If you want to know the political news, read the business pages.
It’s all about the money.
Sure, this is a subsidy, and for those who need it – which, increasingly are many (50/311 Million, or 16% of the American population) – it is a life saver. Eventually however, it is an indirect subsidy upon private enterprise. Again, not that it is bad, per se, but that without regulation to prevent abuse of smaller businesses by large, powerful multi-national corporations and their denizen hordes of attorneys, regulations must be enacted.
Part of the greater problem is – according to the CIA World Factbook – that
“Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Since 1996, dividends and capital gains have grown faster than wages or any other category of after-tax income. Long-term problems include inadequate investment in deteriorating infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable current account and budget deficits – including significant budget shortages for state governments – energy shortages, and stagnation of wages for lower-income families.”
As Robert Reich and others observed,
“Corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them abroad.
“Meanwhile, the wealthy don’t create jobs, and giving them additional tax cuts won’t bring unemployment down. America’s rich are already garnering a bigger share of American income than they have in eighty years. They’re using much of it to speculate in the stock market. All this has done is drive stock prices higher.”
So it seems that the bottom-line question is, and remains: How do we correct & rectify the problem of gross income inequity?
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Kraft warns on US food stamp cut plans
September 9, 2012 10:06 pm
By Alan Rappeport in Washington
Proposals to impose deep cuts on the $75bn US food stamp programme could eat into profits Read the rest of this entry »
Warm Southern Breeze 