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Let's play 'Moneyball' with the moneychangers

Published in Medford (OR) Mail Tribune

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111004/OPINION/110040303

By Matt Witt

When I got home the other day from seeing the Brad Pitt movie, "Moneyball," there was an email in my inbox announcing a protest against Wall Street on Thursday, Oct. 6, in the plaza in Ashland.

The coincidence got me thinking.

"Moneyball" is based on the true story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team.

By comparison to the Yankees or Red Sox, the A's have to be extraordinarily careful with their relatively small budget. Beane's moneyball approach means asking tough questions about what they are actually getting for their investment in each player — exactly how many runs, hits, walks, home runs and so on.

I began thinking about what it would be like if the people of Oregon started playing moneyball with our tax and consumer dollars.

For example, consider all the money we give to giant corporations and billionaires in subsidies and special tax breaks, making Oregon the state with the fifth lowest business taxes in the nation, according to a corporate-funded study.

Our leaders say they shift the responsibility for taxes from big corporations to the rest of us in order to promote jobs. But in virtually all cases there are no requirements that CEOs actually create good-paying jobs in return for our money. To the contrary, CEOs and big corporations make money by cutting jobs to the lowest possible level. Creating profits is their goal, not creating jobs, yet our leaders continue to throw money at them with no accountability for the results.

By bailing out the big national banks such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bank that control nearly half of all deposits in Oregon, we all restored their profits and CEO bonuses. But Bank of America cut its affordable small business loans in Oregon from 77 per year before the bailout to only six such loans for the whole state in 2010. What would Billy Beane say about that return on our investment?

Health insurance companies make record profits, average employee premiums rose another 13.7 percent last year, yet millions of us can't afford to see a doctor. If we were playing moneyball with the insurance industry, we'd be demanding much faster and more effective health care reform at both the state and national levels.

We all are subsidizing the Wall Street speculators who looted Harry & David of millions of dollars. They shifted responsibility for retirement costs onto the taxpayers and walked away from debts to local businesses — while pushing for zoning changes that would allow them to destroy prime farmland for development profiteering. It's like we gave them our best hitter and best pitcher in exchange for two unproven minor leaguers. Why haven't our elected leaders been insisting on a better deal?

In-state college tuition in Oregon has nearly tripled in the past 25 years — an average increase of more than 10 percent per year every year over that period. Most students now emerge from college in debt — an average of more than $22,000. Yet, median earnings for college graduates under the age of 34 have declined over the past 10 years. What kind of game are we playing in which young people come to bat already having two strikes against them?

Inequality between the richest Oregonians and the rest of us has been growing faster than in 39 other states. Between now and 2020, the rate of growth in millionaire households is expected to rise faster here than in all but two other states, according to a Wall Street study. Our tax and budget policies are promoting great wealth for a few, while cutting education and other basic needs for everyone else.

The email I got about the protests against Wall Street on Oct. 6 said they are being coordinated with similar actions in other cities and towns, including sit-ins that have been taking place recently on Wall Street itself (see OccupyWallSt.org).

There is a well-known Bible story in which Jesus threw the "moneychangers" — the financial speculators of his day — out of the temple because they had converted it into a "den of thieves." Maybe these nationwide protests are the beginning of doing the same with the Wall Street manipulators and corporate CEOs who are the moneychangers of our time.

It's time that Oregonians started playing moneyball with the moneychangers, asking just what we are getting in terms of good jobs, quality education and affordable health care and housing in return for all the tax and consumer dollars we throw their way.

Matt Witt is a writer and photographer who lives in Talent, Oregon.