Does anybody besides me think we’re looking at the wrong end of the horse? The wealthy of this country, and their political emissaries the Republican Party, attack Obama’s healthcare reforms declaring it will result in jobs being taken away from American workers. Jobs, jobs, jobs, they say, is what Americans need the most, and what government ought to focus on. This from the wealthy—the plutocracy, if you will—that have spent the last 30 years systematically eliminating jobs in this country by taking their business overseas to exploit cheap labor and, in effect, exploit our less organized, less represented, more desperate brothers and sisters.
Oh, that’s right—the money trickles up. The wealthiest 1 percent take home 23 percent of all the income in this country. The wealthiest 10 percent take 50 percent of the entire wealth of the country. By the way, it didn’t use to be this way. The largest period of growth for the middle class occurred between 1945 and 1980. But between 198 what we miss by looking only in this direction is that the wealthy are 0 and 2005, 80 percent of all new income went to the top what we miss by looking only in this direction is that the wealthy are doing just fine.
Remember the banking crisis? The deregulation sought and obtained by George W. and company created the ground for rampant exploitation of regular working people. And after they created the economic disaster, who did they turn to for the bailout? Us. We the People saved their sorry asses. So with foreclosures happening everywhere, job losses everywhere, basic services threatened everywhere, it’s a bit galling that Wall Street CEOs are now earning more money than they were before the bailout.
The depletion of money for basic services isn’t happening because there’s no money to be had; it’s because the wealthy have found ways to avoid paying their fair share. It’s an old story: the rich get richer while the poor, and now middle class, gets poorer. This is the conversation we’re not having. And to the extent that we don’t, we participate in our own demise.
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