no, it is about 100 years.
G
http://www.glocom.org/opinions/essays/20040301_tsurumi_president/
President George Bush and the Gilded Age
by Yoshi Tsurumi, Professor of International Business, Baruch College,
the
City University of New York
March 1, 2004
Something really strange has happened to the U.S. under the Bush
Administration. With her ever bulging budget deficits and foreign
debts,
America's skewed income distribution is rapidly making the U.S.
resemble
Argentina or Mexico. The "Jobless Recovery" is not a political mirage,
but a
serious problem. America's GDP is increasing at an annual rate of about
4.0%
this year. But, only those Wall Street "money gamers" and self-dealing
"management aristocrats" of Corporate America are dizzy with their huge
bonuses, padded salaries, and self-dealt stock options. The remaining
hard
working Americans cannot eat "GDP." The U.S. has widening income gap
between
a few "haves" and many "have-nots."
During the last economic recovery period of March 1991 to April 1993, a
10%
increase in GDP increased manufacturing jobs and service jobs 3% and
5.9%
respectively. However, for the present economic recovery since November
2001, a 10% increase in GDP is increasing manufacturing and service
jobs
only 0.7% and 0.9% respectively. Just to keep up with her population
growth,
the U.S. needs to create about 230,000 jobs a month. If the U.S. wants
to
employ the 3 million unemployed workers thrown out of work under the
Bush
Administration, the U.S. would have to create a lot more jobs monthly.
Last
month, however, the U.S. only created 115,000 jobs. President Bush has
now
abandoned his earlier declared promise of "creating 2.6 million jobs by
the
fall of 2004."
The unemployed rate of January this year was 5.6%, dipping only 0.1
percentage point. President Bush hailed it as the "unemployment
declines for
four months in a row." In reality, however, the U.S. has had four
months of
consecutive decline in the unemployment rate because so many formerly
"unemployed" became too discouraged to keep seeking jobs and were
eliminated
from the unemployment statistics. The U.S. has over 5 million part-time
job
holders who want full time jobs but cannot find them. In addition, the
U.S.
has 8 million persons who have had to settle for full time jobs paying
far
less than their previous jobs. The "jobless recovery" and the widening
income gaps are aggravated by massive migrations of good paying
manufacturing and service jobs abroad. Such migrations have been
accelerated
by President Bush's misguided tax cuts.
At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student
of
mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that
"people
are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social
security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To
him,
the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the
Securities
Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market
competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."
Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's
Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her
Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President
Bush
and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl
Rove,
are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic
political,
social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and
moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal.
In June 2003, Bill Moyers said that "Karl Rove has modeled the Bush
presidency on that of William Mckinley (1897-1901) and modeled himself
on
Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Mark Hanna saw
to
it that Washington was ruled by business, railroads, and public utility
corporations." President Bush's tax cuts have given over 93% of their
benefits to large corporations and well-to-do households with over
250,000
dollars of annual income (about 10% of the U.S. households). Moreover,
President Bush's tax cuts are abolishing taxes on such asset-based
income as
stock dividends and capital gains.
He is opposed to taxing management aristocrats' self-dealt stock
options
(salary payment in kind). He is opposed to requiring the corporations
to
treat such stock options as their personnel expenses. More than
anything
else, management aristocrats' stock options are encouraging many
corporations to abandon manufacturing-and-supply procurements at home
and
switching to imports from China and other lower-wage countries. He is
phasing out estate taxes. All these measures are transforming the past
"potbelly flower vase" shape of the U.S. income distribution to the
"bottom-heavy hour glass" shape.
This was the same kind of income distribution that the U.S. built
during the
McKinley-Gilded Age. There was no Securitiesy Exchange Commission to
check
"creative accounting" and Enron-WorldCom like malfeasance of
corporations.
America had poor public schools and medical care. There was no minimum
wage
or labor standard. Both federal and state governments and courts were
hostile to labor unions and civic groups protesting the "injustices" of
the
society. The natural environment was ravaged by railroads, mining,
lumbering, and newly emerging oil and gas firms. Abortion was illegal.
Women
did not even have the vote. In the South, Christian fundamentalists
were
pressuring public schools to stop teaching Charles Darwin's evolution
theories. During the McKinley-Gilded Age, America's democracy
atrophied. And
America embarked on her imperialistic expansions of colonising Cuba,
Panama,
and the Philippines.
