The evidence continues to mount that the GOP's insistent demands for still further reductions in federal, state and local spending have exacerbated and prolonged the current recession. In response, advocates for austerity measures have now begin to argue that demands for increased government programs to lift the economy and to reign in abusive business practices are nothing less than an assault upon free enterprise itself.
Former New Hampshire U.S. Senator John Sununu is a case in point. In an opinion column in today's Boston Globe
( "Apple, not manufacturing, is America's future," January 30, 2011),
Sununu showed that he is oblivious to the daily economic struggle of a
majority of Americans who must grapple with high unemployment,
declining wages, mortgage foreclosures, lack of access to affordable
medical insurance, loss of retirement savings and diminished prospects
for themselves, their children and their grandchildren.
In his column, Sununu argued that we should not lament the loss of
manufacturing. In order to support the proposition that corporations
like Apple represent the future for America, Sununu had to ignore all of
the evidence to the contrary. Previously for example, Charles Duhigg
and Keith Bradsher reported in the New York Times ("How the U.S. Lost
out on iPhone Work," January 21, 2012) that nearly all of the 70 million
iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other assorted products sold
by Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas, primarily in China
by third-party vendors with whom Apple contracts for services and
products.
One facility alone, Foxconn, employed
230,000 workers, who often worked six days a week, in shifts that lasted
12 hours per day. More than a quarter of Foxconn's work force was
reported to live in company barracks; many workers earned less than $17 a
day; and the intolerable working conditions within its facilities have
led to suicides and explosions from aluminum dust that killed and
injured scores of workers. By contrast, Apple employs only 43,000 people
in the United States and 20,000 overseas.
As a result
of its exploitation of these workers, the New York Times article noted
that Apple made a profit of $400,000 per each of it's actual employees, a
sum greater than that made by Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil and Google.
In response to that data, one current Apple executive stated, We sell
iPhones in over a hundred countries, We don't have an obligation to
solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product
possible."
Sununu's enthusiasm for Apple's business model
is expansive: "In just ten years, the market value of Apple has grown
from $7 billion to over $400 billion. The return for mutual funds and
pension funds owning the stock have been outstanding, and thousands of
employees have earned financial security." That enthusiasm, however, is
not tempered by any recognition that, for millions of middle class
Americans who do not directly own Apple stocks, the stock market has
been an unmitigated disaster.
CNN News reported that,
on September 29, 2008, the Dow Jones lost nearly 778 points, in the biggest
single-day point loss ever, after the GOP House rejected the
government's $700 billion bank bailout plan. The day's loss totaled
approximately $1.2 trillion in market value, the first post-$1 trillion
day ever recorded, according to the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, the
broadest measure of the stock market. As a result, many middle income
investors lost their life savings and have never recovered.
Apple's predatory business practices and the out-sourcing of U.S.
manufacturing must be viewed in the context of the American economy as a
whole. Numerous studies report that more than 47 million Americans,
including 9 million children, do not have health insurance. A study by
Harvard University Medical School in 2009 attributed that the lack of
medical insurance to about 45,000 deaths per year in the U.S.
Researchers for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2010 reported
that 17.2 million households - or 14.5 % of all households in the United
States - were "food insecure" and that in one-third of those households
"normal eating patterns were disrupted." In 3.9 million of those
households, children went hungry.
As the real unemployment
rate climbed to approximately 20 million Americans in 2011, another 2.6
million Americans, according to the Census Bureau, descended into
poverty. Almost simultaneously, the World Bank observed that the United
States had a higher level of income inequality than Canada, South Korean
or any country in Europe with the exception of Turkey.
In
October of last year, the Internal Revenue Service and the Congressional
Budget Office released findings which showed that the top 1% of the
American population continued to receive a disproportionate share of the
country's wealth. In 2009, the 1.4 million who belong to the top 1%
made an average of $1 million dollars in 2009. Further, since 1979, the
share of U.S. Income enjoyed by the top 1% has increased from 9.18% to
17.9% as of 2009, or more than the entire bottom half of the U.S.
population.
Almost simultaneously, Forbes magazine
reported that, as of November, 2011, the four hundred richest Americans
enjoyed a combined worth of $1.53 trillion, which figure had increased
from $1.37 trillion over the previous year. Their combined wealth was
thus approximately equivalent to the GDP of Canada.
Sununu does correctly note a shortfall of trained U.S. works, including
scientists and engineers. He, however, refuses to recognize that the
same austerity measures that he and other GOP leaders have advocated
have caused the lay-offs of thousands of public school teachers around
the United States and forced state governments to cut back significantly
their investments in pubic higher education.
Today's
Republican Party has become an apologist for an economic status-quo
that is stacked against ordinary Americans The net effect of the
extraordinary concentration of wealth and power has been that the
decisions and predilections of fewer and fewer individuals now determine
the outcomes in the American economy while the overwhelming majority of
Americans have little ability to influence macro-economic trends or
economic and political policies.
In the alternate
economic universe that so many GOP members inhabit, the enormous wealth
now enjoyed by a mere 1% of the population should be an object of
public celebration rather than the focus of civic opprobrium or class
envy. As Erasmus once observed, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed
man is king."
