined their pro-business colleagues on the other side of the aisle by voting
against the needs of the people. To permanently repeal the estate tax, 42 House Democrats voted in favor
of supporting another break for the wealthy. Every Republican in the House except one approved that
legislation.
"The middle-class working-family interests are not being guarded on Capitol Hill," says Illinois Democratic
Sen. Dick Durbin, who voted against the bankruptcy reform bill. "They are, unfortunately, victims of what
has become a tidal wave of pro-business legislation, which has been unfair to a lot of families that are
struggling to get along."
Durbin acknowledges that too many in his party are now under the sway of the all-powerful political influence
of corporate America. "It's sad that there are many Democrats that felt, initially, this was an easy
business vote when the bill came up 10 years ago, Durbin said. "Unfortunately, over the years, the bill got
progressively worse and much more unfair for consumers, and many of those same Democrats still stuck with
the Republicans." Abraham Lincoln declared that a government "of the people, by the people, for the people
shall not perish from the Earth," but the 21st century has so far seen it certainly diminishing. Unless one
political party (and let's hope both) finds the courage to resist corporate interests and put working men and
women first, our middle class will be among the loneliest people in a faded nation..
The following is Chapter 7-11 from George B Shaws book "The Intelligent Womens Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism, published in 1928
Chapter 7
SEVEN WAYS PROPOSED
A PLAN which has often been proposed, and which seems , very plausible to the working classes, is to
let every person have that part of the wealth of the counltry which she has herself produced by her work
(the feminine pronoun here includes the masculine). Others say let us all get what we deserve; so that the
idle and dissolute and weak shall have nothing and perish, and the good and industrious and energetic shall
have all and survive. Some believe in "the good old rule, the simple plan, that they shall take who have the
power, and they shall keep who can", though they seldom confess it nowadays. Some say let the common
people get enough to keep them alive in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call them; and let
the gentry take the rest, though that, too, is not now said so openly as it was in the eighteenth century.
Some say let us divide ourselves into classes; and let the division be equal in each class though unequal
between the classes; so that laborers shall get thirty shillings a week, skilled workers three or four pounds,
bishops two thousand five hundred a year, judges five thousand, archbishops fifteen thousand, and their
wives what they can_get out of them. Others say simply let us go on as we are.
What the Socialists say is that none of these plans will work well, and that the only satisfactory plan is to
give everybody an equal share no matter what sort of person she is, or how old she is, or what sort of work
she does, or who or what her father was. p19 THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN'S GUIDE
If this, or any of the other plans, happens to startle and scandalize you, please do not blame me or throw
my book into the fire. I am only telling you the different plans that have been proposed and to some extent
actually tried. You are not bound to approve of any of them; and you are quite free to propose a better plan
than any of them if you can think one out. But you are not free to dismiss it from your mind as none of your
business. It is a question of your food and lodging, and therefore part of your life. If you do not settle it
for yourself, the people who are encouraging you to neglect it will settle it for you; and you may depend on it
they will take care of their own shares and not of yours, in which case you may find yourself some day
without any share at all.
I have seen that happen very cruelly during my own lifetime.
In the country where I was born, which is within an hour's run of England at the nearest point, many ladies
of high social standing and gentle breeding, who thought that this question did not concern them because they
were well off for the moment, ended very pitiably in the workhouse. They felt that bitterly, and hated
those who had brought it about; but they never understood why it happened. Had they understood from the
beginning how and why it might happen, they might have averted it, instead of, as they did, doing everything
in their power to hasten their own ruin,
You may very easily share their fate unless you take care to understand what is happening. The world is
changing very quickly, as it was around them when they thought it as fixed as the mountains. It is changing
much more quickly around you; and I promise you that if you will be patient enough to finish this book (think
of all the patience it has cost me to finish it instead of writing plays!) you will come out with much more
knowledge of how things are changing, and what your risks and prospects are, than you are likely to have
learnt from your schoolbooks.
Therefore I am going to take all these plans for you one after another, and examthem chapter by chapter
until you know pretty well all that is to be said for and against them. p20
Chapter 8 TO EACH WHAT SHE PRODUCES
THE first plan: that of giving to every person exactly what he or she has made by his or her labor, seems
fair; but when we try to put it into practice we discover, first, that it is quite impossible to find out how
much each person has produced, and, second, that a great deal of the world's work is neither producing
material things nor altering the things that Nature produces, but doing services of one sort or another.
When a farmer and his laborers sow and reap a field of wheat nobody on earth can say how much of the
wheat each of them has grown. When a machine in a factory turns out pins by the mi11ion nobody can say
how many pins are due to the labor of the person who minds the machine, or the person who invented it, or
the engineers who made it, to say nothing of all the other persons employed about the factory. The clearest
case in the world of a person producing something herself by her own painful, prolonged, and risky labor is
that of a woman who produces a baby; but then she cannot live on the baby: the baby lives greedily on her.
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island could have claimed that the boats and shelters and fences he made with
the materials supplied by Nature belonged to him because they were the fruit of nobody's labor but his own;
but when he returned to civilization he could not have laid his hand on a chair or table in his house which was
not the work of dozens of men: foresters who had planted the trees, woodmen who had felled them,
lumbermen and bargemen and sailors and porters who had moved them,
sawyers who had sawn them into planks and scantlings, upholsterers and joiners who had fashioned them into
tables and chairs, not to mention the merchants who had conducted all the business involved in these
transactions, and the makers of_the shops and the ships and all the rest of it. Anyone who thinks about it
for a few minutes must see that trying to divide-up by giving each worker exactly what she or he has
produced is like trying to give every drop of rain in a heavy shower exactly the quantity of water it adds to
the supply in your cistern. It just cannot be done.
21
THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN'S GUIDE
What can be done is to pay every person according to the time she or he spends at the work. Time is
something that can be measured in figures. It is quite easy to pay a worker twice as much for two hours
work as for one. There are people who will work for sixpence an hour, people who will work for eighteen
pence an hour, people who will work for two guineas an hour, people who will work for a hundred and fifty
guineas an hour. These prices depend on how many competitors there are in the trade looking for the work,
and whether the people who want it done are rich or poor. You pay a sempstress a shilling, to sew for an
hour, or a laborer to chop wood, when there are plenty of unemployed sempstresses and laborers starving for
a job, each of them trying to induce you to give it to her or him rather than to the next applicant by
offering to do it at a price that will barely keep body and soul together. You pay a popular actress two or
three hundred pounds a week, or a famous opera singer as much a night, because the public will pay more
than that to hear her. You pay a famous surgeon a hundred and fifty guineas to cut out your appendix, or a
famous barrister the same to plead for you, because there are so few famous surgeons or barristers, and so
many patients and clients offering them large sums to work for them
rather than for you. This is called settling the price of a worker's time, or rather letting it settle itself,
by supply and demand.
Unfortunately, supply and demand may produce undesirable results. A division in which one woman gets a
shilling and another three thousand shillings for an hour of work has no moral sense in it: it is just something
that happens, and that ought not to happen. A child with an interesting face and pretty ways, and some
talent for acting, may, by working for the films, earn a hundred times as much as its mother can earn by
drudging at an ordinary trade. What is worse, a pretty girl can earn by vice far
more than her plain sister can earn as an honest wife and mother.
Besides, it is not so easy to measure the time spent on a piece of
work as it seems at first. Paying a laborer twice as much for two hours work as for one is as simple as
twice one are two; but when you have to divide between an opera singer and her dresser, or an unskiI1ed
laborer and a doctor, you find that you cannot tell how much time you have to allow for. The dresser and the
laborer are
(p22) TO EACH WHAT SHE PRODUCES
doing what any able bodied person can do without long study or apprenticeship. The doctor has to spend six
years in study and training, on top of a good general education, to qualify himself to do his work. He claims
that six years of unpaid work are behind every minute of his attendance at your bedside. A skilled workman
may claim in the same way that seven years of apprenticeship are behind every stroke of his hammer. The
opera singer has had to spend a long time learning her parts, even when, as sometimes happens, she has
never learnt to sing. Everybody acknowledges that this makes a difference; but nobody can measure exactly
what the difference is, either in time or money.
The same difficulty arises in attempting to compare the value of the work of a clever woman with that of a
stupid one. You may think that the work of the clever woman is worth more; but when you are asked how
much more in pounds, shillings, and pence you have to give it up and fall back on supply and demand, confessing
that the difference cannot be measured in money.
In these examples I have mixed up making things with doing services; but I must now emphasize this
distinction, because thoughtless people are apt to think a brickmaker more of a producer than a clergyman.
When a village carpenter makes a gate to keep cattle out of a field of wheat, he has something solid in his
hand which he can claim for his own until the farmer pays him for it. But when a village boy makes a noise to
keep the birds off he has nothing to shew, though the noise is just as necessary as the gate. The postman
does not make anything: he only delivers letters and parcels. The policeman does not make anything; and the
soldier not only does not make things: he destroys them. The doctor makes pills sometimes; but that is not
his real business, which is to tell you when you ought to take pills, and what pills to take, unless indeed he
has the good sense to tell you not to take them at all, and you have the good sense to believe him when he
is giving you good advice instead of bad. The lawyer does not _make anything substanttial, nor the
clergyman, nor the_member- of Parliament, nor the domestic servant (though she sometimes breaks things),
nor the Queen or King, nor an actor. When their work is done they have nothing in hand that can be weighed
or measured: nothing that the maker can keep from others until
23THE INTELLIGENT WOMAN'S GUIDE
she is paid for it. They are all in service: in domestic service like the housemaid, or in commercial service
like the shop assistant, or in Government service like the postman, or in State service like the King; and all
of us who have full size consciences consider ourselves in what some of us call the service of God.
And then, beside the persons who make the substantial things there must be persons to find out how they
should be made. Beside the persons who do things there must be persons who know how they should be done,
and decide when they should be done, and how much they should be done. In simple village life both the
making or the doing and the thinking may be done by the same person when he is a blacksmith, carpenter, or
builder; but in big cities and highly civilized countries this is impossible: one set of people has to make and do
whilst another set of people thinks and decides what, when, how much, and by whom.
Our villages would be improved by a little of this division of labor; for it is a great disadvantage in country
life that a farmer is expected to do so many different things: he has not only to grow crops and raise stock
(two separate arts to begin with, and difficult ones too), but to be a man of business, keeping complicated
accounts and selling his crops and his cattle, which is a different sort of job, needing a different sort of
man. And, as if this were not enough, he has to keep his dwelling house as part of his business; so that he is
expected to be a professional man, a man of business, and a sort of country gentleman all at once; and the
consequence is that farming is all a muddle: the good farmer is poor because he is a bad man of business; the
good man of business is poor because he is a bad farmer; and both of them are often bad husbands because
their work is not separate from their home, and they bring all their worries into the house with them
instead of locking them up in a city office and thinking no more about them until they go back there next
morning. In a city business one set of men does the manual work; another set-keeps the accounts; another
chooses the markets for buying and selling; and all of them leave their work behind them when they go home.
The same trouble is found in a woman's housekeeping. She is expected to do too many different things. She
may be a very good housekeeper and a very bad cook. In a French town this would not matter, because the
whole family would take all the meals that require any serious cooking in the nearest restaurant; but in the
country the woman must do both the housekeeping and the cooking unless she can afford to keep a cook. She
may be both a good housekeeper and a good cook, but be unable to manage children; and here again, if she
cannot afford a capable nurse, she has to do the thing she does badly along with the things she does well,
and has her life muddled and spoilt accordingly. It is a mercy both to her and the children that the school
(which is a bit of Communism) takes them off her hands for most of the day. It is clear that the woman who
is helped out by servants or by restaurants and schools has a much better chance in life than the woman who
is expected to do three very different things at once.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to
bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to
regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not
be paid for it. A man gets higher wages than a woman because he is supposed to have a family to support;
yet if he spends the extra money in drink or betting, the woman has no remedy against him if she is married
to him. But if she is his hired housekeeper she can recover her wages at law. And the married man is in the
same predicament. When his wife spends the housekeeping money in drink he has no remedy, though he could
have a hired housekeeper imprisoned for theft if she did the very same thing.
Now with these examples in mind, how can an Intelligent Woman settle what her time is worth in money
compared to her husband's? Imagine her husband looking at it as a matter of business, and saying "I can hire
a housekeeper for so much, and a nursemaid for so much, and a cook for so much, and a pretty lady to keep
company with for so much; and if I add up all this the total will be what a wife is worth; but it is more than
I can afford to pay"! Imagine her hiring a husband by the hour, like a _taxi cab!
Yet the income of the country has to be divided-up between husbands and wives just as it has between
strangers; and as most of us are husbands and wives, any plan for dividing-up that breaks down when it is
applied to husbands and wives breaks in
the middle and is no use. The old plan of giving the man everything, and leaving the woman to get what she
could out of him, led to such abuses that it had to be altered by the Married Women's Property Acts, under
which a rich woman with a poor husband can keep all her property to herself whilst her husband is imprisoned
for life for not paying her taxes. But as nine families out of ten have no property, they have to make the
best of what the husband can earn at his trade; and here we have the strangest muddles: the wife getting
nothing of her own, and the bigger children making a few shillings a week and having the difference between
it and a living wage made up by the father's wage; so that the people who are employing the children cheaply
are reaIly sweating the father, who is perhaps being sweated badly enough by his own employer. Of this,
more later on.
Try to straighten out this muddle on the plan of giving the woman and the children and the man what they
produce each by their own work, or what their time is worth in money to the country; and you will find the
plan nonsensical and impossible. Nobody but a lunatic would attempt to put it into practice.
TO EACH WHAT SHE DESERVES
THE second plan we have to examine is that of giving to each person what she deserves. Many people,
especially those who are comfortably off, think that this is what happens at present: that the industrious
and sober and thrifty are never in want, and that poverty is due to idleness, improvidence, drink, betting,
dishonesty, and bad character generally. They can point to the fact that a laborer whose character is bad
finds it more difficult to get employment than one whose character is good; that a farmer or country
gentleman who gambles and "bets heavily, and mortgages his land to live wastefully and extravagantly, is soon
reduced to poverty; and that a man of business who is lazy and does not attend to it becomes bankrupt. But
this proves nothing but that you cannot eat your cake and have it too: it does not prove that your share of
the cake was a fair one. It shews that certain vices and weaknesses make us poor; but it forgets that
certain other vices make us rich. People who are hard, grasping, selfish, cruel, and always ready to take
advantage of their neighbors, become very rich if they are clever enough not to overreach themselves. On
the other hand, people who are generous, public-spirited, friendly, and not always thinking of the main
chance, stay poor when they are born poor unless they have extraordinary talents. Also, as things are
today, some are born poor and others are born with silver spoons in their mouths: that is to say, they are
divided into rich and poor before they are old enough to have any character at all. The notion that our
present system distributes wealth according to merit, even roughly, may be dismissed at once as ridiculous.
Everyone can see that it generally has the contrary effect: it makes a few idle people very rich, and a
great many hardworking people very poor.
On this, Intelligent Lady, your first thought may be that if wealth is not distributed according to merit, it
ought to be; and that we should at once set to work to alter our laws so that in future the good people shall
be rich in proportion to their goodness and the bad people poor in proportion to their badness. There are
several objections to this; but the very first one settles the question for good and all. It is, that the
proposal is impossible.
How are you going to measure anyone's merit in money? Choose any pair of human beings you like, male or
female, and see whether you can decide how much each of them should have on her or his merits. If you live
in the country, take the village black_ smith and the village clergyman, or the village washerwoman and the
village schoolmistress, to begin with. At present the clergyman often gets less pay than the blacksmith: it is
only in some villages he gets more. But never mind what they get at present: you are trying whether you can
set up a new order of things in which each will get what he deserves. You need not fix a sum of money for
them: all you have to do is to settle the proportion between them. Is the blacksmith to have as much as the
clergyman? or twice as much as the clergyman? or half as much as the clergyman? or how much more or
less? It is no use saying that one ought to have more and the other less: you must be prepared to say
exactly how much more or less in calculable proportion.
Well, think it out. The clergyman has had a college education; but that is not any merit on his part: he owes
it to his father; so you cannot allow him anything for that. But through it he is able to read the New
Testament in Greek; so that he can do something the blacksmith cannot do. On the other hand, the
blacksmith can make a horse-shoe, which the parson cannot. How many verses of the Greek Testament are
worth one horse-shoe? You have only to ask the silly question to see that nobody can answer it.
Since measuring their merits is no use, why not try to measure their faults? Suppose the blacksmith swears
a good deal, and gets drunk occasionally! Everybody in the village knows this; but the parson has to keep his
faults to himself. His wife knows them; but she will not tell you what they are if she knows that you intend
to cut off some of his pay for them. You know that as he is only a mortal human being he must have some
faults; but you cannot find them out. However, suppose he has some faults that you can find out! Suppose he
has what you call an unfortunate manner;
that he is a hypocrite; that he is a snob; that he cares more for sport and fashionable society than for
religion! Does that make him as bad as the blacksmith, or twice as bad, or twice and a quarter as bad, or
only half as bad? In other words, if the blacksmith is to have a shilling, is the parson to have a shilling also,
or is he to have sixpence, or fivepence and one-third, or two shillings? Clearly these are fools' questions:
the moment they bring us down from moral generalities to business particulars it becomes plain to every
sensible person that no relation can be established between human qualities, good or bad, and sums of money,
large or small. It may seem scandalous that a prizefighter, for hitting another prize-fighter so hard at
Wembley that he fell down and could not rise within ten seconds, received the same sum that was paid to
the Archbishop of Canterbury for acting as Primate of the Church of England for nine months; but none of
those who cry out against the,' scandal can express any better in money the difference between the two.
Not one of the persons who think that the prize-fighter should get less than the Archbishop can say how
much less. What the prizefighter got for his six or seven minutes boxing would pay a judge's salary for two
years; and we are all agreed that nothing could be more ridiculous, and that any system of distributing
wealth which leads to such absurdities must be wrong. But to suppose that it could be changed by any
possible calculation that an ounce of archbishop or three ounces of judge is worth a pound of prize-fighter
would be sillier still. You can find out how many candles are worth a pound of butter in the market on any
particular day; but when you try to estimate the worth of human souls the utmost you can say is that they
are all of equal value before the throne of God. And that will not help you in the least to settle how much
money they should have. You must simply give it up, and admit that distributing money according to merit is
beyond mortal measurement and judgment.
Chapter 10
TO EACH WHAT SHE CAN GRAB
THE third plan: that of letting everyone have what she can lay her hands on, would produce a world in which
there would be no peace and no security. If we were all equally strong and cunning we should all have an equal
chance; but in a world where there are children and old people and invalids, and where able-bodied adults of
the same age and strength vary greatly in greediness and wickedness, it would never do: we should get tired
of it in no time. Even pirate crews and bands of robbers prefer a peaceful settled understanding as to the
division of their plunder to the Kilkenny cat plan.
Among ourselves, though robbery and violence are forbidden, we still allow business to be conducted on the
principle of letting everyone make what he can out of it without considering anyone but himself. A shopkeeper
or a coal merchant may not pick your pocket; but he may overcharge you as much as he' likes. Everyone is
free in business to get as much and give as little for his money as he can induce his customers to put up
with. House rent can be raised without any regard to the cost of houses or the poverty of the tenant. But
this freedom produces such bad results that new laws are continually being made to restrain it; and even
when it is a necessary part of our freedom to spend our money and use our possessions as seems best to us,
we still have to settle how much money and what possessions we should given to start with. This distribution
must be made according to some law or other. Anarchy (absence of law) will not work. We must go on with
our search for a righteous and practicable law.
Chapter II OLIGARCHY
THE fourth plan is to take one person in every ten (say), and make her rich without working by making the
other nine work hard and long every day, giving them only enough of what they make to keep them alive and
enable them to bring up families to continue their slavery when they grow old and die. This is roughly what
happens at present, as one-tenth of the English people own nine-tenths of all the property in the country,
whilst most of the other nine-tenths have no property, and live from week to week on wages barely
sufficient to support them in a very poor way. The advantage claimed for this plan is that it provides us with
a gentry: that is, with a class of rich people able to cultivate themselves by an expensive education; so that
they become qualified to govern the country and make and maintain its laws; to organize and officer the
army for national defence; to patronize and keep alive learning, science, art, literature, philosophy, religion,
and all the institutions that distinguish great civilizations from mere groups of villages; to raise magnificent
buildings, dress splendidly, impose awe on the unruly, and set an example of good manners and fine living.
Most important of all, as men of business think, by giving them much more than they need spend, we enable
them to save those great sums of spare money that are called capital, and are spent in making railways,
mines, factories full of machinery, and all the other contrivances by which wealth is produced in great
quantities.
This plan, which is called Oligarchy, is the old English plan of dividing us into gentry living by property and
common people living by work: the plan of the few rich and the many poor. It has worked for a long time, and
is still working. And it is evident that if the incomes of the rich were taken from them and divided among
the poor as we stand at present, the poor would be only very little less poor; the supply of capital would
cease because nobody could afford to save; the country houses would fall into ruins; and learning and science
and art and literature and all the rest of what we call culture would perish. That is why so many people
support the present system, and stand by the gentry although they themselves are poor. They see that if
ten women can produce only f110 a year each by their labor, it may be wiser for nine of them to be content
with L50 apiece, and make the other one an educated lady, 'mistress, and ruler by giving her £500 a year
without any obligation to work at all, or any inducement to work except the hope of finding how to make their
work more fruitful for her own benefit, rather than to insist on having £110 a year each. Though we make
this sort of arrangement at present because we are forced to, and indeed mostly without knowing that we
are making it, yet it is conceivable that if we
understood what we were doing and were free to carry it out or not as we thought best, we might still do it
for the sake of having a 'gentry to keep up finer things in the world than a miserable crowd all equally poor,
and all tied to primitive manual labor.
But the abuses that arise from this plan are so terrible that the world is becoming set against it. If we
decide to go on with it, the first step is to settle who is to be the tenth person: the lady. How is that to
be decided? True, we could begin by drawing lots; and after that the gentry could intermarry and be
succeeded by their firstborns. But the mischief of it is that when we at last got our gentry established we
should have no guarantee that they would do any of the things we intended them to do and paid them
to do. With the best intentions, the gentry govern the country very badly because they are so far removed
from the common people that they do not understand their needs. They use their power to make themselves
still richer by forcing the common people to work still harder and accept still less. They spend enormous sums
on sport and entertainment, gluttony and ostentation, and very little on science and art and learning They
produce poverty on a vast scale by withdrawing labor from production to waste it in superfluous menial
service. They either shirk military duties or turn the army into a fashionable retinue for themselves and an
instrument of oppression at home and conquest abroad. They corrupt the teaching in the universities and
schools to glorify themselves and hide their misdeeds. They do the same with the Church. They try to keep
the common people poor and ignorant and servile so as to make themselves more indispensable. At last their
duties have to be taken out of their hands and discharged by Parliament, by the Civil Service, by the War
Office and the Admiralty, by city corporations, by Poor Law Guardians, by County and Parish and District
Councils, by salaried servants and Boards of paid directors, by societies and institutions of all kinds
depending on taxation or on public subscription.
When this occurs, as it actually has occurred, all the cultural and
political reasons for the maintenance of a gentry vanish. It always does occur when city life grows up and
takes the place of country life. When a peeress resides 'On her estates in a part of the country where life
is still very simple, and the nearest thing to a town is a village ten miles from the railway station, the
people look to
,her ladyship for everything that is not produced by their daily toil. She represents all the splendor and
greatness and romance of civilization, and does a good deal for them which they would not know how to do for
themselves. In this way a Highland clan, before Scotland became civilized, always had a chief. The clansmen
willingly gave him the lion's share of such land and goods as they could come by, or of the plunder they took
in their raids. They did this because they could not fight successfully without a leader, and could not live
together without a lawgiver. Their chief was to them what Moses was to the Israelites in the desert. The
Highland chief was practically a king in his clan, just as the peeress is a queen on her estates. Loyalty to
him was instinctive.
But when a Highland chief walked into a city he had less power
than the first police constable he met: in fact it sometimes happened that the police constable took him in
charge, and the city authorities hanged him. When the peeress leaves her estate and goes up to London for
the season, she becomes a nobody except
to her personal acquaitances.. Everything that. she does for her people in the country is done in London by
paid public servants of all sorts; and when she leaves the country and settles in America or on the Continent
to evade British income tax she is not missed in London: everything goes on just as before. But her tenants,
who have to earn the money she spends abroad, get nothing by her, and revile her as a fugitive and an
Absentee.
Small wonder then that Oligarchy is no longer consented to willingly. A great deal of the money the oligarchs
get is now taken back from them by taxation and death duties; so that the old families are being reduced
very rapidly to the level of ordinary citizens; and when their estates are gone, as they will be after a few
generations more of our present heavy death duties, their titles will only make their poverty ridiculous.
Already many of their most famous country houses are occupied either by rich business families of quite
ordinary quality, or by Co-operative Societies as Convalescent Homes or places for conference and
recreation, or as hotels or schools or lunatic asylums.
You must therefore face the fact that in a civilization like ours, where most of the population lives in cities;
where railways, motor cars, posts, telegraphs, telephones, gramophones and radio have brought city ways
and city culture into the country; and where even the smallest village has its parish meeting and its communal
policeman, the old reasons for making a few people very rich whilst all the others work hard for a bare
subsistence have passed away. The plan no longer works, even in the Highlands.
Still, there is one reason left for maintaining a class of excessively rich people at the expense of the rest;
and business men consider it the strongest reason of all. That reason is that it provides capital by giving
some people more money than they can easily spend; so that they can save money (capital is saved money)
without any privation. The argument is that if income were more equally distributed, we should all have so
little that we should spend all our incomes, and nothing would be saved to make machinery and build factories
and construct railways and dig mines and so forth. Now it is certainly necessary to high civilization that
these savings should be made; but it would be hard to imagine a more wasteful way of bringing it
about. -_'
To begin with, it is very important that there should be no saving until there has been sufficient spending:
spending comes first. A nation which makes steam engines before its little children have enough milk to make
their legs strong enough to carry them is making a fool's choice. Yet this is just what we do by this plan of
making a few rich and the masses poor. Again, even if we put the steam engine before the milk, our plan
gives us no security that we shall get the steam engine, or, if we get it, that it will be set up in our
country. Just as a great deal of the money that was given to the country gentlemen of England on the chance
of their encouraging art and science was spent by them on cockfighting and horse-racing; so a shocking
proportion of the money we give our oligarchs on the chance of their investing it as capital is spent by them
in self-indulgence. Of the very rich it may be said that they do not begin to save until they can spend no
more, and that they are continually inventing new and expensive extravagances that would have been
impossible a hundred years ago. When their income outruns their extravagance so far that they must use it
as capital or throw it away, there is nothing to prevent them investing it in South America, in South Africa,
in Russia, or in China, though we cannot get our own slums cleaned up for want of capital kept in and applied
to our own country. Hundreds of millions of pounds are sent abroad every year in this way; and we complain
of the competition of foreigners whilst we allow our capitalists to provide them at our expense with the very
machinery with which they are taking our industries from us.
Of course the capitalists plead that we are none the poorer, because the interest on their capital comes
back into this country from the countries in which they have invested it; and as they invest it abroad only
because they get more interest abroad than at home, they assure us that we ate actually the richer for
their export of capital, because it enables them to spend more at home and thus give British workers more
employment. But we have no guarantee that they will spend it at home: they are as likely to spend it in
Monte Carlo, Madeira, Egypt, or where not? And when they do spend it at home and give us employment, we
have to ask what sort of employment? When our farms and mills and cloth factories are all ruined by our
importing our food and cloth from abroad instead of making them ourselves, it is not' enough for our
capitalists to shew us that instead of the farms we have the- best golf courses in the world; instead of
mills and factories splendid hotels; instead of engineers and shipwrights and bakers and carpenters and
weavers, waiters and chambermaids, valets and ladies' maids, gamekeepers and butlers and so forth, all
better paid and more elegantly dressed than the productive workers they have replaced. We have to
consider what sort of position we shall be in when our workers are as incapable of supporting themselves and
us as the idle rich themselves. Suppose the foreign countries stop our supplies either by a revolution followed
by flat repudiation of their capitalistic debts, as in Russia, or by taxing and supertaxing incomes derived
from investments, what will become of us then? What is becoming of us now as taxation of income spreads
more and more in foreign countries? The English servant may still be able to boast that England can put a
more brilliant polish on a multi-millionaire's boots than any foreigner can; but what use will that be to us
when the multi-millionaire is an expropriated or taxed-out pauper with no boots to have polished?
We shall have to go into this question of capital more particularly later on; but for the purposes of this
chapter it is enough to shew that the plan of depending on oligarchy for our national capital is not only
wasteful on the face of it, but dangerous with a danger that increases with every political development in
the world. The only plea left for it is that there is no other way of doing it. But that will not hold water
for a moment. The Government can, and to a considerable extent actually does, check personal expenditure
and enforce the use of part of our incomes as capital, far less capriciously and more efficiently than our
oligarchy does. It can nationalize banking, as we shall see presently. This leaves oligarchy without its sole
economic excuse.
DISTRIBUTION BY CLASS
NOW for the fifth plan, which is, that though everybody should work, society should be divided into as many
classes as there are different sorts ,of work, and that the
different classes should receive different_payment for their work:
for instance, the dustmen and_scavengers and scullery-maids and charwomen and ragpickers should receive
less than the doctors and clergymen and teachers and opera singers and professional ladies generally, and
that these should receive less than the judges and prime ministers and kings and queens.
You will tell me that this is just what we have at present. Certainly it happens so in many cases; but there
is no law that people employed in different sorts of work should be paid more or less than one another. We
are accustomed to think that schoolmistresses and clergymen and doctors, being educated ladies and
gentlemen, must be paid more than illiterate persons who work with their hands for weekly wages; but at
the present time an engine driver, making no pretension to be a gentleman, or to have had a college
education, is paid more than many clergymen and some doctors; and a schoolmistress or governess is very
lucky indeed when she is as well off as a first rate cook. Some of our most famous physicians have had to'
struggle pitiably against insufficient means until they were forty or fifty; and many a parson has brought up
a family on a stipend of seventy pounds a year. You must therefore be on your guard against the common
mistake of supposing that we need nowadays pay more for gentility and education than for bodily strength
and natural cunning, or that we always do pay more. Very learned men often make little money or none; and
gentility without property may prove rather a disadvantage than otherwise to a man who wants to earn a
living. Most of the great fortunes are made in trade or finance, often by men without any advantages of
birth or education. Some of the great poverties have been those of saints, or of geniuses whose greatness
was not recognized until they were dead.
You must also get rid of the notion (if you have it: if not, forgive me for suspecting you of it) that it costs
some workers more than others to live. The same allowance of food that will keep a laborer in health will
keep a king. Many laborers eat and drink much more than the King does; and all of them wear out their
clothes much faster. Our King is not rich as riches go nowadays, Mr Rockefeller probably regards His
Majesty as a poor man, because Mr Rockefeller not only has much more money, but is under no ob1igat,ion to
spend it in keeping up _ great establishment: that is spending It on other people. But If you_could find_out
how much the King and Mr Rockefeller spend on their own personal needs and satisfaction, you would find it
came to no more than is now spent by any other two persons in reasonably comfortable circumstances. If you
doubled the King's allowance he would not eat twice as much, drink twice as much, sleep twice as soundly,
build a new house twice as big as Buckingham Palace, or marry another queen and set up two families instead
of one. The late Mr Carnegie, when his thousands grew to hundreds of thousands and his hundreds of
thousands to millions, gave his money away in heaps because he already had everything he cared for that
money could buy for himself or his household.
Then, it may be asked, why do we give some men more than they need and some less? The answer is that
for the most part we do not give it to them: they get it because we have not arranged what anyone shall
get, but have left it to chance and grab. But in the case of the King and other public dignitaries we have
arranged that they shall have handsome incomes because we intend that they shall be specially respected
and deferred to. Yet experience shews that authority is not proportionate to income. No person in Europe is
approached with such awe as the Pope; but nobody thinks of the Pope as a rich man: sometimes his parents
and brothers and sisters are very humble people, and he himself is poorer than his tailor or grocer. The
captain of a liner sits at table every day with scores of people who could afford to throw his pay into the
sea and not miss it; yet his authority is so absolute that the most insolent passenger dares not treat him
disrespectfully. The village rector may not have a fifth of the income of his farmer churchwarden. The
colonel of a regiment may be the poorest man at the mess table: everyone of his subalterns may have far
more than double his income; but he is their superior in authority for all that. Money is not the secret of
command.
Those who exercise personal authority among us -are by no means our richest people. Millionaires in expensive
cars obey policemen. In our social scale noblemen take precedence of country gentlemen, country gentlemen
take precedence of professional men, professional men of traders, wholesale traders of retail traders, retail
traders of skilled workmen,_ skilled_work men of laborers; but if social precedence were according to income
all this would be completely upset; for the tradesmen would take precedence of everybody; and the Pope and
the King would have to touch their hats to distillers and pork packers.
When we speak of the power of the rich, we are speaking of a very real thing, because a rich man
can discharge anyone in his employment who displeases him, and can take away his custom from any
tradesman who is disrespectful to him. But the advantage a man gets by his power to ruin an other is a quite
different thing from the authority that is necessary to maintain law and order in society. You may obey the
highwayman who puts a pistol to your head and demands your money or your life. Similarly you may obey the
landlord who orders you to pay more rent or take yourself and your brats into the street. But that is not
obedience to authority: it is submission to a threat. Real authority has nothing to do with money; and it is in
fact exercised by persons who, from the King to the village constable, are poorer than many of the people
who obey their orders.
13 LAISSER- F AIRE
AND now, what about leaving things just as they are? That is just what most people vote for doing. Even
when they dont like what they are accustomed to, they dread change, lest it should make matters worse.
They are what they call Conservative, though it is only fair to add that no Conservative statesman in his
senses ever pretends (except perhaps occasionally at election times, when nobody ever tells the truth) that
you can conserve things by simply letting them alone.
It seems the easiest plan and the safest; but as a matter of hard fact it is not only difficult but
impassible. When Joshua told the sun to stand still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, 'for a
trifle of twenty four hours, he was modest in comparison with those who imagine that the world will stay put
if they take care not to wake it up. And he knew he was asking for a miracle. It is not that things as they
are are so bad that nobody who knows how bad they are will agree to leave them as they are; for the reply
to that may be that if they dont like them they must lump them, because there seems to be 110 way of
changing them. The real difficulty is that things Wi11 not stay as they are, no matter how careful you are
not to meddle with them. You might as well give up dusting your rooms and expect to find them this time
next year just as they are now. You might as well leave the cat asleep on the hearthrug and assume that
you would find her there, and not in the dairy, when you came back from church. The truth is that things
change much faster and more dangerously when they are let alone than when they are carefully looked after.
Within the last hundred and fifty years the most astounding changes have taken place in this very business
that we are dealing with (the production and distribution of the national income) just because what was
everybody's business was nobody's business, and it was let run wild. The introduction of machinery driven by
steam, and later on of electric power distributed from house to house like water or gas, and the invention of
engines that not only draw trains along the ground and ships over and under the sea, but carry us and our
goods flying through the air, has increased our power to produce wealth and get through our work easily and
quickly to such an extent that there is no longer any need for any of us to be poor. A labor-saving house
with gas stoves, electric light, a telephone, a vacuum cleaner, and a wireless set, gives only a faint notion of
a modern factory full of automatic machines. If we each took our turn and did our bit in peace as we had to
do during the war, all the necessary feeding and clothing and housing and lighting could be done handsomely by
less than half our present day's work, leaving the other half free for art and science and learning and
playing and roaming and experimenting and recreation of all sorts. This is a new state of things: a change
that has come upon us when we thought we were leaving things just as they were. And the consequence of
our not attending to it and guiding and arranging it for the good of the country is that it has actually left
the poor much worse off than they used to be when there was no machinery at all, and people had to be
more careful of pence than they now are of shillings; whilst the rich have become rich out of all reason, and
the people who should be employed in baking bread for the hungry and clothes for the naked, or building
houses for the homeless, are wasting their labor in providing service and luxuries for idle rich people who are
not in the old sense of the words either gentle or noble, and whose idleness and frivolity and extravagance
set a most corrupting moral example. Also it has produced two and a half revolutions in political power, by
which the employers have overthrown the landed gentry, the financiers have overthrown the employers, and
the Trade Unions have half overthrown the financiers. I shall explain this fully later on; meanwhile, you have
seen enough of its effects in the rise of the Labor Party to take my word for it that politics will not stand
still any more than industry merely because millions of timid old fashioned people vote at every election for
what they call Conservatism : that is, for shutting our eyes and opening our mouths. If King Alfred had been
told that the time would come in England when one idle family would have five big houses and a steam yacht
to live in whilst hard-working people were living six in a room, and half starving at that, he would have said
that God would never allow such things to happen except in a very wicked nation. Well, we have left God out
of the question and allowed it to barren, not through wickedness, but through letting things alone and
fancying that they would let themselves alone. Have you noticed, by the way, that we no longer speak of
letting things alone in the old-fashioned way? We speak of letting them slide; and this is a great advance in
good sense; for it shews that we at last see that they slide instead of staying put; and it implies that
letting them slide is a feckless sort of conduct. So you must rule out once for all the notion of leaving things
as they are in the expectation that they will stay where they are. They wont. All we can do in that line is
to sit idly and wonder what will happen next. And this is not like sitting on the bank of the stream waiting
for the water to go by. It is like sitting idly in a carriage when the horse is running away. You can excuse it
by saying "What else can I do?" ; but your impotence will not avert a smash. People in that predicament
must all think hard of some way of getting control of the horse, and meanwhile do all they can to keep
the carriage right side up and out of the ditch.
The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the Government should never interfere with
business or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has broken down
so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago,
and is still influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who naturally would like to be allowed
to make money as they please without regard to the interests of the public.
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? Chapter 14
WE seem now to have disposed of all the plans except the Socialist one. Before grappling with that, may I
call your attention to something that happened in our examination of most of the others. We were trying to
find out a sound plan of distributing money; and every time we proposed to distribute it according to personal
merit or achievement or dignity or individual quality of any sort the plan reduced itself to absurdity. When
we tried to' establish a relation between money and work we were beaten: it could not be done. When we
tried to establish a relation between money and character we were beaten. When we tried to establish a
relation between money and the dignity that gives authority we were beaten. And when we gave it up as a
bad job and thought of leaving things as they are we found that they would not stay as they are. Let us
then consider for a moment what any plan must do to be acceptable, And first, as everybody except the
Franciscan Friars and the Poar Clares will say that no' plan will be acceptable unless it abolishes poverty
(and even Franciscan poverty must be voluntary and not compelled) let us study poverty for a moment. It is
generally agreed that poverty is a very uncomfortable misfortune for the individual who happens to be poor.
But poor people, when they are not suffering from acute hunger and severe cold, are not more unhappy than
rich people: they are often much happier, You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as
they were at twenty; but not one of them will tell' you that they are ten times as happy. All the thoughtful
ones will assure you that happines_and unhappiness, are constitutional, and have nothing to do with money.
Money can cure hunger: it cannot cure unhappiness. Food can satisfy the appetite, but not the soul. A famous
German Socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, said that what beat him in his efforts to stir up the poor to revolt
against poverty was their wantlessness. They were not, of course content: nobody is; but they were not
discontented enough to take any serious trouble to change their condition. It may seem a fine thing to a poor
woman to have a large house, plenty of servants, dozens of dresses, a lovely complexion and beautifully
dressed hair. But the rich woman who has these things often spends a good deal of her time travelling in
rough places to get away from them. To have to spend two or three hours a day washing and dressing and
brushing and combing and changing and being messed about generally by a lady's maid is not on the face of it
a happier lot than to have only five minutes to spend on such fatigues, as the soldiers call them. Servants
are so troublesome that many ladies can hardly talk about anything else when they get together. A drunken
man is happier than a sober one: that is why unhappy people take to drink. There are drugs that will make
you ecstatically happy whilst ruining your body and soul. It is our quality that matters: take care of that,
and our happiness will take care of itself. People of the right sort are never easy until they get things
straight; but they are too healthy and too much taken up with their occupations to bother about happiness.
Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount: the objection to it is not that
it makes people unhappy, but that it degrades them; and the fact that they can be quite as happy in their
degradation as their betters are in their exaltation makes it worse. When Shakespear's king said “Then
happy low, lie down: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” he forgot that happiness is no excuse for
lowness. The divine spark in us flashes up against being bribed to submit to degradation by mere happiness,
which a pig or a drunkard can achieve. Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the
poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a
neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large
neighborhood. It's bad effects cannot be escaped by the rich. When poverty produces outbreaks of virulent
infectious disease, as it always does sooner or later, the rich catch the disease and see their children die of
it. When it produces crime and violence the rich go in fear of both, and are put to a good deal of expense to
protect their persons and property. When it produces bad manners and bad language the children of the rich
pick them up no matter how carefully they are secluded; and such seclusion as they get does them more
harm than good. If poor and pretty young women find, as they do, that they can make more money by vice
than by honest work, they will poison the blood of rich young men who, when they marry, will infect their
wives and children, and cause them all sorts of bodily troubles, sometimes ending in disfigurement and
blindness and death, and always doing them more or less mischief. The old notion that people can "keep
themselves to themselves" and not be touched by what is happening to their neighbors, or even to the people
who live a hundred miles off, is a most dangerous mistake. The saying that we are members one of another
is not a mere pious formula to be repeated in church without any meaning: it is a literal truth; for though
the rich end of the town can avoid living with the poor end, it cannot avoid dying with it when the plague
comes. People will be able to keep themselves to themselves as much as they please when they have made an
end of poverty; but until then they will not be able to shut out the sights and sounds and smells of poverty
from their daily walks, nor to feel sure from day to day that its most violent and fatal evils will not reach
them through their strongest police guards.
Besides, as long as poverty remains possible we shall never be sure that it will not overtake ourselves. If we
dig a pit for others we may fall into it: if we leave a precipice unfenced our children may fall over it when
they are playing. We see the most innocent and respectable families falling into the unfenced pit of poverty
every day; and how do we know that it will not be our turn next? It is perhaps the greatest folly of which a
nation can be guilty to attempt to use poverty as a sort of punishment for offences that it does not send
people to prison for. It is easy to say of a lazy man "Oh, let him be poor: it serves him right for being lazy:
it will teach him a lesson". In saying so we are ourselves too lazy to think a little before we lay down the
law. We cannot afford to have poor people anyhow, whether they be lazy or busy, drunken or sober, virtuous
or vicious, thrifty or careless, wise or foolish. If they deserve to suffer let them be made to suffer in
some other way; for mere poverty will not hurt them half as much as it will hurt their innocent neighbors. It
is a public nuisance as well as a private misfortune. Its toleration is a national crime.
We must therefore take it as an indispensable condition of a sound distribution of wealth that everyone must
have a share sufficient to keep her or him from poverty. This is not all together new. Ever since the days
of Queen Elizabeth it has been the law of England that nobody must be abandoned to destitution. If anyone,
however undeserving, applies far relief to the Guardians of the Poor as a destitute person, the Guardians
must feed and clothe and house that person. They may do it reluctantly and unkindly; they may attach to
the relief the most unpleasant and degrading conditions they can think of; they may set the pauper to
hateful useless work if he is able-bodied, and have him sent to prison if he refuses to do it; the shelter
they give him may be that of a horrible general workhouse in which the oId and the young, the sound and the
diseased, the innocent girl and lad and the hardened prostitute and tramp are herded together pramiscuously
to contaminate one another; they can attach a social stigma to the relief by taking away the pauper's vote
(if he has one) , and making him incapable of filling certain public offices or being elected to. certain public
authorities; they may, in short, drive the deserving and respectable poor to endure any extremity rather
than ask far relief; but they must relieve the destitute willy nilly if they do ask for it. To that extent the
law of England is at its root a Communistic law. All the harshnesses and wickednesses with which it is
carried out are gross mistakes, because instead of saving the country from the degradatian of poverty they
actually make poverty more degrading than it need be; but still, the principle is there. Queen Elizabeth said
that nobady must die of starvation and exposure. We, after the terrible experience we have had of the
effects of poverty on the whole nation, rich or poor, must go further and say that nobody must be poor. As
we divide-up our wealth day by day the first charge on it must be enough for everybody to be fairly
respectable and well-to-do. If they do anything or leave anything undone that gives ground far saying that
they do not deserve it, let them be restrained from doing it or compelled to do it in whatever way we
restrain or compel evildoers of any other sort; but do not let them, as poor people, make everyone else
suffer for their shortcomings.
Granted that people should not on any account be allowed to be poor, we have still to consider whether they
should be allowed to be rich. 'When poverty is gone, shall we tolerate luxury and extravagance? This is a
poser, because it is much easier to say what poverty is than what luxury is. When a woman is hungry, or
ragged, or has not at least one properly furnished room all to herself to sleep in, then she is clearly
suffering from poverty. When the infant mortality in one district is much greater than in another; when the
average age of death for fully grown persons in it falls far short of the scriptural threescore-and-ten; when
the average weight of the children who survive is below that reached by well-fed and well-cared-for
children, then you can say confidently that the people in that district are suffering from poverty. But
suffering from riches is not so' easily measured. That rich people do suffer a great deal is plain enough to
anyone who has an intimate knowledge of their lives. They are so unhealthy that they are always running
after cures and surgical operations of one sort or another. When they are not really ill they imagine they
are. They are worried by their property, by their servants, by their poor relations, by their investments, -
by the need for keeping up their social position, and, when they have several children, by the impossibility of
leaving these children enough to enable them to live as they have been brought up to live; for we must not
forget that if a married couple with fifty thousand a year have five children, they can leave only ten
thousand a year to each after bringing them up to live at the rate of fifty thousand, and launching them into
the sort of society that lives at that rate, the result being that unless these children can make rich
marriages they live beyond their incomes (not knowing how to live more cheaply) and are presently head over
ears in debt. They hand on their costly habits and rich friends and debts to their children and very little
else; so that the trouble becomes worse and worse from generation to generation; and this is how we meet
everywhere with ladies and gentlemen who have no means of keeping up their position; and are therefore
much more miserable than the common poor.
Perhaps you know some well-off families who do not seem to suffer from their riches. They do. not over eat
themselves; they find occupations to keep themselves in health; they do not worry about their position; they
put their money into safe investments and are content with a low rate of interest; and they bring up their
children to. live simply and do useful work. But this means that they do. not live like rich people at all, and
might therefore just as well have ordinary incomes. The general run of rich people do. not know what to do
with themselves; and the end of it is that they have to. join a round of social duties and pleasures mostly
manufactured by West End shopkeepers, and so tedious that at the end of a fashionable season the rich are
more worn out than their servants and tradesmen. They may have no. taste far sport; but they are farced
by their social pasition to go. to. the great race meetings and ride to hounds. They may have no taste for
music; but they have to. go. to the Opera and to. the fashionable concerts. They may not dress as they
please nor do what they please. Because they are rich they must do. what all the other rich people are
doing, there being nothing else far them to do. except work, which would immediately reduce them to. the
condition af ordinary people. So, as they cannot do what they like, they must contrive to like what they do.,
and imagine that they are having a splendid time of it when they are in fact being bored by their
amusements, humbugged by their doctors, pillaged by their tradesmen, and forced to. console themselves
unamiably far being snubbed by richer people by snubbing poorer people.
To escape this boredom, the able and energetic spirits go. into Parliament or into. the diplomatic service or
into the army, or manage and develop their estates and investments instead of leaving them to. solicitors and
stockbrokers and agents, or explore unknown countries with great hardship and risk to. themselves, with the
result that their lives are not different from the lives of the people who. have to do these things for a
living. Thus riches are thrown away an them; and if it were not far the_continual dread of falling into
poverty which haunts us all at present they would refuse to. be bothered with much property. The only
people who. get any special satisfaction out of being richer than others are those who enjoy being idle, and
like to fancy that they are better than their neighbors and be treated as if they were. But no country can
afford to pamper snobbery. Laziness and vanity are not virtues to be encouraged: they are vices to be
suppressed. Besides, the desire to be idle and lazy and able to order poor people about could not be
satisfied, even if it were right to satisfy it, if there were no poor people to order about. What we should
have would be, not poor people and rich people, but simply people with enough and people with more than
enough. And that brings up at last the knotty question, what is enough?
In Shakespear's famous play, King Lear and his daughters have an argument about this. His idea of enough is
having a hundred knights to wait on him. His eldest daughter thinks that fifty would be enough. Her sister
does not see what he wants with any knights at all when her servants can do all he needs for him. Lear
retorts that if she cuts life down to what cannot be done without, she had better throw away her fine
clothes, as she would be warmer in a blanket. And to this she has no answer.
Nobody can say what is enough. What is enough for a gipsy is not enough for a lady; and what is enough for
one lady leaves another very discontented. When once you get above the poverty line there is no reason why
you should stop there. With modern machinery we can produce much more than enough to feed, clothe, and
house us decently. There is no end to the number of new things we can get into the habit of using, or to the
improvements we can make in the things we already use. Our grandmothers managed to get on without gas
cookers, electric light, motor cars, and telephones; but today these things are no longer curiosities and
luxuries: they are matter-of-course necessities; and nobody who cannot afford them is considered well-off.
In the same way the standard of education and culture has risen. Nowadays a parlor maid as ignorant as
Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective. As Queen Victoria
managed to get on very well in spite of her ignorance it cannot be said that the_knowledge in which the
parlor maid has the advantage of her is a necessity of civilized life any more than a telephone is; but
civilized life and highly civilized life are different: what is enough for one is not enough for the other. Take
a half-civilized girl into a house; and though she may be stronger and more willing and good natured than
many highly civilized girls are, she will smash everything that will not stand the roughest handling. She will
be unable to take or send written messages; and as to understanding or using such civilized contrivances as
watches, baths, sewing machines, and electric heaters and sweepers, you will be fortunate if you can induce
her to turn off a tap instead of leaving the water running. And your civilized maid who can be trusted with
all these things would be like a bull in a china shop if she were let loose in the laboratories where highly
trained scientific workers use machines and instruments of such delicacy that their movements are as
invisible as that of the hour hands of our clocks, handling and controlling poisons and explosives of the most
dangerous kind or in the operating rooms where surgeons have to do things in which a slip of the hand might
prove fatal. If every housemaid had the delicacy of touch, the knowledge, and the patience that are needed
in the laboratories and operating theatres (where they are unfortunately not always forthcoming), the most
wonderful changes could be made in our housekeeping: we could not only have the present work done much
more quickly, perfectly, and cleanly, but we could do a great deal that is now quite impossible.
Now it costs more to educate and train a laboratory worker than a housemaid, and more to train a:
housemaid than to catch a savage. What is enough in one case is not enough in another. Therefore to ask
baldly how much is enough to live on is to ask an unanswerable question. It all depends on what sort of life
you propose to live. What is enough for the life of a tramp is not enough for a highly civilized life, with its
personal refinements and its atmosphere of music, art, literature, religion, science, and philosophy. Of these
things we can never have enough: there is always something new to be discovered and something old to be
bettered. In short, there is no such thing as enough civilization, though there may be enough of any
particular thing like bread or boots_at any particular moment. If being poor means wanting something more
and something better than we have_and it is hard to say what else feeling poor means-then we shall always
feel poor no matter how much money we have, because, though we may have enough of this thing or of that
thing, we shall never have enough of everything. Consequently if it be proposed to give some people enough,
and others more than enough, the scheme will break down; for all the money will be used up before anybody
will be content. Nobody will stop asking for more for the sake of setting up and maintaining a fancy class of
pampered persons who, after all, will be even more discontented than their poorer neighbors.
The only way out of this difficulty is to give everybody the same, which is the Socialist solution of the
distribution problem. But you may tell me that you are prepared to swallow this difficulty rather than
swallow Socialism. Most of us begin like that. What converts us is the discovery of the terrible array of
evils around us and dangers in front of us which we dare not ignore. You may be unable to see any beauty in
equality of income. But the least idealistic woman can see the disasters of inequality when the evils with
which she is herself in daily conflict are traced to it; and I am now going to shew you the connexion.
WHAT WE SHOULD BUY FIRST
To test the effects of our unequal division of the nation's. income on our national institutions and on the life
and prosperity of the whole people we must view the industry of the country, and see how it is affected by
inequality of income. We must view one by one the institution of marriage, the working of the courts of
justice, the honesty of our Houses of Parliament, the spiritual independence of the Church, the usefulness of
our schools, and the quality of our newspapers, and consider how each of them is dependent on the way in
which money is distributed. Beginning with industry, we are at once plunged into what we call political
economy, to distinguish it from the domestic economy with which we are all only too- familiar. Men find
political economy a dry and difficult subject: they shirk it as they shirk housekeeping; yet it means nothing
more abstruse_than the art of managing a country as a housekeeper manages a house. If the men shirk it
the women must tackle it. The nation has a certain income to manage on just as a housekeeper has; and the
problem is how to spend that income to the greatest general advantage. Now the first thing a housekeeper
has to settle is what things are wanted most, and what things can be done without at a pinch. This
means that the housekeeper must settle the order in which things are desirable. For example, if, when
there is not enough food in the house, she goes out and spends all her money on a bottle of scent and an
imitation pearl necklace, she will be called a vain and silly woman and a bad mother. But a stateswoman would
call her simply a bad economist: one who does not know what should come first when money has to be spent.
No woman is fit to have charge of a household who has not sense and seIf control enough to see that food
and clothing and housing and firing come first, and that bottles of scent and pearl necklaces, imitation or
real, come a long way afterwards. Even in the jeweller's shop a wrist watch comes before a necklace as
being more useful. I am not saying that pretty things are not useful: they are very useful and quite right in
their proper order; but they do not come first. A Bible may be a very proper present to give to a child; but
to give a starving child a Bible instead of a piece of bread and a cup of milk would be the act of a lunatic. A
woman's mind is more wonderful than her flesh; but if her flesh is not fed her mind will perish, whereas if
you feed her flesh her mind will take care of itself and of her flesh as well. Food comes first.
Think of the whole country as a big household, and the whole nation as a big family, which is what they
really are. What do we see? Half-fed, badly clothed, abominably housed children all over the place; and the
money that should go to feed and clothe and house them properly being spent in millions on bottles of scent,
pearl necklaces, pet dogs, racing motor cars, January strawberries that taste like corks, and all sorts of
extravagances. One sister of the national family has a single pair of leaking boots that keep her sniffing all
through the winter, and no handkerchief to wipe her nose with. Another has forty pairs of high-heeled shoes
and dozens of handkerchiefs. A little brother is trying to grow up .on a penn'orth of food a day, and is
breaking his mother's heart and' wearing out her patience by asking continually for more, whilst a big
brother, spending five or six pounds on his dinner at a fashionable hotel, followed by supper at a night club,
is in the doctor's hands because he is eating and drinking too much. Now this is shockingly bad political
economy. When thought less people are asked to explain it they say "Oh, the woman with the forty shoes
and the man drinking at the night club got their money from their father who made a fortune by speculating
in rubber; and the girl with the broken boots, and the troublesome boy whose mother has just clouted his
head, are only riffraff from the slums". That is true; but it does not alter the fact that the nation that
spends money on champagne before it has provided enough milk for its babies, or gives dainty meals to
Sealyham terriers and Alsatian wolf-hounds and Pekingese dogs whilst the infant mortality rate shews that
its children are dying by thousands from insufficient nourishment, is a badly managed, silly, vain, stupid,
ignorant nation, and will go to the bad in the long run no matter how hard it tries to conceal its real condition
from itself by counting the pearl necklaces and Pekingese dogs as wealth, and thinking itself three times as
rich as before when all the pet dogs have litters of six puppies a couple. The only way in which a nation can
make itself wealthy and prosperous is by good housekeeping: that is, by providing for its wants in the order
of their importance, and allowing no money to be wasted on whims and luxuries until necessities have been
thoroughly served.
But it is no use blaming the owners of the dogs. All these mischievous absurdities exist, not because any sane
person ever wanted them to exist, but because they must occur whenever some families are very much richer
than others. The rich man, who, as husband and father, drags the woman with him, begins as everyone else
begins, by buying food, clothing, and a roof to shelter them. The poor man does the same. But when the poor
man has spent all he can afford on these necessaries, he is still short of them: his food is insufficient; his
clothes are old and dirty; his lodging is a single room or part of one, and unwholesome even at that. But when
the rich man has fed himself, and dressed himself, and housed himself as sumptuously as possible, he has
still plenty of money left to indulge his tastes and fancies and make a show in the world. Whilst the poor
man says_"I want more bread, more clothes, and a better house for my family; but I cannot pay for them",
the rich man says "I want a fleet of motor cars, a yacht, diamonds and pearls for my wife and daughters,
and a shooting box in Scotland. Money is no object: I can pay and overpay them ten times over". Naturally
men of business set to work at once to have the cars and the yacht made, the diamonds dug out in Africa,
the pearls fished for, and the shooting lodge built, paying no attention to the poor man with his crying needs
and empty pockets.
To put the same thing in another way, the poor man needs to have labor employed in making the things he is
short of : that is, in baking, weaving, tailoring, and plain building; but he cannot pay the master bakers and
weavers enough to enable them to pay the wages of such labor. The rich man meanwhile is offering money
enough to provide good wages for all the work required to please him. All the people who take his money may
be working hard; but their work is pampering people who have too much instead of feeding people who have
too little; therefore it is misapplied and wasted, keeping the country poor and even making it poorer for the
sake of keeping a few people rich.
It is no excuse for such a state of things that the rich give employment. There is no merit in giving
employment: a murderer gives employment to the hangman; and a motorist who runs over a child gives
employment to an ambulance porter, a doctor, an undertaker, a clergyman, a mourning-dressmaker, a hearse
driver, a gravedigger: in short, to so many worthy people that when he ends by killing himself it seems
ungrateful not to erect a statue to him as a public benefactor. The money with which the rich give the wrong
sort of employment would give the right sort of employment if it were equally distributed; for then there
would be no money offered for motor cars and diamonds until everyone was fed, clothed, and lodged, nor any
wages offered to men and women to leave useful employments and become servants to idlers. There would be
less ostentation, less idleness, less wastefulness, less uselessness; but there would be more food, more
clothing, better houses, more security, more health, more virtue: in a word, more real prosperity.
EUGENICS
THE question has been asked, would the masses be any better for having more money? One's first impulse on
hearing such a silly question is to take the lady who asks it by the shoulders and give her a violent shaking.
If a fully fed, presentably clothed, decently housed, fairly literate and cultivated and gently mannered
family is not better than a half-starved, ragged, frowsy, overcrowded one, there is no meaning in words.
Still, let us not lose our tempers. A well-fed, clean, decently lodged woman is better than one trying to live
on tea and rashers in dirty clothes in a verminous garret. But so is a well-fed clean sow better than a
hungry dirty one. She is a sow all the same;
and you cannot make a silk purse out of her ear. If the common women of the future were to be no better
than our rich ladies today, even at their best, the improvement would leave us deeply dissatisfied. And that
dissatisfaction would be a divine dissatisfaction. Let us consider, then, what effect equality of income would
have on the quality of our people as human beings.
There are some who say that if you want better people you must breed them as carefully as you breed
thoroughbred horses and pedigree boars. No doubt you must; but there are two difficulties. First, you cannot
very well mate men and women as you mate bulls and cows, stallions and mares, boars and sows, without
giving them any choice in the matter. Second, even if you could, you would not know how to do it, because you
would not know what sort of human being you wanted to breed. In the case of a horse or a pig the matter is
very simple: you want either a very fast horse for racing or a very strong horse for drawing loads; and in
the case of the pig you want simply plenty of bacon. And yet, simple as that is, any breeder of these
animals will tell you that he has a great many failures no matter how careful he is.
The moment you ask yourself what sort of child you want, beyond preferring a boy or a girl, you have to
confess that you do not know. At best you can mention a few sorts that you dont want: for instance, you
dont want cripples, deaf mutes, blind, imbecile, epileptic, or drunken children. But even these you do not
know how to avoid as there is often nothing visibly wrong with the parents of such unfortunates. When you
turn from what you dont want to what you do want you may say that you want good children; but a good child
means only a child that gives its parents no trouble; and some very useful men and women have been very
troublesome children. Energetic, imaginative, enterprising, brave children are never out of mischief from
their parents' point of view. And grown-up geniuses are seldom liked until they are dead. Considering that we
poisoned Socrates, crucified Christ, and burnt Joan of Arc amid popular applause, because, after a trial by
responsible lawyers and Churchmen, we decided that they were too wicked to be allowed to live, we can
hardly set up to be judges of goodness or to have any sincere liking for it.
Even if we were willing to trust any political authority to select our husbands and wives for us with a view to
improving the race, the officials would be hopelessly puzzled as to how to select. They might begin with some
rough idea of preventing the marriage of persons with any taint of consumption or madness or syphilis or
addiction to drugs or drink in their families; but that would end in nobody being married at all, as there is
practically no family quite free from such taints. As to moral excellence, what model would they take as
desirable? St Francis, George Fox, William Penn, John Wesley, and George Washington? or Alexander,
Caesar, Napoleon, and Bismarck? It takes all sorts to make a world; and the notion of a Government
department trying to make out how many different types were necessary, and how many persons of each
type, and proceeding to breed them by appropriate marriages, is amusing but not practicable. There is
nothing for it but to let people choose their mates for themselves, and trust to Nature to produce a good
result.
"Just as we do at present, in fact," some will say. But that is just what we do not do at present. How much
choice has' anyone' among us when the time comes to choose a mate? Nature may-- , point out a woman's
mate to her by making her fall in love at first sight with the man who would be the best mate for her; but
unless that man happens to have about the same income as her father, he is out of her class and out of her
reach, whether above her or below her. She finds she must marry, not the man she likes, but the man she
can get; and he is not often the same mate.
The man is in the same predicament. We all know by instinct that it is unnatural to marry for money or
social position instead of for love; yet we have arranged matters so that we must all marry more or less for
money or social position or both. It is easy to say to Miss Smith or Miss Jones "Follow the promptings of
your heart, my dear; and marry the dustman or marry the duke, whichever you prefer". But she cannot
marry the dustman; and the duke cannot marry her; because they and their relatives have not the same
manners and habits; and people with different manners and habits cannot live together. And it is difference
of income that makes difference of manners and habits. Miss Smith and Miss Jones have finally to make up
their minds to like what they can get, because they can very seldom get what they like; and it is safe to
say that in the great majority of marriages at present Nature has very little part in the choice compared to
circumstances. Unsuitable marriages, unhappy homes, ugly children are terribly common; because the young
woman who ought to have all the unmarried young men in the country open to her choice, with dozens of other
strings to her bow in the event of her first choice not feeling a reciprocal attraction, finds that in fact she
has to choose between two or three in her own class, and has to allow herself to be much petted and
tempted by physical endearments, or made desperate by neglect, before she can persuade herself that she
really loves the one she dislikes least.
Under such circumstances we shall never get a well-bred race; and it is all the fault of inequality of income.
If every family were brought up at the same cost, we should all have the same habits, manners, culture,
and refinement; and the dustman's daughter could marry the duke's son as easily as a stockbroker's son now
marries a bank manager's daughter. Nobody would marry for money, because there would be no money to be
gained or lost by marriage. No woman would have to turn her back on a man she loved because he was poor,
or be herself passed for the same reason. All the disappointments would be natural and inevitable
disappointments; and there would be plenty of alternatives and consolations. If the race did not improve
under these circumstances, it must be unimprovable. And even if it be so, the gain in happiness by getting rid
of the heartbreak that now makes the world, and especially its women, so miserable, would make the
equalization of income worth while even if all the other arguments for it did not exist.
The Bad Doctor
Bill Frist’s long record of corporate vices
by Doug Ireland
While TV gushed last week over the Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a
traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a "Good Samaritan," in truth the GOP has simply
replaced a racist with a corporate crook.
Frist was born rich, and got richer — thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of
the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain
in the country, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the
scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-
decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the
federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth’s
executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can.
The government’s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently overbilled the government. The
deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams — which, on top of
previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the health-care conglomerate to a whopping
$1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.
The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal
shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called "one of the FBI’s highest-priority
white-collar crime investigations," no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided
over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor — and that includes Senator Frist’s
brother, Thomas, HCA’s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as
"one of the richest men in America," with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.
What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the
government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated
both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, "the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating
the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals
as a kickback for the doctors’ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never
expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture — and free drugs from hospital pharmacies."
This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment,
Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were
like "benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone." Apparently the senator considers defrauding
the government "benign." So too does the Bush White House, which dictated the Justice Department deal
with HCA that let the crooks escape jail just as Frist was being anointed the Senate’s majority leader. A
pure coincidence in timing, of course.
The senator has always claimed no current connection to HCA because the $26 million he and his wife hold in
the company’s stock is in a so-called "blind trust." But it was the family’s dirty money that bought Frist a
place in the Senate. In 1994, Frist — who’d never bothered to vote before first running for the Senate
that year — spent some $3.4 million of his personal fortune to buy the seat from Tennessee (HCA’s
headquarters) that he now occupies. Moreover, "In the Senate, Frist has used his influence to further HCA’s
cause by stopping a strong patients’ bill of rights, gridlocking a mandatory Medicare prescription-drug
benefit, and promoting caps on damages for victims who sue negligent hospitals like HCA’s," points out Jamie
Court, executive director of the Santa Monica–based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, who
adds, "The Senate should not replace a racist with a principal backer of one of the largest corporate
swindles ever perpetrated against the American public. If Frist was a patriot first, he would have sold his
HCA stock long ago."
But Frist’s pandering to the lobbyists of the voracious health-care industry knows no bounds. "Frist isn’t the
senator from Tennessee — he’s the senator from the state of Health Care Industry Influence — he’s gotten
more than $2 million from the health-care sector, giving him the dubious distinction of raising more cash
from health-care interests than 98 percent of his colleagues," says Nick Nyhart, executive director of
Public Campaign.
Consider the special servicing he gave to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. In another example of his
"patriotism," Frist engineered the insertion into the Homeland Security bill of a provision that would protect
Eli Lilly from lawsuits over Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in its vaccines. Thousands of
lawsuits have been filed against Lilly by parents who believe Thimerosal caused autism and other neurological
maladies in their kids. The Frist-authored rider shields Lilly by forcing those lawsuits into a special "vaccine
court," where they can be easily scuttled, potentially saving Lilly hundreds of millions. The pharmaceutical
industry was the largest single contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that
Frist chaired, ladling out some $4 million — and Lilly was the single biggest contributor to the GOP from that
industry, having given $1.6 million in the last election cycle, 79 percent of it to Republicans.
The good Dr. Frist voted against patients’ rights to sue their HMOs for failure to provide adequate
treatment, and voted to give tax subsidies to HMOs and insurance companies to offer prescription drugs to
seniors, rather than providing them through Medicare. Frist has, of course, personally raked it in from the
interested industries, gobbling up $123,750 in campaign cash from the HMOs and $265,023 from the
pharmaceutical industry. Frist also took $130,204 from the food-processing industry — and then helped kill
a bill putting teeth into the USDA’s authority to crack down on processing plants that violate federal
standards for bacterial and viral infection of meat and poultry.
There’s a lot more, like this — so much that it leads to an inescapable conclusion: In the Senate, "Good
Samaritan" Frist has almost daily violated the injunction of the physicians’ Hippocratic oath: "First, do no
harm."
Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?
By Michael I. Niman, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2002.
Paul Wellstone Dies in Tragic Plane Crash
The death of the Minnesota senator, the conscience of the Senate, will have a major impact on American
politics.
Paul Wellstone was the only progressive in the U.S. Senate. Mother Jones magazine once described him as,
"The first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. senate." He was also the last. Since defeating incumbent
Republican Rudy Boschowitz 12 years ago in a grassroots upset, Wellstone emerged as the strongest, most
persistent, most articulate and most vocal Senate opponent of the Bush administration.
In a senate that is one heartbeat away from Republican control, Wellstone was more than just another
Democrat. He was often the lone voice standing firm against the status-quo policies of both the Democrats
and the Republicans. As such, he earned the special ire of the Bush administration and the Republican Party,
who made Wellstone's defeat that party's number one priority this year.
Various White House figures made numerous recent campaign stops in Minnesota to stump for the ailing
campaign of Wellstone's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman. Despite being outspent and outgunned, however,
polls show that Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing
George Bush to wage war in Iraq. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and moving toward a victory that would
both be an embarrassment to the Bush administration and to Democratic Quislings such as Hillary Clinton who
voted to support "the president."
Then he died.
Wellstone now joins the ranks of other American politicians who died in small plane crashes. Another recent
victim was Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks
before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first
dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft,
despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators
determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."
Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first was Democratic
Representative Jerry Litton, whose plane crashed the night he won the Democratic nomination for senate in
1976. His Republican opponent ultimately captured the seat from his successor in November.
While an article in the New York Times on Saturday pointed out the danger politicians face due to their
heavy air travel schedules, the death of a senator or member of Congress is still relatively rare, with only
one other sitting U.S. Senator, liberal Republican John Heinz, dying in a plane crash since World War II.
Heinz, who entered office as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, later emerged as a strong
proponent of health care, social services, public transportation and the environment. He also urged
reconciliation with Cuba. He died when the landing gear on his small plane failed to function, and a helicopter
dispatched to survey the problem crashed into his plane.
One former senator, John Tower, also died in a small plane crash. Tower was best known as the chair of the
Tower Commission, which investigated the Reagan/Bush era Iran/Contra scandal.
Another member of a prominent government commission who died in a small plane crash was former
Democratic representative and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. Boggs was best known as one of the seven
members of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The
commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone when he killed the president. Boggs, it turns out,
had "strong doubts" that Oswald acted alone, but went along with the commission findings. Later, in 1971
and 1972, he went public with his doubts. He was presumed dead after the small plane carrying him and
Democratic Representative Nicholas Begich disappeared in 1972.
Texas Democratic Representative Mickey Leland also died in a plane crash. In his case, the six-term
member of Congress and outspoken advocate of sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa,
died while traveling in Ethiopia. Another American politician to die overseas in a plane crash was the Clinton
administration's Commerce Secretary, Ronald Brown, whose plane went down in the Balkans.
Anyone familiar with my work knows that I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But to be honest, I know I
wasn't alone in my initial reaction at this week's horrible and tragic news: that being my surprise that
Wellstone had lived this long. Perhaps it's just my anger and frustration at losing one of the few reputable
politicians in Washington, but I also felt shame. Shame for not writing in my column, months ago, that I felt
that Paul Wellstone's life, more so than any other politician in Washington, was in danger. I felt that such
speculation was unprofessional and would ultimately undermine my credibility. In the end, my own self-
interest triumphed, and I never put my concerns into print. Neither did any other mainstream journalist,
though I know of many who shared my concern.
When I heard Wellstone's plane went down, I immediately thought of Panamanian General Omar Torrijos,
who in 1981 thumbed his nose at the Reagan/Bush administration and threatened to destroy the Panama
Canal in the event of a U.S. invasion. Torrijos died shortly thereafter when the instruments in his plane
failed to function upon takeoff. Panamanians speculated that the U.S. was involved in the death of the
popular dictator, who was replaced by a U.S. intelligence operative, Manuel Noreiga, who previously worked
with George Bush Senior.
There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however,
is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by
an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone. For our government to maintain its credibility at
this time, we need an open and accountable independent investigation involving international participation into
the death of Paul Wellstone. Hopefully we will find out, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed
an untimely accident. For the sake of our country, we need to know this.
Dr. Michael I. Niman teaches journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College
When I was in Europe last time the CIA assasinated Pim Fortuyn, the candidate that was just about to win
the presidency in the Netherlands. In Germany Schroder was first elected because he promised the
policies of his Finance minister, Oskar LaFontaine. After Schroders victory the CIA told Lofontaine they
would try to kill him again if he didn't step down and this time they would make sure he didn't recover like
he did after they tried to kill him the first time. I was in Germany in the late 80's when the CIA blew up
the armored plated Mercedes of the head of the German Federal reserve because they didn't like his
monetary policy. The CIA assasinated the Swedish finance minister. Anyone interested in real democracy in
Europe can research these assasinations and Lofontaines history in Schroders government. Thats what these
sick fuckers from Texas call democracy.
Former Prime Minister of Saarland & Federal Minister of Finance a.D.
Oskar Lafontaine, born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Bonn and Saarbrücken, joined the SPD
(Social Democratic Party) in 1966. From 1970 to 1975 he was member of the SPD in Saarland. From 1974
to 1985 he became mayor of the town Saarbrücken and from 1977 to 1996 he was Chairman of the SPD in
Saarland. Since 1979 he has been a member of the Federal Board of the SPD.
In March 1985 he was first elected Prime Minister of Saarland and then re-elected in 1990 and 1994.
In June 1987 he was elected Deputy Chairman of the SPD and led the Commission "Fortschritt ‘90", which
developed the party programme for the elections in 1990. During this election Oskar Lafontaine stood as the
main candidate for his party.
On 25 April 1990 he was critically injured during an assassination attempt.
From 1991 to 1994 he was the Representative for cultural issues for the Bundesrepublik Germany within the
frame of the Treaty for German and French co-operation. From November 1992 until 31 October 1993 he
was President of the Federal Council (Upper House). From May 1995 until January 1996 Oskar Lafontaine
became Chairman of the Mediation Committee of the Federal Council (Upper House) and the ‘Bundestag’
(Lower House).
In November 1995 he became chairman for the SPD and was re-elected in December 1997.
In September 1998 he was elected as member of the German Bundestag.
After winning the elections, Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, appointed him Minister of Finance on
28 October 1998. On the 18 March 1999 Oskar Lafontaine stood down from this position.
Why did GM pull a successful electric car off the market in California a few months ago. A few months ago
the following article was in the Financial Times. It describes how Volkswagon was working on a car that would
258 miles per gallon and they just decided to stop development of the car. They justified their decision
saying nobody wants to pay $25,800 for a car that get 258 miles per gallon.
New Poll: Disapproval of Congress's Performance Highest since 1994
The Wall Street Journal | John Harwood | READ STORY | permalink
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that disapproval of Congress's performance is higher than it
has been since 1994, the year voters swept Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill. Americans have grown
gloomier about the nation's direction, the economy and Iraq, and by 65%-17% they say Congress doesn't
share their priorities.
"If you're a member of Congress ... you'd better be looking over your shoulder," says Democratic pollster
Peter Hart, who helps conduct the Journal/NBC survey. His Republican counterpart, Bill McInturff, adds that
a particular concern for incumbents looking to 2006 is unhappiness among senior citizens, a group that
disproportionately turns out to vote in midterm elections.
The Corporate Abuse-reform Cycle
By Edward Herman
We are at the peak of the latest corporate abuse-reform cycle in which business abuses have been so
severe, and their effects so conspicuous, that their low-key treatment and normalization by the mainstream
media has been unsustainable.
During the past year the media have featured the Enron collapse; the Enron (and many other) management's
conflict-of-interest dealings with and looting of their own company; Enron's (and other companies')
manipulation of electric power prices and looting of California consumers and taxpayers; the conflict-of-
interest and criminal actions of Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen; the role of the major banks in helping
Enron and others engage in various malpractices;
the disclosure that brokers had touted stocks underwritten by their investment banking department, but
which they privately derided as "a piece of junk" or "a piece of crap" (in the words of internet stock analysts
at Merrill Lynch); managerial overpayment and de facto looting via stock option plans, golden parachutes and
other forms of more or less legal theft, all on an obscene scale; and the utter failure of regulation to curb
these excesses.
The extensive publicity has sparked anger and distrust of business. Naturally, this distresses the corporate
community, and some of its members, along with the media, are in the phase of trying to repair the damage.
Business Week's Cover Story of June 24 was "Restoring Trust In Corporate America," with subtitle,
"Business Must Lead the Way to Real Reform."
This was the same problem that faced the business community during the Great Depression. Business abuses
of majestic proportions in the 1920s had helped inflate the stock market with borrowed money and unload on
the public vast quantities of sure-fire dogs issued in the United States and abroad. The Great Depression
collapsed these junkpiles and uncovered massive fraud in security markets and banking alike.
Some Wall Street dignitaries actually served prison time (notably, Richard Whitney, former president of the
New York Stock Exchange). Business had a huge public relations problem on its hands, which also provided an
environment in which REAL reform could take place. In 1934-35 this included creation of the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), public disclosure requirements for the sale of securities on the exchanges, the
Glass-Steagall Act's enforced separation of commercial and investment banking, and the dismantlement of
public utility holding companies.
These real reforms of the 1930s were fought bitterly by the bulk of the business community, although an
important segment did support them, considering them needed to make capitalism viable. The reforms were
softened and weakened in these struggles, but were unstoppable at that time. It is therefore of great
interest that as the business community has gained political and media muscle over the last two decades it
has succeeded in steadily eroding those earlier REAL reforms.
Reflecting this transformation, the word "reform" has come to mean deregulation, privatization, and faith
and trust in markets. During this period the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banking
and other limits on financial integration were removed, and regulation was weakened by inadequate funding,
damaging rule changes, and more frequent and blatant conflict-of-interest appointments of regulators.
For example, George W. Bush's appointee to head the SEC, corporate lawyer Harvey Pitt, had worked for
dozens of banks and security firms, the New York Stock Exchange, and all of the Big Five auditing firms,
including Arthur Andersen. He had helped the Big Five fend off regulatory constraints on the conflicts of
interest that were notable features of the Enron-Arthur Andersen relationship.
His conflicts of interest as a regulator are remarkable, almost co-extensive with the scope of securities
regulation. Unsurprisingly, Pitt does not support very strong legal or regulatory changes (Business Week notes
that his "proposal to put 'real teeth' into auditor discipline has some big gaps where the gums are showing").
The corporate community's (and Business Week's) call for business to lead the way to "real reform" thus
reeks of hypocrisy. Business took advantage of its advancing power to create an environment in which Enron,
Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, Citibank, Tyco International, et al., would thrive and be able to exploit
their increasing freedom from the controls of the earlier and effective REAL reforms.
Business was enthused about the Gingrich revolution of 1994 and is extremely pleased with George W. Bush,
who has been aggressively pushing the traditional business agenda, supporting consolidation and weakening
regulation. Business's successful drive to weaken labor, by diminishing the strength of a major countervailing
power, has made it easier to exploit pension fund money as well as elevate profit margins that can be
skimmed off by managers practically at will.
Although by now the media have given considerable attention to Enron and to managerial abuses across the
board, they have stopped short of examining in detail and exploring the political meaning of the links between
Enron et al. and George W. Bush and leading Democrats.
If all politically viable politicians are on the corporate take, this helps explain why the Enron phenomenon
could happen, and why Glass-Steagall could be eliminated and SEC regulation weakened. But this would make
it crystal clear that the developments leading to disaster were just what business wanted, and that the call
for "real reforms" by those who engineered these results, and their media front persons, must be treated
with the utmost skepticism.
The needed reforms enumerated by Business Week, suggested by the New York Stock Exchange, Business
Roundtable, and various business reformers, are exceedingly modest, and the reformers are perfectly frank
that the important thing is "renewing confidence" rather than doing much of substance. For many
businesspeople the abuses have been minor excesses, the worst of them by "bad apples." And there remains
great faith that "the market" can still be relied on to straighten things out in the long run.
For Business Week and the new business reformers, what is needed first and foremost are improved
standards of corporate governance-- most notably a board dominated by independent directors. They are
also pushing for constraints on stock option plans (like requiring that they be approved by vote of
stockholders), and improved accounting practices, perhaps helped along by audit company reform and
separation of auditing and consulting.
In the more radical proposals, very unlikely to be implemented, it is urged that stock option costs be
"expensed," meaning charged off at time of installation so that their costs to stockholders would be put on
the table when granted.
These proposals are remarkably thin and would have minimal effect on corporate behavior even if adopted,
which is far from certain.
It is hard to define "independent" directors in such a way as to assure the selection of directors who are not
dominated by the managements, as the top executives must choose or approve the directors, they frequently
have personal or business relations with the "independents," and the managers control the flow of information
to the directors.
In each abuse-reform cycle there is a call for more independent and active directors, and more firms than
ever have a majority of independent directors, but this only works when the management want it to work,
which is where it isn't much needed. When the managers want to dominate, they find this easy, unless the
company is in serious difficulties. In the boom phase of cycles, moreover, when things are going well and
stock prices are soaring, managers easily dominate and abuses can become egregious and extensive. (These
issues are discussed in detail in Herman, Corporate Control, Corporate Power, chaps. 2 and 7.)
Trying to constrain stock option plans by requiring a stockholder vote suffers from the fact that the
management usually gets a very large majority of the votes automatically in the proxy collection process, so
that its proposals are rarely shot down--corporate democracy is a mirage. It is argued, however, that
forcing the vote will still impose a publicity constraint on the abuse of stock options, and there is some small
element of truth in this.
But corporate proposals at stockholder meetings normally don't generate much publicity, and the options
usually only get out of hand in times of prosperity and euphoria when they are hidden beneath the trappings
of success. Furthermore, managements have shown great ingenuity in finding new modes of self-
aggrandizement when old ones suffer from adverse publicity.
The usual accounting reform proposals suffer from the fact that accounting firms are in a basic conflict-of
interest position: they are hired and paid by the managements whose business operations they are supposed
to audit independently. There are no "practical" proposals for reform on the table today for addressing this
problem (e.g., hiring auditors for only one year, or having them assigned by an outside body like the SEC).
Company accounting practices that mislead are currently under fire and may be repaired, but there is little
reason to believe that similar abuses won't crop up in the future under corporate pressure to show good
results.
Even a modest "real reform" today would call for a return to Glass Steagall and more, the selection of at
least a number of independent directors by major corporate constituencies like labor and local citizens groups,
a requirement that there be really independent auditors, and a renewed and strengthened SEC. These are
real (if modest) reforms.
More basic would be decentralization of the overconcentrated corporate system, including the media
conglomerates, and a strengthening of the labor movement, which would tip the scales toward a more
democratic capitalism and away from "corporate democracy" and plutocratic capitalism.
But at present even modest real reforms are unlikely. Capital was discredited and in disarray in the 1930s,
with the system in obvious crisis and the need for real reform undeniable. Ironically, one reason why the
crisis today is not as severe as in the 1930s is that the government sector is relatively as well as
absolutely much larger, helping reduce the impact of private instability, a benefit of Big Government that
neoliberals are doing their best to rectify.
So, with the help of Big Government, capital remains in complete command and still rides high, despite Enron,
the looting, and the New Economy collapse. The media and major political parties are its agents, allies or
hostages; market ideology reigns supreme despite the growing evidence of deregulation's failures; and the
corporate community is well on its way to riding out this new crisis with the most nominal reforms, if any at
all.
Sharing The Sacrifice
Chuck Collins
March 23, 2005
It's been two years since the United States first entered Iraq, but for the majority of Americans—those
lucky enough not to have loved ones serving in the Middle East—this doesn't feel like wartime. That's
because there's been little interest in Congress about the compromises of war. And no one is less concerned
about shared sacrifice than the wealthy, who are getting permanent tax cuts while the war bill is passed
onto our children. Chuck Collins of United For A Fair Economy explains why now is the worst possible time to
abolish the estate tax—our only tax on accumulated wealth.
Collins is senior fellow at United for a Fair Economy ( www.faireconomy.org) and co-author, with Bill Gates
Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes.
In one America, we hold bake sales to buy Kevlar bulletproof vests for family members deployed to Iraq. In
another America, lobbyists press to abolish the estate tax, America's only tax on accumulated wealth. This
will ensure that the children of multimillionaires—who are not losing sleep over insufficient body armor—will
harvest unlimited inheritances into the millions and billions.
As we mark the second anniversary of the Iraq mission, there is a stunning inequality of sacrifice on the
home front. The Bush administration and congressional leaders have shown little interest in the symbolism,
let alone practice, of shared sacrifice. There are no tire drives, no calls for rationing, nor any moral duty to
share in the costs of the war.
The war managers are determined to isolate the domestic sacrifice and losses for this war to as few
families as possible—largely to those waiting for loved ones to return from duty in Iraq.
But the war has a steep financial price tag. The Iraq operation has cost us more than $155 billion to date,
with more to come. Instead of taxing our citizenry to pay for this war, Congress is deferring the bill to the
next generation in the form of whopper deficits. And instead of taxing the wealthy, we are now about to
pass permanent tax cuts for multimillionaires.
Never in the history of U.S. wartime has Congress pushed tax cuts—let alone permanent tax cuts.
Historically, the opposite has been true: Wealth has been "conscripted," in the form of progressive income
and estate taxes, to at least symbolize that everyone is contributing in some way.
The estate tax has been a wartime tax. The first federal tax on wealth was levied in 1797, as our country
was faced with the escalating costs of responding to French attacks on American shipping. During the Civil
War and the Spanish-American War, inheritance taxes were instituted, to be repealed only after war debts
were retired.
The 1916 law establishing our current estate tax was given a tremendous push by entry into World War I
and the need for revenue. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that national
domestic unity against Hitler depended on a sense of shared sacrifice—not just by G.I. Joe and Rosie the
Riveter—but also by the Rockefellers.The estate tax was increased so that fortunes exceeding $50 million
would be taxed at a 70 percent rate.
Our present inequality of sacrifice is not lost on some veterans' groups. "During the Civil War, rich people
could buy their way out of the draft," said Charlie Richardson, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out.
"Now, the wealthy don't have to pay anything to avoid the draft and they get tax cuts on top."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently observed that times of war in U.S. history have been times of
domestic sacrifice. "In the past year, we have approved legislation containing billions and billions of dollars—in
pork-barrel projects, huge tax breaks for the wealthy and a corporate tax bill estimated to cost $180
billion. This is a far cry from sacrifice."
The sustained push to abolish the estate tax has been financed by some of the wealthiest families in
America, including the Walton, Mars and Gallo clans. These families, underrepresented in mess tents outside
Fallujah, are not interested in a compromise estate tax reform that keeps our nation strong and secure while
protecting veterans' services and America's family farms and small businesses.
Young Americans are putting their lives on the line to serve their country in Iraq, while those who are
whining about the estate tax are fighting to keep every last cent. A time of war is no time to eliminate the
estate tax.
