US media demands Greek-style austerity for American workers

Hannah Bell

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Fri May-14-10 12:53 AM
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US media demands Greek-style austerity for American workers

Edited on Fri May-14-10 12:53 AM by Hannah Bell

In recent days, the US media—led by the standard bearer of American liberalism, the New York Times—has insisted that workers in the US, like their brethren in Greece, have been living the good life for far too long and must accept a drastic and permanent reduction in their living standards.

In a May 9 piece, Times columnist Thomas Friedman denounces workers in the US and Western Europe for believing in the “tooth fairy” and expecting government services without paying for them. In America, Friedman says, the baby-boom generation, which supposedly had inherited the prosperity of the post-war years, had “eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts. After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.”

Describing what he has in mind, two days later Friedman wrote about his meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in a rooftop restaurant in Athens. Praising Papandreou for defying mass protests, the Times columnists hails the government for carrying out a “revolution,” including raising the retirement age and slashing wages and pensions for public sector workers, imposing regressive consumption taxes and wiping out two-thirds of the country’s publicly owned companies.

Another May 11 article, appearing on the front page of the Times, is entitled, “In Greek Debt Crisis, Some See Parallels to U.S.” Its author, David Leonhardt, led the newspaper’s campaign to promote Obama’s health care overhaul, explicitly supporting limits on medical treatments ordinary people could receive. (“In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life”).

“It’s easy to look at the protesters and the politicians in Greece—and at the other European countries with huge debts—and wonder why they don’t get it,” Leonhardt writes. “They have been enjoying more generous government benefits than they can afford…Yet in the back of your mind comes a nagging question: how different, really, is the United States?... And politicians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem. We, the people, are.”

It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about “the people” living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of Leonhardt and Friedman. The latter, who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine, the couple owns “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house” in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/pers-m14.shtml

Friedman & Leonhardt, are course, don't mean themselves when they say "we, the people," nor do they mean the fat, bloated, tick-like capitalists & financiers they work for -- they mean you, & this is part of the propaganda assault LEADING UP TO OBAMA'S CUTS IN SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE.