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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER   OCTOBER 2000 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1

CUNY’s Trickle-down Economics

We thought the theory of trickle-down economics that purported to jump-start the economy had been discredited with Ronald Reagan’s departure from the White House a decade ago, but it’s back.

The theory, derided by many and discredited, actually worked spectacularly well. The trouble is, it didn’t work the way they said it would. It was supposed to jump-start the economy by cutting taxes and increasing profits for the wealthy. That would entice big business to hire more employees and invest in more machinery for production, resulting in an economic boom.

Big business and the ruling class got their tax breaks while public programs were gutted. Meanwhile, CEO salaries, stock dividends, and corporate profits went through the roof. Military suppliers earned exponentially more.

The catch was, instead of reinvesting, hiring more employees, and raising the standard of living for the workers that created all the profit in the first place, CEOs and stockholders pocketed the money. So the rich got richer and the poor either stayed poor or got poorer. This includes all the middle class folks that got squeezed by spiraling health care costs and pinched by corporate cutbacks (remember the AT&T and IBM layoffs?), all in the name of “global competitiveness,” the latest catch phrase.

The current dot-com frenzy, stock boom, and record government surpluses are the same scam. The Internet, for example, was a Defense Department project, financed by billions of taxpayer dollars. The cost was socialized, but as soon as it showed some profit potential, it was handed over to private industry. Now AOL is big enough to swallow a media conglomerate like Time-Warner.

The current prison-building and law enforcement boom was financed by pay freezes for government employees, and deep cuts to budgets for education, health services, and entitlement programs. That’s why there are too few classes, the libraries are a wreck, and faculty have been cut.

Of course, we’re now doing so well that the CUNY execs saw fit to give themselves and college presidents pay raises. Again, the rationale is that we need top-notch executives to make strategic decisions, think up ways to boost enrollment, and make students learn.

We propose a different solution. Spend money on what the colleges need. Hire more full-time faculty (and start with the underpaid and overworked adjuncts), give us better libraries, pay faculty and support staff better wages, and add more class sections. Cut tuition, too. Maybe even clean the bathrooms. That will do more to make students want to come here and excel than slick promotional campaigns or long range plans with high-sounding ideals.

CUNY could build itself from the bottom up, rather than the top down. Give students and staff what they all need to get the job done. Of course, that would be real democracy, and might actually change things, which is not usually what the ruling class wants. So, instead of a student-centered university, we get stuck with CUNY’s warped version of trickle-down economics. Just like Wall Street, the executives make a killing, while those on the bottom get the shaft.

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