It is class warfare. But it was begun not by the tear-gassed, rain-soaked protesters asserting their constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful assembly but rather the financial overlords who control all of the major levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is they who subverted the American ideal of a nation of stakeholders in control of their economic and political destiny.
Between 1979 and 2007, as the Congressional Budget Office reported this week, the average real income of the top 1 percent grew by an astounding 275 percent. And that is after payment of the taxes that the superrich and their Republican apologists find so onerous.
Those three decades of rampant upper-crust greed unleashed by the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s will be well marked by future historians recording the death of the American dream. In that decisive historical period the middle class began to evaporate and the nation's income gap increased to alarming proportions. "As a result of that uneven growth," the CBO explained, "the distribution of after-tax household income in the United States was substantially more unequal in 2007 than in 1979: The share of income accruing to higher-income households increased, whereas the share accruing to other households declined. ... The share of after-tax household income for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income more than doubled. ..."
That was before the 2008 meltdown that ushered in the massive increase in unemployment and housing foreclosures that further eroded the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans while the superrich rewarded themselves with immense bonuses. To stress the role of the financial industry in this march to greater income inequality as the Occupy Wall Street movement has done is not a matter of ideology or rhetoric, but, as the CBO report details, a matter of discernible fact.
The CBO noted that in comparing top earners, "The [income] share of financial professionals almost doubled from 1979 to 2005" and that "employees in the financial and legal professions made up a larger share of the highest earners than people in those other groups."
No wonder, since it was the bankers and the lawyers serving them who managed to end the sensible government regulations that contained their greed. The undermining of those regulations began during the Reagan presidency, and so it is not surprising that, as the CBO reports, "the compensation differential between the financial sector and the rest of the economy appears inexplicably large from 1990 onward." Citing a major study on the subject, the CBO added, "The authors believe that deregulation and corporate finance activities linked to initial public offerings and credit risks are the primary causes of the higher compensation differential."
So much for the claim that excessive government regulation has discouraged business activity. The CBO report also denies the charge that taxes on the wealthy have placed an undue burden on the economy, documenting that federal revenue sources have become more regressive and that the tax burden on the wealthy has declined since 1979.
In the face of the evidence that class inequality had been rising sharply in the United States even before the banking-induced recession, it would seem that the Occupy Wall Street protests are a quite measured and even timid response to the crisis.
Actually, the rallying cry of that movement was originally enunciated not by the protesters in the streets, but by one of the nation's most respected economists. Last April, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote an article in Vanity Fair titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" that should be required reading for those well-paid pundits who question the logic and motives of the Wall Street protesters. "Americans have been watching protests [abroad] against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few," Stiglitz wrote. "Yet, in our democracy, 1% of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income -- an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."
Maybe justice will prevail despite the suffering that the 1 percent has inflicted on the foreclosed and the jobless. But to date those who have seized 40 percent of the nation's wealth still control the big guns in this war of classes.
Bob Cesca: Occupy Wall Street Isn't Anti-Corporation, It's Anti-Corporate Crime
Income Inequality Is Not a Myth
Income Inequality Lower Than Average In NW, Says Census Report
Viewpoint: Income inequality is troubling
Yes, Virginia, There Is Income Inequality—Will the Supercommittee Admit It?
The Myth of Income Equality, Courtesy of AEI
Obama education chief: student loan reform to address income inequality
http://acivilamericandebate.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-30-year-growth-of-income-inequality/
As you can see from the 3rd graph this trend actually started in 1976. Should we blame President Carter? The greatest jumps happened under President Clinton should we blame President Clinton?
I think so!
President Clinton gave us The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 (IBBEA) swept away all state barriers to interstate banking. Which allowed BANKS to become to BIG to FAIL nor Reagan! It was Clinton that gave us The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealed part of Glass-Steagall, tearing down the walls between banking, insurance and investments. That allowed Wall Street to steal our 401K's!
It was Clinton that finally got passed NAFTA and gave Permanent MFTS to China against his word!
I have fun at my Republicans expense pointing out Reagan raised Capital Gains after unemployment fell below 6%! http://www.ctj.org/pdf/regcg.pdf
So stop blaming Reagan for the mess we are in today! It is the Fault of President Clinton. The father of Clinton Democrats aka the Kinder Gentler Republicans aka Rockefeller Republicans - well they had to find a home somewhere and they found it in the Democratic party!
See Most Millionaires Want higher Taxes on Millionaires on HuffPost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/millionaire-tax-warren-buffett_n_1035763.html
I'm talking about pursuing policies that move people from the middle class to a less prosperous class, policies which, if pursued as fully as dedicated ideologues seem to be trying to pursue them, would result in the eventual destruction of the middle class. Those at the top would have a bigger piece of a smaller pie.
We don't need to speculate about what the American society and economy would look like after that transformation. That experiment is already being run in dozens of countries around the world. They're called "third world."
www.keyboardpolitics.com
too funny
Wow. So did mine.
And all I did it was leave teaching for retail middle managment.
Sorry, America, for being so greedy.
However, it is not democratic government intervention. It is plutocratic government intervention.
They outsourced high education jobs and told you to apply at service sectors
They capped your service sector hourly wages at 2.50 plus tips and no insurance
Now they just blame you when you can't even find a service sector jobs.