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opinionjournal.com
"Human Need Trumps Corporate Greed
Why you should vote Green Nov. 7.
BY RALPH NADER
Wednesday, October 25, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Green Party ticket of Nader/LaDuke stands for a strengthening of
democratic initiatives by voters, workers, consumers and taxpayers,
and a shift away from the increased concentration of economic and
political power in fewer and larger global corporations.
Politics is principally about who decides, who pays and who is held
accountable. When it comes to federal elections for Congress and the
presidency, no one has described it better than Sen. John McCain, who
said that the "campaign finance system is little more than an elaborate
influence-peddling scheme in which both parties conspire to stay in
office by selling the country to the highest bidder."
The highest bidders are overwhelmingly business interests who want
lax enforcement of consumer, labor and environmental laws; massive
subsidies, giveaways and bailouts; and government contracts that
waste taxpayer dollars.
Cash-register politics must be replaced by public funding of campaigns.
Among the ways to accomplish a clean-money/clean-politics goal is a
well promoted, voluntary check off up to $250 per person on the 1040
tax return with certain free time on TV and radio for ballot-qualified
candidates.
The decade-long economic boom has resulted in an apartheid
economy. In contrast to rocketing corporate profits, stock markets and
top executive compensation, a majority of workers make less--inflation
adjusted--and work longer than in the 1970s. Forty-seven million
workers--a third of the work force--do not make a living wage,
receiving for their labors less than $10 an hour, with millions at the
$5.15, $6 or $7 level. Benefits and traditional, defined pensions have
declined. The federal minimum wage at $5.15 an hour is $2.15 less in
purchasing power than the minimum wage in 1968, when economic
output was half what it is today.
One reason that this economy raises all yachts instead of all boats is
the declining percentage of the private labor force that is in trade
unions. Presently, less than 10% of these workers are unionized--a
60-year low. The widening of returns to capital as compared to labor
reflects the serious decline in workers' bargaining power. Repeal of the
Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and other obstructive anti-union laws would
free American workers in places such as Wal-Mart and McDonald's to
have a fair chance to band together in trade unions for a living wage,
better working conditions and a share of capital.
Consumers are exposed to a variety of frauds and hazardous products
that take a terrible toll in dollars, lives, injustices and disease. From
gross hospital malpractice to massive billing fraud in the health-care
industry to accelerating invasions of privacy, corporations are out of
control, turning legislators and regulators into patsies. We call for
strong law-and-order programs against corporate law violators. A
recent Business Week cover story documented why nearly
three-quarters of the American people think that corporations have
"gained too much power over their lives." The editors agreed and, in an
editorial calling for a "new social contract," declared that corporations
should "get out of politics" and embrace campaign finance reform.
Taxpayers are finding that more and more of their tax dollars are going
to corporate welfare--hundreds of billions of dollars a year in direct or
indirect transfers at the local, state and federal level. As Republican
John Kasich, chairman of the House Budget Committee, observed last
year, just about every industry and every major corporation comes to
state capitols demanding tax dollars for stadiums while schools and
clinics and public transit systems crumble. We urge an end to
corporate welfare as we know it and a redirection of tax dollars to
broad public necessities.
After many years working to get industries to build safer cars, process
safer food, reduce air pollution, pay their fair share of taxes and
respect democratic processes, I decided to help build a new
progressive political party for four reasons. First, civil society groups of
all persuasions were being closed out in Washington from a chance to
improve their country. The two major parties are rapidly morphing into
corporate power where corporate money produces a permanent
corporate government.
Second, solutions abound in America for renewable energy, modern
public transit, preventative health care, safe environments, better
schooling, affordable housing, more time for family, children and
community and a non-commercial cultural renaissance. But these
advances too often are blocked by the concentration of power in the
"monied interests" that Jefferson, Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and
many other of our nation's historical leaders warned the citizenry to
oppose.
Third, many good people who would run for elective office are turned
off by corrupt and sleazy politics mired in dirty-money elections. We
are losing a wealth of human talent.
Finally, great investigative stories about corporate abuses published by
the major media, including The Wall Street Journal, go nowhere.
Nothing happens to move such information toward corrective action
because we have an underdeveloped democracy and an overdeveloped
plutocracy.
Look around the world and see the correlations between democracy
and expanding markets and autocracy and limited markets. Whenever,
in our nation's history, people successfully challenge the excessive
power of commercial interests, whether over workers, child labor,
minorities, consumers and the environment, the country became better
and the economy stronger. Moreover, a strong democracy is good for
good business and bad for bad business. Those business executives
who ignore this lesson of history are shortchanging their own
company's potential for serving a deeper prosperity--one that places
human need over corporate greed."
Mr. Nader is the Green Party's candidate for president. His campaign
Web site is www.votenader.org. |
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