Mark Naison: Spitzer, Clemens and Bonds ... A Case of Fiddling While Rome Burns
[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.]
As I read the latest economic news, which includes stories of federal bailouts of some of the nation's largest investment banking firms and predictions of the worst recession in recent memory, I marvel at the amount of press coverage given to the Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds steroid investigations and Eliot Spitzer ill considered sexual escapades.
I understand the appeal of stories which show rich and arrogant public figures being cut down to size because of their alleged involvement in illegal behavior, but when all is said and done, who cares what private decisions these individuals made to improve their athletic performance and gratify their sexual needs needs when millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs, hundreds of thousands are going to lose their homes, and virtually all of us are going to make tough decisions about how to allocate scarce resources
It is time that our journalists and elected officials- and the American public- start preparing for the very real hardships that a severe recession will impose and begin raising the question of EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE in a faltering economy now that hard times are upon us
Should heads of failing companies be given buyouts of their contracts that run into the hundreds of millions of dollars?
Should executives who are making five hundred times what their average worker in their company gets lay anyone off until their first cut their own salary?
Should tax rates on the very wealthy be in the 30% range rather than the 70% range they are in most other
advanced societies?
Should the government do something to stimulate construction of affordable multiple dwellings now that the mechanisms for making private housing affordable-namely subprime mortgages-have completely collapsed, bringing the nation's major financial institutions to the edge of bankruptcy?
Now that gas prices are rising and per capita income is falling, should we be exploring public transportation alternatives to the private automobile so that people can get to work without bankrupting themselves and
creating permanent damage to the environment?
If my reading of economic trends is correct, we may be in for a level of economic dislocation and hardship that hasn't been seen in this country since the stagflation crisis if the 1970's and possibly since the Great Depression of the Thirties
The impact of these events, which will be felt by every American working class and middle class family, is likely to make what Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens put into their bodies, and what Elliot Spitzer expelled from his, seem monumentally unimportant.
As I read the latest economic news, which includes stories of federal bailouts of some of the nation's largest investment banking firms and predictions of the worst recession in recent memory, I marvel at the amount of press coverage given to the Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds steroid investigations and Eliot Spitzer ill considered sexual escapades.
I understand the appeal of stories which show rich and arrogant public figures being cut down to size because of their alleged involvement in illegal behavior, but when all is said and done, who cares what private decisions these individuals made to improve their athletic performance and gratify their sexual needs needs when millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs, hundreds of thousands are going to lose their homes, and virtually all of us are going to make tough decisions about how to allocate scarce resources
It is time that our journalists and elected officials- and the American public- start preparing for the very real hardships that a severe recession will impose and begin raising the question of EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE in a faltering economy now that hard times are upon us
Should heads of failing companies be given buyouts of their contracts that run into the hundreds of millions of dollars?
Should executives who are making five hundred times what their average worker in their company gets lay anyone off until their first cut their own salary?
Should tax rates on the very wealthy be in the 30% range rather than the 70% range they are in most other
advanced societies?
Should the government do something to stimulate construction of affordable multiple dwellings now that the mechanisms for making private housing affordable-namely subprime mortgages-have completely collapsed, bringing the nation's major financial institutions to the edge of bankruptcy?
Now that gas prices are rising and per capita income is falling, should we be exploring public transportation alternatives to the private automobile so that people can get to work without bankrupting themselves and
creating permanent damage to the environment?
If my reading of economic trends is correct, we may be in for a level of economic dislocation and hardship that hasn't been seen in this country since the stagflation crisis if the 1970's and possibly since the Great Depression of the Thirties
The impact of these events, which will be felt by every American working class and middle class family, is likely to make what Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens put into their bodies, and what Elliot Spitzer expelled from his, seem monumentally unimportant.