KRUGMAN: To suggest that workers can have equal dignity despite huge inequality in pay is just silly

[kpete]

It’s all very well to talk in the abstract about the dignity of work, but to suggest that workers can have equal dignity despite huge inequality in pay is just silly. In 2012, the top 40 hedge fund managers and traders were paid a combined $16.7 billion, equivalent to the wages of 400,000 ordinary workers. Given that kind of disparity, can anyone really believe in the equal dignity of work?

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Think about it: Has anything done as much to enhance the dignity of American seniors, to rescue them from the penury and dependence that were once so common among the elderly, as Social Security and Medicare? Inside the Beltway, fiscal scolds have turned “entitlements” into a bad word, but it’s precisely the fact that Americans are entitled to collect Social Security and be covered by Medicare, no questions asked, that makes these programs so empowering and liberating.

Conversely, the drive by conservatives to dismantle much of the social safety net, to replace it with minimal programs and private charity, is, in effect, an effort to strip away the dignity of lower-income workers.

And it’s something else: an assault on their freedom.


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MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/krugman-inequality-dignity-and-freedom.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140214&_r=1

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. There is also another a reason the GOP wants to dismantle the social safety net.

Since 2009 95% of ALL economic gains in the US went straight to the top 1%. The thing is that the 1% WANT MORE. 95% is not enough for these people. They are psychopaths.