Maytag and Globalism

The genius of capitalism

This is heartbreaking. This is one of the most unpatriotic, most un-American things I can imagine a company doing. They want Americans to buy their products, but they don't want to put Americans to work making those products.
― Aaron Kemp, a worker at the Maytag plant in Galesburg, Illinois, December 26, 2002. Maytag is closing the Galesburg plant (average hourly wage of $15.14) and moving the work to Reynosa, Mexico (average hourly wage of $2). Union, city and state concessions to Maytag have totaled over $10.5 million since 1994.

In today's environment you have to be focused on cost.
― Efraim Levy, a Standard & Poor's appliance industry analyst, December 26, 2002. Wall Street analysts applauded the closing announcement, and Maytag's stock rose 6%.

It's not that Maytag can't still make money in the United States, it's that they can't make enough money.
― Dave Bevard, vice president of the Galesburg machinists' local, December 26, 2002. Maytag executives have refused to say whether the plant is profitable.

Death and Death Taxes

'Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes.
— Christopher Bullock, The Cobbler of Preston, 1716

Small-business owners, particularly minority owners, suffer anxious moments wondering whether the businesses they hope to hand down to their children will be destroyed by the death tax bill.
— William Beach, "Time to Repeal Federal Death Taxes: The Nightmare of the American Dream," The Heritage Foundation, April 4, 2001

"We view this as a moral issue," said Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, the co-author of the Senate bill. "We think death taxes are fundamentally wrong. We think death should not be a taxable event." Opponents of the repeal say inheritances, not death, are taxed.

[Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota] said it was "no coincidence" that he brought the issue to the floor the same day that the Senate voted to increase the federal debt ceiling by $450 billion. "So while we increase the debt limit $450 billion right now, the question before the Senate immediately following that is, do we want to benefit the top one-half of one percent of taxpayers in this country with a $600 billion tax cut?" "I can't imagine that the answer for any senator would be yes."

— CARL HULSE, New York Times, June 12, 2002

The most remarkable example of how politics has shifted in favor of the wealthy is the drive to repeal the estate tax. In 1999, only the top 2 percent of estates paid any tax at all, and half the estate tax was paid by only 3,300 estates, 0.16 percent of the total, with a minimum value of $5 million and an average value of $17 million.
— Paul Krugman, The New York Times, October 20, 2002

Taxes and Nazi Germany

Right out of Nazi Germany.
— Senator Phil Gramm, Republican-Texas, describing a proposal for a one-time capital gains tax on Americans who renounce their citizenship to avoid U.S. taxes

Twenty years ago, would a prominent senator have likened those who want wealthy people to pay taxes to Nazis? Only someone with a net worth of at least several million dollars is likely to find it worthwhile to become a tax exile.

— Paul Krugman, The New York Times, October 20, 2002

Malefactors of Great Wealth

The genius of capitalism

Andrew Jackson on the Rich and Powerful

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics, and laborers — who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.
— Andrew Jackson, Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States, July 10, 1832

Theodore Roosevelt on Malefactors of Great Wealth

There is a world-wide financial disturbance; it is felt in the bourses of Paris and Berlin; and British consols are lower than for a generation, while British railway securities have also depreciated. On the New York Stock Exchange the disturbance has been peculiarly severe. . . It may well be that the determination of the Government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver), to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the Government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their evil-doing. . . I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country — the people through their governmental agents or a few ruthless and domineering men, whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable, because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.
― Theodore Roosevelt, Address on the occasion of the laying of the corner stone of the Pilgrim memorial monument, August 20, 1907. The Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic – led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.

He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Fitzgerald, "Yes, they have more money."
― Ernest Hemingway in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, August 1936, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

The most remarkable example of how politics has shifted in favor of the wealthy is the drive to repeal the estate tax. In 1999, only the top 2 percent of estates paid any tax at all, and half the estate tax was paid by only 3,300 estates, 0.16 percent of the total, with a minimum value of $5 million and an average value of $17 million. . . It is no accident that strongly conservative views, views that militate against taxes on the rich, have spread even as the rich get richer: in addition to directly buying influence, money can be used to shape public perceptions.
— Paul Krugman, The New York Times, October 20, 2002

Do You Want Fries with Healthcare?

Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc.

Taco Bell competes with Beverly [Enterprises] for those people.
― William R. Floyd, Chairman of the nation's largest nursing home chain, referring to his low-wage nursing assistants, July 7, 2002

There really are an enormous number of similarities between this and the world I came from.
― Chairman Floyd again, on his seven years at PepsiCo, mostly at Taco Bell, July 7, 2002

111-year-old Fred Hale, Sr. and Elizabeth LeBeau, Certified
Nursing Assistant, st-camillus.org

A minimum of 120 classroom, lab, and clinical hours; a minimum of 32 clinical hours in a nursing home or hospital, final written and practical exams, and certification in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
― Wisconsin Nurse Aide Training Program and Registry Manual, October 2017. The median salary six months after graduation in 2001 was $19,320, or 9% above the poverty line for a family of four. Do you want fries with that?

These are among the lowest paid workers in New York State. They take care of the people who are dying, or are too infirm to bathe themselves or feed themselves. But they're so impoverished they can't provide for their own families.
― Dennis Rivera, president of SEIU Local 1199 New York, the health care workers' union newly representing 15,000 home health aides in New York city, September 12, 2002. Most are paid $6 to $7 an hour, and receive no benefits, including health insurance.