Wall Street’s War Against the Middle Class

Wall Street’s War Against the Middle Class

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What if Jesus Had Been a Republican Like Mitt the Twit Romney

According to Wall Street Money Changer of the Temple Mitt the Twit Romney, 47 percent of the American people want government to take care of them. Actually, only the rich expect government to take care of themselves (See link below). But the picture above shows you what Jesus would’ve been like had he been named Mitt “the Money Changer of the Temple” Romney.

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Chart shows number of Americans in Poverty rising in 2012

The Associate Press, a propaganda organ of the 1 percent, continues to mislead the American people. Ok, the organization does not mislead, it lies to the 99 percent on behalf of the 1 percent. On the other hand, stunningly, even liberal blogs like to lie to the 99 percent. Of the AP report, ThinkProgress.org wrote, “The number of Americans who live within 125 percent of the federal poverty level is expected to reach an all-time high of 66 million in 2012, the Associated Press reports. A family of four at 125 percent of the poverty level — the threshold for legal aid and other government assistance programs — makes $28,800 a year, according to government data. Faced with stagnant wage growth and high unemployment, the number of Americans near the poverty line has skyrocketed since the Great Recession began in 2008, as the chart from Zero Hedge shows below, contributing to America’s rising levels of income inequality.”

The truth is this. Rising income inequality is brought about because the government continues to enact income redistribution legislation, such as free trade treaties. In other words, legislation redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent and this creates rising poverty. It’s not the other way around whereby rising poverty contributes to “income inequality.” The point of view of the folks at ThinkProgress does not make any sense. It makes one wonder. Has ThinkProgress become a propaganda agent of the 1 percent?

The Obama administration, like all good corporate Republicans, continues to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislation, such as free trade treaties and deregulation. This is all done on behalf of Wall Street and the 1 percent.

Related stories below.

US Poverty on Track to Rise to Highest Level Since 1960s–Associated Press

Number of Americans to be near or below poverty level to reach all time high in 2012

US Economic Recovery Weakest Since the Great Depression

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Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

John Schmitt and Janelle Jones of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reached a conclusion from their research. Their conclusions are incorrect, but the information is still impressive. A synopsis is below.

“The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979. In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and better-educated workers generally receive higher pay and better benefits, we would have expected the share of “good jobs” in the economy to have increased in line with improvements in the quality of workforce. Instead, the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy has actually fallen. The estimates in this paper, which control for increases in age and education of the population, suggest that relative to 1979 the economy has lost about one-third (28 to 38 percent) of its capacity to generate good jobs. The data show only minor differences between 2007, before the Great Recession began, and 2010, the low point for the labor market. The deterioration in the economy’s ability to generate good jobs reflects long-run changes in the U.S. economy, not short-run factors related to the recession or recent economic policy.”

The reason why so many good jobs are gone is simple; they’ve been redistributed to the rich. Enact a free trade treaty, ship jobs overseas. The difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages is pocketed by the affluent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. This income redistribution scam is achieved by manipulating the political markets, i.e. purchasing the rules of the game. That’s precisely how the 1 percent have stolen nearly 30 of the total national income compared to about 8 percent back in 1980.

When the jobs are shipped away and the income from them is redistributed to the 1 percent, opportunities are lost for the rest of us, and more so than just the loss of the jobs. When those jobs are exported via bribed-enforced legislation, we lose our tax base and government jobs go away, like police, firefighters and teachers. There are less opportunities for accountants, mechanics and attorneys in government.

And illegal free trade treaties are just one way the one percent manipulate the legislative process to achieve income redistribution from the 99 percent. There’s a ton of other ways. Deregulation, for example, allows corporations to jack up the prices they charge at will. The difference between what prices would be under real competitive conditions and the manipulated prices go into the pockets of the rich via the same route as free income redistribution treaties.

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Where Have All The Good Jobs Gone? Center for Economic and Policy Research

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US Poverty Increase as Income is Redistributed from Working People to the Rich

Poverty rates in the United States rose during the 2000s; it started happening during and because of the economic policies of the illegal Bush regime. The trend was exacerbated by the Great Recession and its aftermath, which, to fair degree, were products of the Bush tax cuts.

The US government is continuously working on behalf of the 1 percent to redistribute income from working Americans to the 1 percent. In this way, Wall profits can constantly move upward. Without this redistribution, corporate profits would go down, down, down, and Wall Street would shrivel up and die. See links below.

According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “By 2010, just over 46 million people fell below the U.S. Census Bureau’s official poverty line (according to data from the Current Population Survey).”

EPI’s “‘The State of Working America, 12th Edition’ puts the U.S. experience with poverty in an international context, comparing the lower end of the wage and income distribution in the United States with that of “peer” countries, largely countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with roughly similar GDP per hour worked as the United States.” Check it out at the link below.

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Economic Policy Institute–US Poverty Rates Higher, Safety Nets Weaker

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Obama and Jobs; Hostage to Fortune; or How Free Trade Treaties Redistribute Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent

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The Poor in America

What happened to Obama’s vision for America? Why is poverty exploding? Why are there so many homeless people? Maybe some of it has to do with Obama, the Democrats and the Republican continuing to enact legislation that redistributes income from the 99 percent to the one percent, from main street to Wall Street. The South Korea Freely Redistributing Your Income to the Rich Treaty is a recent example. That treaty is expected to cost the US nearly a million net jobs. The difference between the old wages here and the new wages there will go into the already overflowing wallets of the one percent.

Watch the film below to see what’s happening to the real face of the 99 percent. Then think how much nothing has changed, how the massive amount of poverty and unemployment will continue to grow under Obama. The 99 percent is playing a rigged game, in which the outcome has been fixed by legislation purchased in the halls of congress and the white house by the one percent.

There is one thing everybody should know; Elizabeth Warren for president.

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Even Severely Conservative Critics of the Social Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It

The economy is in shambles, even if there might be occurring some short-term improvement. In the long-term, say over the next five years, if not sooner, things are going to deteriorate. That’s why even severely conservative people continue to use the government social safety nets more and more.

More of the national income is going to the rich every day. That means there’s less money for the 99 percent to demand more goods and services, which is what creates jobs. Giving more of the national income to the rich actually destroys jobs and wrecks the economy for the rest of us, decreasing demand, and sends most of the rest of us into third world style poverty. We’ve probably already stepped through the door into that world.

Click here for the complete story

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Dickens’s 200th birthday celebrated around the world and on the web

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens! You wrote about wretched conditions in England, and child labor, and your brilliance as a writer put out the worst of humanity on the very first page. And you entertained us.

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The Phoney Populist: Obama can’t and won’t fight the class war too soon

The American middle class hardly needs to be told that it’s struggling: Obama needs to name the enemy, not emote empathy, but he’s not likely to do that. He doesn’t care about the middle class, except during election time. That’s now, and three years ago, and ten years ago. Obama wasn’t politically around ten years ago, but he was three years ago.

Substantively, nothing in Obama’s Kansas speech broke new ground. No new policies were put put forth and no new arguments were made. He spoke to restrained frustration dusted with hope – wasn’t much different from other recent addresses, either.

And you can’t argue he was breaking new ground by showing empathy with a disintegrating middle class.

“When people are slipping out of the middle class,” he said, “it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom.”

This is not news to anyone, anywhere. The president has been aware of this for quite some time.

“Soon, the middle class will only exist in speeches given by politicians and in the minds of workers who cannot allow themselves to identify as something below that. The face of poverty looks more and more like the face in the mirror as thousands of Americans turn to food banks and homeless shelters for the first time. Yet, I think we may be too proud to let the term “middle class” slip away – even as the moderate level of prosperity and disposable income that defined it becomes a day dream.” Ana Marie Cox

some people say that “Obama takes a risk in his willingness to openly discuss the fragility of our national self-image: admitting how bad things have become can only work to his electoral advantage if he offers a solution that feels right to voters – or if he can channel their discontent away from himself.” That may be true, but not likely. Americans are easily swayed. Obama’s core constituents will believe in his populist rhetoric, or at least, pump hope into their financially destroyed hearts. Obama will not follow his words with any substantial action.

The so-called experts have reacted pretty reliably to Obama’s speech: “those on the left have swooned over his embrace of populist rhetoric, those on the right have raised the tattered banner of “class warfare”, apparently not realising that class warfare has been going on for quite awhile now – and the rich have been winning.”

Ana Marie Cox said it best, “Politicians always put themselves rhetorically on the side of the middle class without ever admitting there’s a fight going on. Obama has finally acknowledged that the elephant in the room is crushing us.” Obama can’t and won’t fight the good fight to save the American middle class because he the disciple of Wall Street. He worships at the feet of greed. Just ask the folks at Goldman Sachs.

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A Full House; The Sad State of the United States; the Destruction of the American Dream via the Corruption of Politics

The number of American households in which three or more generations are living under one roof have increased by 30% over the last decade, according to census data. That’s understandable when one considers that 50 percent of the American public now live at or below the poverty line as defined by the US Census Bureau.

Since the beginning of the New Great Depression, over five million families have moved in with relatives. This has forced most to alter their way of living in the process. Generations living together in one household has been a tradition for a long time, but not in the numbers we see now, at least not in our modern times.

Taking in a relative has long been a cultural tradition for many Hispanic immigrants. When her mother was left living by herself in Mexico, Marta De Anda decided the best thing to do was to move her to Sioux City in Iowa to live with Marta, her husband and their three children. It is almost family tradition to have three generations living under one roof and to have the elder helping out in the household and with the children.

But the economic downturn has been the reason that most Americans have tried to save costs by sharing a roof. When Kristi Quinn and her husband Bill ended up sharing their Dakota City house in Nebraska with their daughter and two grandchildren, they found the new living arrangement meant they had to change some of the plans they had for retirement and travel.

The BBC’s Franz Strasser went to the Iowa-Nebraska border to see how the two families are handling a full house under different circumstances.

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