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Gettelfinger: Hurricane shows the growing social, economic inequality in America

The federal government’s dismal response to Hurricane Katrina and a recent report that poverty is increasing in America means this nation’s priorities must change, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a speech to the Detroit Economic club earlier this month.

Gettelfinger said the heartbreaking images of death, destruction and despair from New Orleans coupled with a U.S. Census report that shows poverty on the rise should spur President Bush to set a new course for America.

“Time and again, the administration and its allies in Congress have catered to the privileged and the powerful at the expense of children, the elderly, working families and the poor,” Gettelfinger said.
The hurricane put a human face the growing social and economic inequality in the United States. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck did not have the means to evacuate, he said. In New Orleans, one-in-three people live below the poverty line. They were stuck in neighborhoods close to the very same levees that experts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers knew could not withstand a Category 5 hurricane.

Rebuilding the levees, roads and other infrastructure are monumental tasks. But if that is all that is done, Americans will have failed to learn a lesson from the Hurricane, Gettelfinger said. The Census Bureau reported 1.1 million more Americans are living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After sharp declines in poverty under President Clinton, poverty has risen 17 percent under President Bush, who along with GOP allies in Congress, have refused to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour. The CEOs of America’s 500 largest corporations received an aggregate pay raise of 54 percent, according to Forbes.com.

“The time is long overdue to set a new course for America, to get off the low road and onto the high road,” he said. “We need a progressive economic strategy aimed at raising the living standards and improving the life of every American, not just those on the top rung of the economic ladder.”
The high road means investing in people, Gettelfinger said. Education, job training and decent affordable health care must be part of the rebuilding package.

“We all know that the U.S. health care system is terribly inefficient. We spend far more of our Gross Domestic Product, and far more per person, on health care than any other country – 75 percent more than Canada.

“Yet nearly 46 million Americans don’t have any health insurance, and millions more are under-insured,” the UAW leader said.

Our nation also ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations in life expectancy and infant mortality. Prescription drugs cost more in the United States and in any other country, thanks to the 1,200 pharmaceutical industry lobbyists in Washington.

Those high costs affect many things, including our ability to stay competitive in the auto sector.
“We have the best doctors, nurses, medical technicians and technology in the world,” Gettelfinger said. “Still millions of Americans don’t get the health care they need when they need it.”

Fixing health care, poverty and other problems brought to light by the devastating hurricane ought to be the national priority, he added.

“We need to stop listening to those who shrug off growing social and economic inequality in America by saying, ‘That’s just the way it is,’ ” Gettelfinger said. “It’s not. It’s the way we let it be. So, let’s stop listening to those who, wrapped up in their smug complacency, keep telling us we can’t. Let’s listen to our own best instincts that tell us we can.”

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