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Give Us Your Lavishly Rich, Your Xenophobic
Immigrants. Taking our jobs and public assistance. The cause of all our problems.
But it's not true. We're blaming people who are struggling day-by-day to survive on their own or support their families, while we applaud a system that allows a financial expert to make enough money to pay the salaries of 50,000 police officers.
Here are some facts:
The Census Bureau and the World Wealth Report 2010 both report increases for the top 5% of households even during the current recession.
Based on Internal Revenue Service figures, the richest 1% have TRIPLED their cut of America's income pie in one generation. In 1980 the richest 1% of America took one of every fifteen income dollars. Now they take THREE of every fifteen income dollars. That's a TRILLION extra dollars a year.
Some ultra-rich individuals, like hedge fund managers David Tepper and John Paulson, made $4 billion in a year (on most of which they paid only a 15% capital gains tax rate). This is enough to pay the salaries of every public school teacher in New York City.
But we blame the immigrants instead of the people taking unimaginable amounts of money from society.
Howard Zinn wrote about the petty thieves who go to jail for crimes averaging $1000 per offense, while sophisticated financial insiders get probation for swindling millions from the system. The only difference now is that it's "legal" to use financial trickery to divert funds from education and infrastructure to a few well-positioned money managers.
The way it's supposed to work, say the free-market tax-me-not supply-side trickle-down tea-party advocates, is that the rich will create jobs and stimulate the economy by investing in new production. But the richest 1%, who used to take $7 of every $100 of America's income, have increased that to $20 of every $100 in just one generation.
To put it another way, if the bottom 90% had shared in America's prosperity at a level consistent with 1980 incomes, the average middle-class family would be making $45,000 a year instead of $35,000.
And it's not just the rich individuals, but also the corporations that are taking money meant for jobs and public needs. Fareed Zakaria noted in Newsweek that the 500 largest non-financial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash.
Zinn said change will occur only through direct action by the people, as occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. The poor foreigner is not the enemy. It's the person or corporation who siphons money away from the rest of us while supporting our irrational fears through the media and the military.
Give us your tired, your poor.
Give us your manipulator of finances.
- Posted in
34 Comments so far
Show AllIMHO this is just scapegoating. The "illegal aliens" are the problem, focuses attention on them while those in power screw us blind. Pretty basic stuff here, but it works like a charm time after time, society after society.
Americans like to think they are exceptional, but we are not. We just happen to have settled on a part of the planet with lots of natural resources that the ruling classes could exploit. It is the land that made us "seem" exceptional, not us as a people. If the EXACT same people that set up the 13 original colonies had set them up in an area like Greenland for example, we all know we wouldn't be the "superpower" we are now.
So not being an "exceptional people", all the political dirty tricks, and manipulations that have worked like a charm in other doomed societies have worked just fine here too. Yea there are lots of people that understand what is going on, but their numbers are not large enough to matter much, and if they get out of line they can be easily discredited or ignored by the national media. It happens ALL the time. For example when was the last time you heard Chomsky even mentioned on a CBS, NBC or ABC, morning news/talk show?
As far as; "Zinn said change will occur only through direct action by the people, as occurred in the 1960s and 1970s." goes, well we saw a huge ground swell effort, especially by the young, to get Obama elected and we see how that has worked out. The ruling class watched, what happened in the 60s, and 70s, learned from it, and have used what they learned to be sure the un-cleansed masses don't pull that crap again.
Back in the Vietnam war days, we had Walter Cronkite go on the air and say the war was un-winnable, now a days we have Lara Logan lambasting one of her own, for putting a general overseeing yet another un-winnable war in a bad light. Support those troops at all cost you know. War is peace. "THAT'S the way it is" now a days.
The elite have rigged the two party system with what can only be honestly described as legalized bribes. Corporate propaganda can easily manufacture consent in the majority of people. This results in only those that will do the bidding of the rich being allowed to play the part of a candidate. Again there are exceptions, but again their numbers are not large enough to matter much, but there are just enough of them to give the appearance that "the people" have some representation.
IMHO the Democrats are now just wolves in sheep's clothing that throw us a scrap of meat from time to time. Many times with strings attached back to their corporate rulers. The Republicans on the other hand are just wolves that can barely contain their contempt for us little folk.
As a member ever growing "unemployable class", I have lots of time to follow all the political crap, and it is overwhelmingly depressing on a scale that is mind boggling. For example, scientists say the planet is warming. Year after year go on record as being the warmest on record, but large parts of the population refuse to believe it, because political hacks say it aint so. The Gulf of Mexico is ruined by deep water drilling, but most of the residents down there think it should continue. "Drill baby Drill!" I could go on and on, and on, but I think you get the picture.
I know my post will be jumped on as being negative and un-empowering, uninspiring. Yea I know get off my ass, take to the streets, protest, organize, join the Greens, don't vote for anyone that is part of the two main parties, etc. etc. But will any of that really work now? Realistically it seems to me that the corporate power grab is now pretty much complete. That power grab has been glacial in both its speed and power. Very slowly implemented, but at the same time, impossible to resist the power of its movement in the end.
I hope I'm wrong in thinking we have reached a point of no return for the working class in this country, but I fear I am not. I really hope I am proved wrong, but I am just not sure how that is going to happen.
Empires like reality don't ALWAYS have to have a happy ending.
NC-Tom: "I know my post will be jumped on as being negative and un-empowering, uninspiring. [and the rest]."
No, NC-Tom, you are being realistic.
As these last five or so years have passed, and I learned more and more of what I suspected in the previous five years and added it all together with decades of other information before 2000, we've been had. There is more coming and it doesn't look good, not just at the national level, but the planetary level.
I have been writing more negative posts than usual too because it is glaringly apparent what is happening, and still so many don't get it. Many folks on CD are writing outstanding posts, loaded with information and sequential history with all the parts, and their conclusions are very logical. And the logical conclusions are: Not lookin' good.
The basic message, however, is. It's over, folks. Life as we knew it is over, and ultimate imperial takeover is closing in quite fast now.
Also, I am not paranoid, but so much of this is planned. And that information takes some ferreting out, but it's readily available.
Our democratic process is kaput, and we are a Corporate/Military-controlled fascist nation in league with particular old colonial powers now as we always have been, and of course, the masters of INSANITY and CRUELTY and INJUSTICE, Zionist Israel, are in a "forever" relationship with us, according to President B.O. & Company. No problemo. Whatever the hell you Zionist coots decide to do, we're with you as protector and friend. Yeeecccchhh!!!
Also throw in the Religious Right-Wingers or just some extreme Right Wingers and they have become a great tool for the powers that be/the ultimate string-pullers. The Fundie Righties keep fighting for things that will really do them in as individuals and families, and they don't get it at all, unless of course, you believe, that you are going up in the Rapture as Jesus scoots around in the sky on his cloud taxi gathering the flock, and you look forward to that.
The oppression of freedoms started several years back and that oppression will get more and more and more.
And if there are too many ominous rumblings, well, Obama ... [if the Lieberman legislation passes or similar legislation] ... will be able to shut down the internet, and every president after will be able to do the same unless there is a drastic change and The People somehow regain their government as in: "of, for and the by the people."
And out there "in the field" is Big Nurse Hillary & Company, chastising countries about their "behavior" and how they must do this or that or shape up or whatever because the U.S. is comin' to get them with sanctions or, you can bet on it, with some kind of military attack, preferably drone bombers so the soldiers don't have to get their hands dirty or be bloodied up too much.
A third party ... a fourth or fifth ... ??? Good luck, dreamers.
And yet there are many things we can do, and as Howard Zinn said often: ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE. [correct me if it's Noam Chomsky who said and says this. A moment of forgetfulness, and I don't feel like looking it up right now.]
The majority of us are still sleeping and do not pay attention and are not interested too much in what's going on. ... That comfortable apathy will last as long as their lives are not affected, but the reckoning is coming. It cannot not come now. And then ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE will take on many forms, including the less than polite and likely dangerous.
We may or may not have enough time left as a species and as a viable planet.
Make your peace with this little piece of news about having as little time as six months because of the ramifications of the lighted fuse of the Lousiana/BP oil blowout, which happens to be attached to the rest of the earth.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20131
The Truth is very uncomfortable sometimes, but we need to say it and we need to hear it so our own fires get lit. We need to internalize what we are truly up against, and then discuss, plan, act in whatever way we can, at a small scale or perhaps and eventually likely the grandest scale we can muster, and the interesting thing is that doesn't have to be anything violent, and that latter is my vision of what can be done.
Anyway ... we're all in this together, whether we yet know that or not.
peace, NC-Tom,
cm
******* THERE IS NO HEARTBEAT ON EARTH THAT IS NOT SOMEHOW OUR OWN. *******
You both are really good posters, but just a quick note to not give in yet. True, the life we knew is over, but that's probably a good thing in the end. It'll be a hard adjustment, as all adjustments are of this magnitude. But we can and will make it through.
We're in a period where a mental divorce process is underway for many, and that process will expand and intensify as things degenerate. This is how consciousness is constructed and always has been. Out of this will come opportunity, but only if we think some things are worth fighting for.
The answer now is both simple and hard in an age of almost total anomie. We must find people in the physical world, build our relationships and ties between like-minded people, and find ways to forge ahead with resistance, rebellion, and renewal in equal shares.
We can still win, guys. We have to.
"... Zionist Israel, are in a "forever" relationship with us"
Not true. The second that it is in Israel's best interests to align themselves with our enemies and help them destroy us, they will gleefully do so. They are allies only so long as we are useful to them.
They are not, and never have been, our friends.
Damn straight. It's not the poor people who lied us into wars for profit, it's the rich. It's not the poor who have given us a for profit prison system in this country, it was the rich. It's not the poor who shipped our jobs overseas, it was the rich. It wasn't the poor who drove the country into bankruptcy, it was the rich.
The poor don't have enough political power to get a keep off the grass sign installed, but the rich can pass policies that make life hell for anyone who isn't THEM. It wasn't the poor who gave us the Alzheimer's economics system we live under, it was the FREAKING RICH.
If there is ONE group of people that you DON'T want in your country, the rich are that group. They steal more than any street thug could dream of, and they do that by corrupting everything they touch. They buy politicians, they destroy entire political systems, they destroy everything they touch if they can profit off of it.
The rich are NOT anyone to emulate or admire. They are greedy, selfish, pig headed people who have no use for other's lives, they just want more than everyone else. And they don't care who they have to destroy to get it. If your kid has a quarter for a school lunch, THEY WANT IT. And they don't care if they have to starve your kid to get it. These people are barely HUMAN. They are no one to be admired, they should be pitied. And then locked up for destroying our economy.
I've been around enough rich people to know that about 1 in 100 or so is actually a decent person. The rest suck and have no decency in their souls. May they get the endings that their stories so RICHLY deserve. And then may they rot in hell.
Wait a minute, WJM!
It's the people in Washington who've lied us into wars for profit, given us a for-profit prison system, shipped our manufacturing jobs overseas, and pitted the various races, classes, religions, and ethnic groups against each other.
Yes, but WHO is it that has been paying them to betray their own people? It's those with FAR more money than those in places of power in gov't do. Those in gov't aren't clever enough to engineer such a looting by themselves. It takes REAL evil and greed to do such a thing. And while those in congress and the WH (especially the last administration) ARE greedy, selfish and in many cases evil, they are by and large not THAT smart. That is clear from their words AND actions.
Look deeper. This is like getting pissed at the Sheriff of Nottingham when the real criminal is Prince john (for lack of a better thought out analogy). One is the henchman, the other is the brains behind the actions. And from "Night of the Living Dead", "If you kill the head, you kill the ghoul". The ghoul will disappear on it's own without it's head to tell it what evil to do.
On the other hand, if you won or inherited millions of dollars, would you change and then be the Hated Rich?
There needs to be a national law that no one can earn more than, say 17 times what the lowest employee earns. And, if we are honest, any garbage collector is at least as important as a CEO.
The ignorance of the many of the poor served the rich quite well. How many voted and continue to vote against their better interests? If you live in the south, you see clearly that many are still in favor of the same destructive policies, even those who are very poor.
Precisely WHY they are rich, they know well how to steal and hoard.
The financial figures quoted in the article should be considered in the context of what is going on in Denmark. That country has no large industrial base and few natural resources. Yet it has the highest standard of living in Europe (and, I recall reading, higher than in America).
The income distribution in Denmark is not "flat," but there is no incredible disparity between the richest and the poorest. They have high taxes but they get something for the taxes - an elaborate social safety net.
Call it Socialism, but it works for the benefit of most of the people there - unlike the system we have here, in which a relatively small number of people get most of the benefits and the rest have to make do.
The system we have here is not caused by any so-called "laws of nature;" it is caused by the stratified social system we have. The difference between what many people in this country face and what the lower classes in England faced in the 19th Century (described by Dickens) is not significant.
There is no economic "divine right of kings" that says hedge fund managers are entitled to the money they make. It is due to the political leverage the money gives them.
The system we have here is not caused by any so-called "laws of nature;
**Anyone hear of Charles Darwin???**
The only balance is the finite human life span and the simple fact that no mater how much they make, they can't take it with them.
Occasionally, an heir might transcend the baseness of his (or her) line. Unfortunately not in the Bush, Forbes, or Murdock dynasties. etc etc etc.
Yeah, the common man! -- ignorant delusional slaves!
We have the technology to reach any corner of this country within seconds, to draw-up and implement alternative social infrastructures within a few months, or at least years (I find the current effort to salvage Detroit quite inspiring), but we're still too preoccupied with our fetishes with wealth and debt and "entertainment" to do any of this without adequate pressure crashing down on us first. I mean, maybe once half the country is unemployed and broke, this intelligence and intuition will be naturally called forth?
Nobody knows what they're doing. And I don't think there's any one cure-all plan-of-action for people, at this point, but my own plan basically consisted of getting rid of my TV, paying attention to my own personal consumption and waste, and continuously reading up on the philosophies and politics of people I admire or find intelligent... Ultimately, I end up drawing my own conclusions, but this process has done a lot of good for my head, as far as anxieties and not-knowing where to stand.
So... Yeah. Rich people own most of the important land, and via corporations and politicians, they pay the American proletariat to work awful jobs for very little... But I still say the advent of the internet and modern technologies have empowered us and handicapped them irreversibly*... So we should start to wield these technologies more fearlessly.
*If we can get our heads out of our asses in time to protect them from consolidation and corporate influence, that is.
But hey, I don't know shit. I'm just another uneducated poor person, I don't know what any of it really means.
It's not that we have our heads up our butts friend. It's that the average family in this country is being reduced to grinding poverty by the system you so accurately depict and has very little energy or time left after working 3 shitty jobs to do anything but eat some crap junk food and hopefully get 8 hrs. of sleep if they're really lucky. By the time their 40 they're old and they can't afford good health care so the rest of their lives is spent limping to an early grave. As for the rich they couldn't care less. They rationalize this awful system as the best in the world full of opportunities ( yea, for them). They live in a different world then the rest of us.
Bonnie & Clyde made their own oppertunities. Hitler was born lower middle class, as was Ronnie Reagan. yes it can be done.
Arnold Schwartznegger started out with some athletic sponsors and a bad accent, and look what he's done.
It just depends on luck, and a willingness to crush anyone in your way.
>^^<
Anytime someone can string Ronnie Reagan and Hitler into the same sentence, my hat is off to the author. Let's not forget Colonel Sanders for the unemployed sixty-something crowd! Beakless chicken anyone?
in a world of increasing vast operational scarcity, the winners win, consolidating their winnings, and the losers are left to die.
..the end of J. Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror-The horror"..
"Nobody knows what they're doing."
Capitalists know *exactly* what they're doing.
Lenin once said "When we are about to hang the last capitalist, another will appear offering to sell us a rope."
Isn't it about time we started with the necktie parties?
i once told a straight arrow type that he had a fawning, overweening attitude toward the rich...he said: "yes i do, and you know why?...with out them there would be chaos!"
Sounds like something Ayn Rand would say, and just as vacuous.
very perceptive sir...he calls himself a libertarian...i would say that this hierarchical sucking up is pretty strong in the hooman however...peace
without them there would be peace and cooperation.
This is on my list for distribution... already printed and copied.
... but that is the american way.
do xenophobes have a Dept. of Knownland Security?
Perhaps some are xenophobes, and some are not. Are these communities experiencing real problems with the continuing influx of undocumented workers, or are the making it all up? True, shady businesses may be inviting them in under the table, and THAT is the issue that needs to be addressed. If we can step down from the various agendas long enough without the accusation, labeling, and slandering, maybe we can come to a workable solution. To do this, though, we must start busting some of these businesses. I agree with NC Tom, the focus is misguided, especially if the illegal practices of employers are ignored. Nevertheless, a large population of undocumented people does present its own set of unique challenges that must be addressed by local communities, especially at a time of severe economic contraction. In my view, these businesses should have to pony up, after all it is they who have reaped and continue to reap the benefits at the taxpayers expense.
Hmmm
It continues to amaze me that the people who are actually in the top 1% fail to review history. These parasites, criminals and despots consider themselves superior. And yet....history has shown that every single time this type of gross economic disparity and the massive levels of poverty that are required to sustain it occur, there has been only one result in the end for those in the top 1%. Simply put, they get what they deserve. And it is usually sooner rather than later. And what do they deserve? The same death and destruction that they have used to steal everyone else's of course.
It's been found Feudal systems were earier on the Serfs, studies showed they only worked 35hrs a week then only in planting and harvest seasons. At the end of the year the Lord was obligated to provide a week of food and drink for his Serfs who had holidays and time off as needed for Childbirth.
Serfs injured or sick also were the responsibility of the Manor Lord.
Things always went both ways, a Lord cought neglecting his people was severily punished by his Over-Lords who also had responsibilities both up and down the line.
>^^<
Trickle down is the way of hierarchies such as ours and always has been. It's a study in abnormal behavior going on continuously.
Normal behavior is people being themselves and having no need for hierarchies or pecking orders which create so many of our problems if not virtually all of them.
We can't continue like this and we won't. We will become extinct if this trickle down continues for long enough.
AD
EXACTLY
The uber-rich oligarchs in the U.S. are impoverishing the rest of us by:
(1) Paying a far lower percentage of their incomes in taxes than everyone else (causing deficits, budget cuts, unemployment and economic recession)
(2) "Financing" (bribing) politicians to pass and sign anti-democratic, "free-trade" pacts that trump all trade, labor and environmental protection laws
(3) Outsourcing American industries and jobs to child-labor, pollution-spewing factories abroad (causing unemployment, lower wages and benefits, and increased poverty and hunger here, and long-term harms around the world)
(4) Recruiting and trafficking illegal wage slaves from foreign countries to take jobs in the U.S. that can't be outsourced (causing unemployment, lower wages and benefits, and increased poverty and hunger)
(5) Taking the money they've hoarded (from all of the above) and speculating in stock, bond and commodities markets without regulation or taxation (causing wild price increases/fluctuations and bubbles that harm the rest of us, and lead to lost savings, lower real-estate values and economic recession)
The idea that we are free to oppose 1, 2, 3 and 5, but anyone who dares mention 4 is "blaming" the migrant slaves and "xenophobic," is pure crap.
"Fareed Zakaria noted in Newsweek that the 500 largest non-financial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's $3.6B per company in uninvested cash. Best case against the "trickle down theory" one could possibly make, IMHO.