Well, I didn't want to post the whole essay, which is why I posted the URL and a quote. The link is here,Click

When a person becomes President of the US and his ideology of thirty years ago is still ruling his policy, what he told his business professor thirty years ago IS important.... because it is shaping the America we live in TODAY.

Since most responses to my initial post did not relate to the whole article, which I hoped people would read, I'll post it here.

Alice

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March 1, 2004

                      President George Bush and the Gilded Age
Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New
                      York )

                      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.