The Race To The Bottom In Doubletime

I keep telling you Americans, from what I see and hear from the rightwing ideologues, you make too damned much money! Shame on you! Of course this only applies to the bottom 90% of the income scale. No protests or bills introduced in legislatures by "conservatives" or out-and-out rightwingers about executive pay or about those darlings of the "sit on their ass class," ah I mean, the investment class, seen by the political right as "the productive class." Not many complaints even after those darlings put the country and the world into the worst slump since the Great Depression, and it's not over yet. In fact, by all accounts, the lobbyists for the banking interests spent a bundle scaling back last year's legislation to rein them in and to protect super bonuses. After much success at watering down the law, they've still been whining. I'll tell you, life's tough. Getting a ten million dollar bonus instead of twelve million can put a real crimp in a person's plans.

For more than thirty years we've heard about cutting taxes on wealthy people and lessening regulation on business interests. We were all going to have "heaven on Earth" and live happily ever after. Well let's see... America has fallen far behind on education, especially science and math. A considerable amount of American plant, equipment, and jobs have been shipped overseas to take advantage of cheaper costs, especially labor costs (and I understand the principle). Wages and benefits for many American workers have been slashed. Further, we are still involved in two wars that were paid for in precious lives and limbs, but not in dollars. More Americans are being kept afloat by assistance, while the income gap between rich and poor has grown to the widest ever.

Now the assault continues, as a number of Republicans want to curtail union rights, especially by restricting or eliminating collective bargaining for public workers. AND they want to repeal estate taxes for the very top of the income pyramid, including in some states, not just on the national level. When I was a kid, the mindset of the Great Depression was still prevalent, as economic populism, progressivism, and liberalism were riding high. Republicans were seen by many in the public as being supporters of the rich,* something that went back to the Depression days. Republicans fervently denied such. Now, they almost tout it! They no longer hide it. Congressional Republicans recently threatened to let EVERYONE'S taxes go up, if tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans were not part of the legislation. PAY ATTENTION AMERICA!!! This is NOT a tough one! Non rich Americans make tough choices all the time to stay afloat, but Republicans are terribly worried about the plight of millionaires and billionaires. I'm tellin' ya, those rich folks have a hell of a life. They may not have to worry about paying their next heating bill, but I'll tell you, it is one difficult decision about whether to have lobster salad or caviar for an appetizer.

* For the rightwing of the party, this was undoubtedly true, but in my opinion it was not true of every Republican, but back then there were actually "progressive" and "liberal" Republicans in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt. Remember Teddy? He was known as "the Trust Buster." I sure can't speak for any Republicans today, but I dare you to find many in public office today who support limiting big interests in America. It is not without reason that in the last thirty plus years we have come to "too big to fail."

WORD HISTORY:
Bargain/Borrow-"Bargain" is one of those words that is Germanic in origin, but came to English by way of a non-Germanic language, in this case Old French, although English already had relatives of the word. To start with, it goes back to the Indo European root "bhergh," which had the notion "to hide, to protect, to secure." This produced the Old Germanic offshoot "borganjan/burganan," which meant "to borrow, to lend" (borrowing/lending have the notion of "something given with security," thus showing the "secure/protect" notion of the word^), this then gave Frankish, a Germanic dialect akin to English, "borganjan," which continued with the "borrow/lend" meaning. Frankish in the general area of what is now France (named after the Franks) and southern Belgium gradually blended in with the Latin dialects of those areas, but left a number of words to the Latin-based language named after their own speech, "French," including what became Old French "bargaignier," which meant "to reach an agreement or settlement over a price by negotiation, to haggle;" that is, "to bargain." The term came along with the Normans to England (late 1066), and became "bargaigner" in Anglo-Norman. It spread into English by the 1300s as "bargaynen," still with the same general meaning. The noun "bargain" was derived from the verb. Prior to the word's arrival, Old English (Anglo-Saxon) already had its close relative "borgian" (from the same Germanic and Indo European sources) with the meaning "lend, borrow," which eventually became modern "borrow" (see below). Modern German still has "borgen," which, like its English relative, still means "borrow," but also kept the old additional meaning "lend" (it depends upon usage in a sentence for the meaning).

^ In borrowing and lending, "security" did not, and still does not, necessarily mean collateral was (is) used to "secure" the transaction, but often an agreement or pledge was what was meant. Whatever the agreement, it typically took (takes) some "give and take," "back and forth," or haggling to finalize.