The people aren't powerless in the face of extreme inequality.
In the coming weeks, millions of Americans will take to the streets as part of the "99 Percent Spring," echoing last year's "Arab Spring."
At the root of this discontent are the extreme inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity that have emerged over the last four decades.
The richest 1 percent now owns over 36 percent of all the wealth in the United States. That's more than the net worth of the bottom 95 percent combined. This 1 percent has pocketed almost all of the wealth gains of the last decade.
In 2010, the 1 percent earned 21 percent of all income, up from only 8 percent in mid-1970s. The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
These trends among the 1 percent are bad for the rest of us. Concentrated wealth translates into political clout -- the power to use campaign contributions to rent politicians and tilt the rules of the economy in their favor.
Websites dramatizing the "We are the 99 percent" movement are full of personal stories of young people who are saddled with debt and no futures, and middle class families that have seen the American Dream collapse around them, losing jobs, homes, and hopes for the future.
"I used to dream about becoming the first woman president," one woman wrote. "Now I dream about getting a job with health insurance."
Reading these stories, I'm struck that the underlying conditions that have squeezed millions of Americans aren't going away. The current political system, captured by large corporations and the wealthy, is incapable of responding to their needs.
The "99 to 1" dichotomy may strike some folks as polarizing and inaccurate. Yet it's a powerful lens for understanding what's happened to our society and economy over the last several decades. The rules guiding our economy have been skewed to benefit the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. These rules include tax policies, global trade agreements, and government actions that benefit asset owners at the expense of wage earners.
Who is the "1 percent"? Primarily it consists of households with annual incomes that top $500,000 and wealth exceeding $5 million. The 1 percent isn't a monolithic interest group. Plenty of people within this group have devoted their lives to building a healthy economy that works for everyone. But there is a small segment within the 1 percent -- the "rule riggers" -- who use their power and wealth to influence the political game so that they and their corporations get more power and wealth.
Just as individuals in the 1 percent are diverse actors, the 1 percent of corporations is also not unified. There are several thousand multinational corporations -- the Wall Street inequality machine -- that are the drivers of rule changes. But they are the minority. There are millions of other built-to-last corporations and Main Street businesses that strengthen our communities and have a stake in an economy that works for everyone.
We must defend ourselves from the bad actors -- the built-to-loot companies whose business model is focused on shifting costs onto society, shedding jobs, and extracting wealth from our communities and the healthy economy.
This spring, watch for millions of people in motion, participating in protests at banks, outside lawmakers' offices, and in the streets. They'll be pressing for an economy that works for the 100 percent, not just the 1 percent. This is a healthy sign for our nation because it dramatizes that the people aren't powerless in the face of extreme inequality.
Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of the new book, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It. www.99to1book.org.
Follow Chuck Collins on Twitter: www.twitter.com/wealthforgood
Jed Diamond: My Drug of Choice Is "More": Getting Real About Wealth Addiction
Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: "There is no alternative".
She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider.
Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: "Home of the Brave?"
which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
~ Albert Einstein
Advantages of business tax reform using both VAT and lower income tax rates include:
• $0.5 trillion in federal revenue
• Elimination of business tax expenditures would produce same rate for all types of business
• 4% VAT and 8% corporate income tax would be lowest business tax rates of all major economies
• The VAT is easy to administer and is fair to imports and exports
• Low rates would permit elimination of deferral of foreign taxes
• Reliance more on business income/sales and less on profit (and identical rates for corporations and individuals) helps close the tax gap between C corporations and other types of business which pass-through the tax liability to the owners.
• All business tax returns would also be digital and available to the public in order to encourage both tax compliance and public confidence in business.
The rates of the 2-4-8 Tax Blend also make it easy to quickly estimate the tax that would be owed for any individual or business. There is no good reason you should settle for incremental reform.
Eugene Patrick Devany, JD, MPA
www.TaxNetWealth.com
The reason I bring this history up is to say there ARE many ways the 99% are being s....... Our representatives over TOOOOOOOOOOO many administrations have LOWERED the tax rate on the rich WHILE at the same time fighting two wars, cutting back on things essential to the poor and the middle class like grants for higher education, like improvements to roads and bridges and public transportation, on and on and on....you can add to the list.