WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
By Michael Parenti
It is no mystery what needs to be done to improve our economy and the lives
of our people. We all know what should be done:
*With the end of the Cold War the military budget should be cut by two-thirds
within a few years or so. We need to eliminate expensive, wasteful weapons
projects, cut down the forces; shut many of those 300 military bases abroad.
Those bases really serve the people who worry about their oil, their timber,
their cotton, their cheap labor, and the depressed conditions there.
*Eliminate the billions of dollars in foreign aid to corrupt autocracies
engaged in oppressing their own peoples and other peoples. Abolish the ClA's
covert action and death squad programs. End the U.S.-sponsored war against
the poor of the world. It's very expensive to maintain that global military
machine. End that war.
*Stop attacking and destabilizing governments that pursue independent self-development,
whether they're populist nationalists like Panama was, whether they're Christian
Socialists like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, whether they're Marxist-Leninists
like Cuba, whether they're Islamic progressives like Libya, whether they're
right-wing nationalists like Iraq. They all committed one sin: they didn't
want to be cows milked by the multinationals; they wanted the development
of their own countries.
*Eliminate the manned space program, the $30 billion boondoggle white elephant.
Eliminate SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative, to guard us against Russian
missiles that Yeltsin wants to point at Cuba now. Yeltsin wants to join
NATO: what do we need this SDI for?
*Eliminate the billion dollar welfare handouts to rich corporations and
rich agribusiness. Let them try living up to their free market rhetoric
and principles. Start seriously enforcing the antitrust laws to reverse
the trend toward concentrated monopolistic and unproductive economic power.
*Put a cap on the hundreds of millions of dollars that CEOs pocket from
their companies' earnings.
*Re-introduce the progressive income tax for rich individuals and corporations
without the many loopholes and deductions that still exist. Also introduce
the inheritance tax for the very rich. Even a 1 percent tax on assets, on
wealth, most of which would be paid by the 840,000 super rich families,
would generate a hundred billion dollars annually and cut the budget. This
would be an asset tax.
*Engage in concerted efforts at conservation and ecological restoration,
including a massive cleanup of land, air, and water along with the development
of alternative energy sources, such as thermal, tidal, and solar power.
The most important single issue that faces us is the issue of ecology, the
survival of the planet. If that issue fails, then everything else we're
doing is nothing but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
*Develop mass-transit systems like the monorail that the Japanese have.
The technology is all there. These trains go 200-300 miles per hour and
there's never been an injury of any kind or a derailment. Develop these
mass-transit systems within and between cities, with safe, economical transportation
minimizing the horrible ecological effects of traffic. That will create
enormous numbers of jobs.
*Initiate a massive employment project that would put jobless people back
to work cleaning up the environment, building new housing, mass transportation,
services for the aged and infirm.
Many empires begin to decay when they are at their height of military power;
the "martial" state devours the resources that would otherwise
have gone to develop the more productive civilian sector. The rulers of
this country preside over one of those empires; they are able to interject
U.S. power into every corner of the globe while unable to deal with basic
problems at home.
When the many begin to struggle back against the few, that is when they
start to call it "class warfare." The minute the Democrats start
talking about taxing the rich they are accused of class warfare, George
Bush even said that it was "envy and jealousy." When I see somebody
go by in a Rolls Royce, and I then see somebody sleeping in a doorway, it's
not envy that I feel. I don't want to change places with the rich. I don't
want a Rolls Royce. I just don't want to live in a society where most have
to live in want and insecurity so that the Bushes can maintain their lifestyle.
We don't want to change places with the rich. We just want to get them off
our backs. We just want them to stop ruining our lives and our society and
our environment-that's what we want. And by the rich, I don't necessarily
mean rich individuals. I mean the conglomerates of wealth and power that
run this society, that engineer and finance its elections, that manage policy,
that devised an undemocratic and secretive state to distort or limit or
make irrelevant democratic governments, that treat this environment that
belongs to all of us as if it was their personal disposable septic tank.
And, if challenging them is class warfare, then let's have more of it.
NCY Feb-Mar 1996