Economics: USA: Prez Bush addresses income gap, free trade (Doha round),

Washington Times report Stephen Dinan, "Bush assails 'income inequality'" (Feb1,2k7)

"President Bush yesterday said there is a growing "income inequality" gap between rich and poor Americans, and told companies they should rethink the giant compensation packages they offer top executives.

While the Prez's stance on this particular issue is important, its greater importance is its symbolism, not because symbols are gestures only, but because they stand as metaphors for a whole range of related issues, here in regard to the economy world and American. Why do I say "symbolism"? Because CEO compensation packages in themselves do require reform, they symbolize a much wider range of desperately required business reforms that relate to an overall incomes policy that should be established in a tripartite way: govt, biz, labour. In Canada, the recent reversal of the position of Conservative minosrity govt, in which it rejected its own previous stance on what up here is called "Income Trusts," a form of assuring no immediate taxes for investors in corporations setting up a tax-shelter system. It was put out as a way of helping seniors invest, but corporations flocked to cut costs to investors so attracted to their stocks, that the annual tax revenues were compromised drastically. It was instituted by the previous Liberal regimes. Previously backed by the Conservs now come to power (minority govt), the consequences required the Conservs themselves to reverse their stance. But in the immedisate context, the seniors who had invested in this Income Trusts arrangement feel stung. Nevertheless the Conservs under Prime Minister Stephen Harper have proved themselves to be courageous in making an adjustment by way of new legistlation, ending the boondoggle that had also proved h+ly advantageous to greedy corporations and nonsenior greedy investors. An excessive captialist twist needed to be reformed, but in the process seniors in the Incomes-Trust benefits lost a benefit. There's a ver long list of income-gap producing specifics, besides CEO compensation packages which need to be reformed in the USA. Some of this reformed needs to be achieved by American business itself, as companies consult and think together of what their practices are doing to enlarge the gap. Companies need to change practices; govt needs to make some new gap-reducing laws; both are necessary.

A word about metaphor: the symbolic value of making an issue of CEO compensation packages is a specific kind of metaphor. In the general theory of metaphor, metanomies include a form of metanomy where a subkind (here, CEO comp pkgs) stands for (displaces) all the subkinds of a given kind (here, Income Trusts plus many others in both mentioned countries). Thus, CEO compensation packages stand for a long list of specific business practices that enlarge the income gap within the population (all the income-receiving members of the society, where as in reformational philosophy a given national society -- with its specific national economy [eg, USA, Canada, UK, Kenya, Saudia Arabia, South Korea, etc] can be understood as founded in the general association of the entirety of its population). In short, each society with its internal economy is founded upon the ontological law-mode of its most general society-wide association, all its members ... thus, society is founded in the sociaic mode, in a revised understanding of that mode as introduced in Herman Dooyeweerd's and D H Th Vollenhoven's general cosmonomic theoretics.

The markedly populist message, a divergence from the past, in which Mr. Bush has accused critics of practicing class warfare, was all the more noteworthy given his venue -- a speech at Federal Hall in New York, in the middle of Wall Street, the capital of capitalism.

Bush here shows an understanding of his mentor Abraham Kuyper's speech on Christianity favouring the poor and opposing class-warfare. Bush makes resonates Kuyper in the USA's major stock and corporate center, where he also visited the New York Stock Exchange. Neither Bush or Kuyper oppose capitalism as such; indeed, Bush is an advocate of capitalist activity, with some societally-helpful constraints on corporaitons especially to favour the poor. But this theme has been slow to emerge in his public articulation of his vision because of the enemies of his ideas, not least of all in and supporting financiallly his political party, who hate any constraint on the pit bull, the capitalist corporation and its profiteering elements. But in New York's financial district, just as in his previous rebuke to the greed of the oil industry and its pollution which he made around what he termed "America's addiction to oil," now Bush has made his critique of runaway society-expolitive versions of capitalism, while also wanting to further thru reform American capitalist practice itself.

But the president called for conservative market-based answers, including demanding that Congress renew trade-promotion authority, which allows him to negotiate trade agreements then present them to Congress in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.

Mr. Bush said he expects a bruising debate before his current trade-promotion authority expires July 1.

"Bashing trade can make for good sound bites on the evening news," Mr. Bush said. "But walling off America from world trade would be a disaster for our economy. Congress needs to reject protectionism."

Yes, but. America's most important problem perhaps of agreements and treaties regarding world trade may well turn on the upcoming effort ont he world level to conclude the the long-lagging Doha Round which would restrain subsidies by Western countries of their agricultural industries. These obstruct competition by underdeveloped countries where agricultural production occurs without subsidy, and the resulting trade with rich countries. However, such a policy revision could hurt the USA ability to have food sources of its own on hand, should the world geostrategic sitution lead a block of agriproducing poor countries to deny the USA the food it needs. Just as the de-industrialization of the USA and of Canada's Ontario has its drawbacks, so the Doha idea could boomerang, leaving the USA unable to feed its population in certain foreseeable international crises of the future.

In what was billed as his update on the state of the U.S. economy, Mr. Bush took credit for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, promised to submit a budget next week that eliminates the deficit in 2012, and asked Congress to give him a version of line-item veto authority.

"When people across the world look at America's economy, what they see is low inflation, low unemployment and the fastest growth of any major industrialized nation," he said. "There is one undisputed leader in the world in terms of economy, and that's the United States of America."

I should state here that the growth idea is one that some reformational economists, like Dr Bob Goudzwaard, constantly attack, but I think they do so often on the basis of a sweeping un-nuanced critique. The policy recommendations that seem to flow from this stance are often impracticable in a profound sense. In the next decade, we'll see how far an oil-rich Venezuela fares by introducing socialist economic policy that even with its advantage of the oil industry there may prove to be severely impraticable in the long run. Yet, strict Goudzwaardians must realize that Venezuela needs economic growth, as do the agriculture-producing poor countries that would benefit from a concluded Doha Round.

But Democrats said Mr. Bush's rosy picture of the overall economy was out of focus.

"If you really spend time out in middle-class America -- if you descend from the president's economic view at 30,000 feet to the real communities of Main Street America -- you know that all is not well with the middle class," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

Note how little Schumer actually says in this remark. It's a debate technique to advance Schumer's desire to recruit the middle-class to support his party, being promised all sorts of Democratic largesse were that party with new middle-class supports thereby enabled to win the Presidency in November 2008. I have no confidence in a party financed by Hollywood millionaires and trial lawyers (who are among the USA's largest income-endowed sectors). So, add these two income-sectors plus professional athletes, etc, to the problem of the income gap between rich and poor in the USA. The middle-class is n-o-t desperate, once you take into account its excessive consumerism, lack of savings, and often wild indebtedness. It's the American economic culture of the middle-class that is the root cause of that class's problems.

Mr. Bush has spoken of corporate responsibility before, most notably following the accounting scandals that ensnared companies such as Enron early in his administration.

But yesterday marked the first time he has spoken of a problem of income inequality.

World Economy > USA Biz

"The fact is that income inequality is real; it's been rising for more than 25 years," he said, adding that he sees the dividing line as between those with good educations and those without.

He also challenged businesses to "step up to their responsibilities."

"They need to pay attention to the executive-compensation packages that you approve. You need to show the world that America's businesses are a model of transparency and good corporate governance," he said.

But this is another rhetorical device, where the Prez subjunctively pictures "America's businesses" as a possible " model of transparency" which at present it actually is not.

After his speech, the president made an unannounced stop on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, getting a warm reception amid the chaos of the room.

But his reception in the new Democrat-controlled Congress has been chilly so far.

The most contentious of the ideas in yesterday's speech is free trade, an issue that used to enjoy the support of a strong bipartisan coalition, but which has seen Democratic support crumble after President Clinton left office.

Mr. Bush yesterday pressed to complete the Doha round of expanded free-trade talks at the World Trade Organization, saying it can help the U.S. economy and also lift millions of people worldwide out of poverty.

"We are dedicated to making sure we have a successful Doha round," he said.

Labor unions, though, called for a break from new trade agreements.

In part, USA's Big Unions oppose new trade agreements to protect jobs, but in part they simply do not have creative ideas to move the situation forward. The dreamed-of growth of the tiny Christian Labor Association USA and a new statutory arrangement for an authentic labour-union representation of the diversity of outlooks of organized workers could go a long way toward a fundamentally more creative mix basied on diversity of workers' outlooks. But that is a task for the future.

"We need a strategic pause to assess what have been the real and significant costs of our trade policy for working men and women in the U.S. and abroad," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

That statement by the old-timer labour executive should be greeted as a stark admission of Big Labour's intellectual bankruptcy on key conerns of workers.

And Mr. Bush's call for clamping down on lawsuits came under fire from trial lawyers, with the American Association for Justice -- formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association -- accusing him of ignoring the nation's major issues in favor of "corporate bottom lines and a free pass for corporate friends."

--Owlb

More info ... coming soon! Look for updates!:

Washington takes aim at CEO pay
Steven Pinkmer on metaphor (he's a cognitivist)
Elaine Botha on metaphor (she's a reformational philosopher). Google Search results.