“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!”
That’s the message that businessman-GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has for the 14 million Americans now desperately searching for work.
It comes in an October 5 interview Cain gave to the business-slanted Wall Street Journal.
“What do they want?” Cain asked when asked about the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, now entering their third week
“I don”t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration.”
Cain could have “the facts” if he so desired.
In its June 8 cover-story on “What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths,” Time magazine warned that profit-seeking corporations can’t be relied on to ”make it all better.”
Wrote Rana Foroohar, Time‘s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business:
“There is a fundamental disconnect between the fortunes of American companies, which are doing quite well, and American workers, most of whom are earning a lower hourly wage now than they did during the recession.
“The thing is, companies make plenty of money; they just don’t spend it on workers here.
“There may be $2 trillion sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations globally, but firms show no signs of wanting to spend it in order to hire workers at home.”
In short: Giving even greater tax breaks to mega-corporations–the standard Republican mantra–has not persuaded them to stop “outsourcing” jobs. Nor has it convinced them to start hiring Americans.
While embarrassingly overpaid CEOs squander corporate wealth on themselves, millions of Americans can’t afford medical care or must depend on charity to feed their families.
Cain and his right-wing supporters thus take a “my-corporation-right-or-wrong” view that totally ignores:
- The loss of jobs within the United States owing to companies’ moving their operations abroad—solely to pay substandard wages to their new employees.
- The mass firings of employees which usually accompany corporate mergers or acquisitions.
- The widespread victimization of part-time employees, who are not legally protected against such threats as racial discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions.
- The refusal of many employers to create better than menial, low-wage jobs.
- The widespread employer practice of extorting “economic incentives” from cities or states in return for moving to or remaining in those areas. Such “incentives” usually absolve employers from complying with laws protecting the environment and/or workers’ rights.
- The refusal of many employers to provide medical and pension benefits—nearly always in the case of part-time employees, and, increasingly, for full-time, permanent ones as well.
- Rising crime rates, due to rising unemployment.
Cain said the banks were in part to blame with the 2008 financial crisis, but he said, “We’re not in 2008 — we’re in 2011!”
This, in turn, ignores the increasingly predatory behavior of the nation’s largest banks, such as Bank of America. BofA recently announced that, starting next year, it would charge customers $5 a month to use their debit cards, whose use had previously been free.
According to the New York Times: Wells Fargo and Chase are testing $3 monthly debit card fees. Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month, while SunTrust, another regional powerhouse, is charging a $5 fee.
The move comes as U.S. banks are seeking to increase their revenue in the wake of new regulations on the financial industry. Starting in October, a cap will be placed on how much banks can charge for overdraft fees.
In addition, banks will face a limit on how much they can charge merchants when customers use debit cards to purchase goods and services. In 2009, this generated $19 billion in revenues.
David Lazarus, the consumer columnist for the Los Angeles Times, put this into perspective on the September 30 edition of PBS Newshour.
“The Federal Reserve says that it pretty much costs about 4 cents to process a debit card transaction, considering the huge economies of scale, 4 cents. So that means the current average of 44 cents represents a 1,000 percent profit.
“So now….that’s going to be cut in roughly half to 21 cents. Well, that’s still a 500% profit. If you can’t make money off a 500% profit margin, you are in the wrong line of work.”
For Cain, the wealthy former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, those protesting economic policies favoring the richest 1% of the country are “unAmerican” and “anti-capitalism.”
Every major Republican Presidential candidate since the end of World War II has attacked his opponents as “unAmerican.”
In raising this slander once more, Cain has joined the ranks of such famous right-wing candidates as Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.
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