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Everyone's getting rich! And other common sense. by
Bob Harris
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Everyone's Getting Rich!
Or so screams the cover of Money magazine's May issue.
On which planet, Money doesn't specify.
Beneath the headline stands an upper-class white couple wearing blue and red
- literally embodying the American flag, intentionally or not - on a lawn,
crudely retouched into a literal field of green.
The clear message: if you're not getting rich, you're an un-American loser.
But not to worry: inside are Money's top 10 recommended stock investments.
None of which will help much if you don't have tens of thousands of dollars
lying around to invest.
So who, pray tell, does common sense tell you "Everyone" is?
I'm driving down LaBrea in Hollywood with two friends a few months ago (I'll
call them Larry and Moe). In the course of a discussion of President Clinton's
shockingly steady popularity, one of them attributes it - as is common - to
the terrific economy.
So I respond that the economy isn't terrific at all. As a matter of fact, it
sucks.
(I'm a lot less articulate when I'm bonding with my male friends.)
My friends express shock at such heresy.
Larry is an honors graduate of Georgetown University who, despite his
education and effort, still struggles with two part-time jobs and barely gets
by. Moe is an actor who, after years of pavement-pounding, finally landed a
small, recurring role in "Buff), The Vampire Slayer," putting him in the upper
2% of income earners in his profession, which means he can afford a
one-bedroom apartment. Moe also qualifies for health insurance through his
union, a luxury the vast majority of other members don't receive because they
don't make enough money.
Even where we are - a relatively nice part of town - homeless people with
shopping carts sit hopelessly in bus shelters near almost every stoplight. On
our left, we'll soon pass a grocery store well-known for union-busting. On our
right, we're approaching a McDonald's whose counter staff has worked 60 years
for something close to minimum wage.
If we hang a left and drive a bit, we'll pass the closed gates of several
small specialty stores, followed by a strip mall anchored by the big, boxy
building supply store that drove the smaller stores out of business. Outside
the big box on weekday mornings, you can often see poor men, many with
families, lining up, hoping maybe a contractor buying supplies will hire them
as day laborers with no benefits or security.
All of which is in plain sight.
And still my intelligent, good-hearted, well-educated friends need a lengthy
explanation.
A recent Louis Harris poll discovered that only about half of all American
adults can answer even the simplest economic questions. Here, try one:
If the price of beef doubled and the price of poultry stayed the same,
people would most likely buy:
A. More poultry and less beef. B. Less poultry and more beef C. The same
amount of poultry and beef.
(If you need me to tell you the answer, please remove your wallet, proceed
to the nearest public space, and begin hurling ali your cash at total
strangers. You probably already do this every day without realizing it.)
Given 20 such questions, less than a third of Americans scored a C or
better.
Half of the adults and two-thirds of the high school students received an F.
Here's some other stuff not enough people understand, the results of decades
of policies and laws designed to benefit Money's concept of Everyone at the
expense of everyone else:
In the 1970s, the top 1% of households had about 20% of the national wealth.
This was widely considered excessive. Today, the percentage of wealth they
control is over 40% and climbing.
Thirty years ago, about 10% of American households were broke, with a net
worth of zero or less. Fifteen years ago, that number was about 15%. Today the
number is almost 20%.
Most Americans have a lower net worth than they did 15 years ago, when this
greatest stock market rally in history began. The bottom two-fifths of
households have lost about 80% of their average net worth. The middle fifth
has lost about 11%. The richest 1% of America owns more wealth than the entire
bottom 95% combined, and the inequality is increasing.
Twenty years ago, a typical big-time corporate CEO was paid about 40 times
what an average worker received. CEOs today are paid almost 420 times as much.
Jack Welch, the GE CEO who eliminated 128,000 jobs, is paid $83.6 million
annually.
Meanwhile, after what economists will soon call the longest economic
expansion in U.S. history, 20% of all American children now grow up in
poverty.
And Money can write "Everyone's Getting Rich!" in giant letters across the
cover.
We hear the idea so frequently these days - often expressed by corporate
media pundits with six- and seven-figure incomes - we even actually believe
it, though our own eyes might protest.
Bathed as we are in ignorance and corporate propaganda, these numbers might
seem stunning.
How handy it is to have the real world around to check them against.
One final note: It's about 3 a.m. on May 10th as I write this. I just did
the math. If you had bought this issue of Money when it hit the racks, and
obediently bought 100 shares of ali 10 can't-miss picks, you'd be (down) 2%.
Whoops. Maybe even "Everyone" gets screwed sometimes.
Cool.
Resource: United for a Fair Economy, www.stw.org.
Bob Harris is a radio commentator, the author of the cybercolumn, The Scoop,
and a stand-up comedian. Harris www.bobharris.com; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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