Is Economy Issue # I of the USA ?

FROM the ongoing emphasis being given by the three running candidates of both the political parties of the USA for Election-2008 and its echoing continuous discussion in media coverage, it appears that the Issue # I of the country is economics. However, in my considered opinion, the paramount issue of the country is quite different and the economic problems that we are facing in different fields are the direct outcome of a fundamental set back some where else. The country and its leadership are ignoring and sidetracking it as a whole. I will elaborate it subsequently after examining the apparent causes of economic debacles that are real and need immediate attention.

Unfortunately, the economic crisis is not a natural catastrophic but a man-made phenomenon. It is due to mismanaging the country’s economy, squandering away its inherent potentials by putting hem into wrong hands, intentionally transferring its surplus financial resources to self-centered corporate interests in an unprecedented scale, imposing unwanted “wars on different countries and regions” of the world for the sake of world domination, acquiring control over the flow of oil form the ME to oil-hungry industries of developed nations, providing “safety” to a particular country of that region and creating a “false” sense of “insecurity” at home. The only person who can be made squarely and pin-pointedly responsible to this effect is the President of the country himself though he is the first head of the State who has a qualified MBA degree to his credit. That expertise he used just to make rich richer and poor poorer. Thus, the reasons for our desperate economic situation are manifold. They are fast engulfing the country into a worst type of recession. A country that rightly claims to be the world’s largest economy is the worst debtor nation of history. Let us survey some of the fundamental blunders that have been and are committed to this effect.

THE CAUSES:

1. PLACING TAX REBATES IN WRONG HANDS: The country is being ruled and controlled for the last seven years by the Republican Party [GOP] whose political agenda is nothing but to “reduce the taxes and decrease the government control overt the tax payers”. Exactly with one stroke of pen the President of the country and the ruling party cut the Taxes by 1.6 trillion dollars and deprived the country to enjoy the surpluses left by the last President Clinton. That turned the country’s finances into deficit. To cover this huge loss of Income/revenue, the Party in power had no choice but to cut the expenditures on medical aids, subsidies to poor families who are estimated to be around 35 million by our own standard as it has made it “HARAM” [prohibited] on itself not to impose any tax at all to cover its own created deficit financing.

Through this process, President Bush is serving the Corporate interest of I or 2 percent people of the country who are rich and whose pockets are already puffed up with trade surpluses and tax “saving and avoiding devices” that are the inherent part of the corporate phenomenon of modern economy. It has no “feeling” for the poor and middle class people of the country who are hard pressed by rising prices of daily life, including the transport cost. The gas prices are all time higher but the thirst of the gas corporations to have greater and greater profit appears to be insatiable though they have earned an exorbitant accumulated profit of 123 billions last year on sale at pumps. It could not show the moral courage to share this abnormal huge profit and return a “bit” of it to their consumers by reducing the price at pumping stations.

2. SHOCK TO CONSUMER BASED ECONOMY: Incentives, in fact, should have been given to common man in the from of Tax Relief to spend on their daily necessities of life, thereby increasing the demand of goods and services in the market, multiplying employment rate to the optimum point and adding huge tax revenue in return. The announced tax relief of 150 billions to be given across the board to all the tax payers is a drop on the starching economy. The Tax rebate given to 2 % people of the land by President Bush might have gone “underground’, might have not been invested at all or in a very negligible quantity. There is no surety. It might have been used in share market, to get the prices higher and make more profit and then desert it to suffer on account of contraction in money supply as we see today all around. The corporate interest takes it own time to decide as “where and how to invest” whereas the common man spends it immediately on his dire needs. Thus, both the Party and the President have squandered away the surpluses of the country to meet their selfish ends and that of the corporate interests which they represent mostly. This process of “rewarding” unnecessarily the higher strata of the society negated the principle of consumer based economy. It has been shattered by the men in power and only the common man “for whom and by whom” the country is ruled is suffering utmost.

3. THE FOOLISH AND FALSE WAR IN IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN: The future historian of the USA are disparately in need to coin a new all comprehensive word to express Bush’s debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan and now “possibly” in Pakistan and Iran . He attacked Afghanistan without any verification and judicial probe as who did caused the tragedy of “9/11” imposed the war on this poor country within hours, resorted to preemptive attack on Iraq on false and concocted pleas and destroyed both the countries as well rendered its own “robust” economy in ruins. The loss in men and material are colossal and the country may take decades to get its lost prestige restored provided an enlightened leadership comes to power in Washington now. The three currently contesting candidates of either party are no match to this fundamental need of time when 81 % people say unanimously that the country is “heading on wrong track”, unemployment is on rise and the capital is shy to meet the emergent needs of housing industry, acutely suffering automobile industry of Detroit, the rising cost of fuel, food products and transport industry. Only the masses are going to feel the burnt of it and face its cumulative disastrous effects all around.

4. THE MAGNITUDE OF THE LOSSES: Only on Iraq front the cost is accumulated to 600 Billion so for and “Pentagon’s weapon acquisition budget has doubled from 790 billion in 2000 to 1.6 trillion last year [NY Times, April 2, 2008] There is no end of war at any place in sight and no body can correctly estimate the accumulated losses to be incurred and sustained by the country in due course of these blunders. The continuous losses of beautiful human life of Americans, Iraqis and Afghans are beyond description. The violations of human rights at home, the “misuse” of the prisoners of war [Field Combatants as they are called] at Guantanamo Bay and in the torture cells of Baghdad, the abuse of minorities civil rights at home, the ever-increasing waves of suspicion against the Muslims, the loss of confidence in America and its leadership abroad, the over-emphasizing the war against terror and posing an overwhelming threat to bomb the tribal area of Pakistan boarding Afghanistan to “curb” the “fear” of Taliban and the “impending war against Iran, all have accumulated to create apprehensions of “unreliability” in the mind of free world about America and its foreign policies in the ME, Europe and South America. This is the biggest loss of America ’s credibility and it is seriously jeopardizing the quantum of our moral and political leadership in the world.

5. MORAL BANKRUPTCY: It is correctly said as the words of wisdom that: if character is lost, every thing is lost. The “great and mighty” America has practically lost its basic inherent characteristic as the champion of peace, democracy, human rights and a staunch supporter of freedom-fighters around the world. It is due to wrongly motivated leadership at the helm of our affairs, representing the vested corporate will to “use” the machinery of the State to serve its selfish designs through promulgating foolish and false policies at home and abroad. The Neo-Cons sitting in the White House and Pentagon are at its back. People are fast losing confidence in the ability of our leadership occupying America ’s seat of power to run the affairs of the country and the world community too wants to keep “aloof” from it with only exception of some of American stooges who look like the feathers of the same bird. They are either military dictators, usurpers of power in their own lands or have been “enticed” by Bush’s administration through "some" military, financial or political help.

The above discussion proves beyond any shadow of doubt that America’s ISSUE # I is NOT economic but Moral Bankruptcy, loss of confidence in its leadership, neglecting its own fundamental age-old cherished values both at home and abroad and torpedoing the interest of its poor and needy. This trend must change, if we Americans are desirous to regain our lost prestige in the community of nations and re-make it the land of opportunities and blessings for the oppressed and the freedom fighters around the world. The economic tragedies of today are the direct consequences of the policies that are not akin to our Constitution and the temperament of our people. The USA can regain both its power and the lost prestige in the world by making these fundamental changes in its policies and programs both at home and abroad, demonstrating positively that it is nourishing friendship for all and harboring malice to none. It would make its economy robust again when people have trust and confidence in its policies, program and the leadership.

 

 

 

Shamim A Siddiq, is the author of books; The Commitment, Greatest Need of Man, Looking for the Book of Wisdom, Methodology of Dawah, The Dawah Program, Dawah and its Objectives, and The Revival. Br. Siddiqi, based in New York, can be reached at TSidd96472@aol.com. He maintains the website www.dawahinamericas.com.