No Money Left? You’re Looking in the Wrong Places.
A protester in Madison has the answer to the state's budget shortfall. Photo: Peter Patau.- Login or register to post comments
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The U.S. government budget deficit is now $1.5 trillion, and political leaders in most states are wringing their hands and crying in unison: “There’s just no money.”
Led by Republicans, the only solution, they say, is to cut, cut, cut. And while they push draconian cuts in education, health care, pensions, public workers, Social Security, and Medicare, they also attack the one social group that’s had the clout to achieve and protect these gains—the unions.
Workers’ pensions are not the cause of the economic crisis hittingWisconsin and other states. That crisis, of course, stems from the crash in the economy that started with a massive Wall Street scam. Financial firms packaged toxic mortgages and sold them to pension funds and other investors as good investments. Their fraud dragged everyone down.
Wall Street has recovered. The New York State comptroller reports its profits are up by 720 percent since 2007. How can there not be enough money for needed social services?
Actually, there’s tons of money. Billions of dollars. The problem is that it’s not available to meet everyone’s needs because the giant corporations and the rich have taken it.
Corporations paid 33 percent of all taxes collected by the federal government in 1953, according
