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Today's Top News
The Top 1%: Wealth Inequality and the New Gilded Age
With 1% of Americans controlling 40% of the country's wealth, we examine the gap between the rich and the rest.
The richest one per cent of Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40 per cent of its wealth.
Inequality in the US is more extreme than it has been in almost a century - and the gap between the super-rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' $14.3 trillion debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above nine per cent, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programmes that are the backbone of the US' social safety net, and whether to raise taxes - or to cut them further.
The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the US has never seemed so divided - both politically and economically.
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26 Comments so far
Show AllIit's all over, folks! We're now a full-blown Plutocracy!!! The Supreme Court finished us off with the "Citizens United" decision.
Over half of the Supreme and both houses of Congress are millionaires - and their ONLY purpose is to insure that the Plutocracy lives forever!!!l All of the "politicking" that goes on in our government is nothing but pure "THEATER"
Democracy is DEAD!!! We might as well face it. Once we assert this "truth," and only then, is there a possibility of reforming our government which is now a government OF THE RICH. BY THE RICH, AND FOR THE RICH into the government originally established by our forefathers.
Wikileaks and the Arab Spring have shown the way. Using modern tools like the Internet, progressives could organize and make a difference, even now. That is, if only they had the will to do so. In that connection, I say let's stop demonizing the rich and look at the shortcomings of ourselves -- members of the poor and middle class -- who have allowed the abuses to occur.
We don't need to demonize the rich. They are doing a fine job of it by themselves.
chaokoh, Agreed. Don't waste time doing what's already been done.
Regarding the comment by Manning120 - the people allowing themselves to be taken - Bingo !
manning120 says…
" I say let's stop demonizing the rich and look at the shortcomings of ourselves -- members of the poor and middle class -- who have allowed the abuses to occur."
Stated like a corporate tool. Look!!!! Over there!!!!
hue_sir_name, Sorry -- I believe unless I (among other less than wealthy persons) accept responsibility, it's unlikely I will do anything about the problem.
After reading your post again, I understand where you are coming from and agree. I think, however, unless the excesses and even criminality of those responsible for attacking the poor and middle classes are not kept in focus, or even brought in to focus, then the effectiveness of such an American Spring succeeding, will be impossible.
It is one thing, to say that we are responsible in responding ourselves, it is another thing to say, stop looking at those responsible for so much destruction, within the new paradigm of disaster capitalism.
Sorry for being disrespectful in my first post.
" and unemployment remains above nine per cent"
I am getting so FKN tired of this polite, soft shelled LIE about the unemployed...Over and above 9% is NOT EVEN CLOSE...I would put it at 20% to 25% conservative estimate, truth be told...9% just makes Obama look less worthless!!!
Me too, stubones. Those of us who are no longer receiving Unemployment (oh boy, I found a low-paying, part-time job) don't count. Those who were cut off, stopped looking, gave up, don't count. Those who are employed part-time, underemployed, don't count. Those who are earning minimum wage or barely more and can't afford to make ends meet don't count.
shadowstats.com
Go to www.shadowstats.com for the real unemployment numbers, closer to 22.7%. John Williams uses the same criteria that were used in 1980 to crunch the numbers. If you've recently heard Noam Chomsky speak, he talks about the REAL unemployment number being very close to Depression levels -- 25%. Paul Craig Roberts also uses these same numbers in the articles he writes.
And in the communities of color it is MUCH higher.
This video and report was excellent. Bravo alJazeera! It's a shame that it takes a foreign media outlet to produce a great American report.
Yes, we know we are betrayed. My belief is that "everything can be different." There is more than one way to go! There is more than one outcome possible! We are suffering the mentality of the defeated. What we need to do to change the direction of our spiral downward is to stay awake and alert and grab onto each and every opportunity we come across to promote positive change. This is all we have......let us at least try!
I agree. One suspects that the chances that a news program like Frontline or 60 Minutes will ever produce a program like the one that Fault Lines has done here is probably, to put it mildly, quite remote.
This report is the kind of thing we don't usually see. We don't have that kind of media anymore.
The reporter did well, although I'd caution Al Jazeera about using Jeffrey Sachs as an economics expert source. His economic prescriptions for counties are quite in the shock doctrine vein of austerity budgets. They are quite contrary to his public speeches, which sound more like common sense. My guess is he's some sort of "economic hit man" type, as described by John Perkins' book with that title.
This Administration, the Republicans, Tea Bagger's Etc. need to be sent A clear, strong message/Ultimatum- "Touch our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and there will be A SHIT STORM beyond Biblical proportions"!!!
Social Security has absolutely NOTHING to do with George Bush's or Barack Obama's EMPIRE WAR DEBT...
Yes, let the storm begin. These criminals have been stealing our SS (to pay for Empire's wars, for example) and do not want to pay it back. Begin with Eric "Cantor" the arch pig. Time he be made to sing a different song--on a chain gang.
September 17 Wall Street occupation; www.october2011.org DC occupation of Freedom Square starting October 6. It was not enough to get bailed out on Wall Street now they manufacture a "crisis" to get out of repaying what they took out of the SS trust fund. And about those jobs program: prison labor and the military where you can go let off steam in a foreign country and get your body parts blown off. Time to turn the tables on the sociopaths!
Change the PR words and we change the discussion, Instead of saying, "The richest one per cent of Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40 per cent of its wealth," change the "earn" to "take" or "keep." Makes a world of difference. Questions arise and answers come forth. Try it.
I feel the rich should pay 45% in tax remember they have more write offs than a regular working person.
However,
I recently saw a T.V. program and the women commentator in a industrial state said they had $24.00. an hour factory work going wanting for workers.
I myself have seen people so used to making such high hourly amounts these people won't ever replicate what they made building $750,000 dollar homes because the same people were buying them when they only could afford something 40% less in price.
Now these homes sit there on the verge of foreclosure and can't get a approved buyer for $550,000 so the older people that want to retire and move on can't
Those insane days of charge and spend days are realistically over and we all have to comeback to real life. Save every week and spend for what you need and not what you desire.
Jobs at $24.00 a hour is 960. a week or 49,920 a year with hardly no education or true skill.
Go wanting for workers?
No wonder our jobs are being outsourced by rich heartless billionaires.
Get real America start out in a "starter house" and for god's sake save even if it's only a lousy thousand or couple of thousand dollars a year.
Stop with the $14.00 pizzas and brown bag your lunch.
It works and in a few years things will be doable that aren't doable for you now.
And Please:
Don't have kids you can't afford.
You make a lot of good points. And the IRS rates over the years since Reagan have changed dramatically to favor the wealthy.
You also need to ask yourself, "what are earnings"? And why is 1 percent of the US population keeping 25 percent of it?
I belief the statistics state that 1% are keeping "40%" of the money...
The favorite current proposal that bites the super-rich the most, by closing loopholes, also winds up LOWERING their tax rates. Its authors claim that it would cut the deficit by a trillion or two.
What is desperately needed is to raise the top incomes incrementally, a couple of percent above 250 or 500 K, then a few more percent from there to a million, then more from 1 to 5 million, etc. Above a billion a year - and there are people who take (not earn) that much - a marginal rate of at least 50%. That still leaves them with enough for bread on the table and a new yacht.
This would go further to heal the deficit than slashing all of the social programs.
Hardly anyone knows about President Lincoln's solution that worked well for the nation for many years, which Dennis Kuccinich wants to bring back:
http://www.thegic.org/profiles/blogs/dennis-kucinichs-revolutionary
Dennis Kucinich's Revolutionary Bill
Posted by Ashana on February 19, 2011
On December 17th, 2010, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced one of the most radical monetary Bills presented to the House of Representatives since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Designated as Bill H.R. 6550, this proposed Act is also referred to as the 'National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010' (NEED).
Kucinich's Bill includes the following astounding objectives: "to restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money... [and to] retire public debt..."
One needs to read that again: Restore the authority of Congress to create and regulate money? Retire public debt? Does that really say what it seems to be saying? What a revolutionary Bill!
H.R. 6550 is much more far-reaching than Ron Paul's valiant attempt to audit the Federal Reserve. This Bill would take us back 175 years to Andrew Jackson who killed central banking in the United States and became the last president to pay off the National Debt. And it would take us back to Abraham Lincoln who, 150 years ago, instructed the Treasury to bypass the banks and issue some 450 million debt-free 'greenbacks' to pay for the Union war effort during the Civil War.
Kucinich's Bill, if enacted as written, would take the power of money creation away from the banksters and return it to Congress as the Founding Fathers had originally intended. And in no time, the National Debt would be fully paid off with debt-free, interest-free U.S. Treasury dollars.....
One way to find out more is the read Web of Debt, by Ellen Brown, or her articles, both of which can be found online.
So what? As long as the rich can hire lobbyists this same thing will continue. There is no way in hell the politicians are going to get rid of the lobbyists. Obama tried and failed very quickly. We, the People, are left to fend for ourselves. One more thing, this "Tea Party" can only by put out of business when the people start thinking and stop following like lemmings.