Why is the USA is Number One in Income and Wealth Inequality?

Overall, the USA rates 75th highest in the world in income inequality, just behind Ghana and Turkmenistan, but ahead of Senegal, Thailand and Zambia, although only nine nations are compared in the graph above. Those are industrialized nations in the graph. Naturally, among those nine the USA is dead last. Why is the USA last among those industrialized nations?

Liars of the corporate news media and their pundits will tell you it is because of technology and automation, as if China, Germany, Sweden and other nations in the graph above don’t have the exact same issues. They do. Yet income inequality in those nations are far less than in the USA.

As you can see from the graph, severe income mal-distribution peaked just before the Great Depression in the USA. That mal-distribution caused the Depression because it weakened the demand for goods and services by the 99 percent.

You can see that a  massive rise  in mal-distribution began in the USA with the so-called Reagan Revolution, which was essentially, something of a coup since the 1 percent essentially stole control of the US government via treason. See The Real October Surprise Really Happened–Christian Science Monitor .

The 1 percent took complete control over the corporate news media around the same time, and sold us a ton of lies, such as trickle down economics, which redistributed income from the 99 to the 1 percent and gave more money to the 1 percent with which they corrupted government. The government redistributed income by signing free trade treaties and other legislation that allowed the 1 percent to ship jobs overseas, and pocket the difference between the higher old wages and the new lower wages.

The press continues to lie to us about a number of things. One of them is that our biggest trade deficit is with the nation of China. No it is not! Our biggest trade deficit is with US corporations as a whole that ship jobs overseas, or create them there which they would otherwise not be able to do without these corporate trade treaties. US corporations also hire foreign contractors and or sub-contractors to manufacture goods and services, rather than US contractors and subcontractors, thanks to these so-called trade treaties. In all of these cases, goods and services are exported to the United States from foreign nations by US corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, General Motors, General Electric, Fannie Mae (call centers in India and Pakistan), Capital One, and many others. The result is a massive United States trade deficit. This is the primary conduit through which income is redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent.

Wall Street President Barack Obama plans to increase income and wealth inequality in the USA through the Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest income redistribution treaty of all time. Incoming Wall Street Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is completely with the president on this scam. So is Democratic Liberal Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. The game is completely rigged against the 99 percent, but the fight’s not over.

In other words, income inequality has been brought about by an inequality of political power in government and in both major political parties.

We can stop the madness. There are a great many Democrats in congress who want to get reelected, and so a few simple phone calls by a large number of constituents can sway them. The same is true of many Tea Party Republican members of the US House. Call them and protest. Let you voices be heard. Let them know you’ve had enough of these income redistribution scams.

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Believe It or Not, the guy who voted to keep millions of Americans in Poverty Just Became the Third Most Powerful Politician in the USA

On November 4, 2014, the six year battle of Wall Street Senator Mitch McConnell came to fruition. He won reelection as one of the many senators controlled by Wall Street investment firms, and the Big Oil/Wall Street Republican party took control of the US Senate. They already control the US House of Representatives.

For six years, Senator McConnell has blocked everything the then Democratic Senate majority proposed in the US Senate, everything from job creating public works projects to increasing the minimum wage. This was a political scorched Earth policy that sent millions of jobs up in smoke, for which Jon Stewart makes fun of below.

As the economy burned back in 2007-2009, due to the failed and long since discredited trickle down policies of President George W. Bush and fueled by the votes of Senator McConnell, the senator fought tooth and nail to fan the fires of economic destruction simply for political gain. He didn’t give a fart about the distress of millions of American citizens. He wanted President Obama to fail, to never get a second term, and willingly sacrificed the economic fortunes of millions of citizens in order to do so. The senator from Wall Street waged war against 99 percent of Americans and won.

The political miscreant is now in charge of the US senate.

The senator from Wall Street failed in his actions to deprive the president of a second term, but now he is about to become the Senate Majority Leader, arguably the third most powerful politician in the United States.

The president and the Wall Street senator will probably fight together to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and that’s possibly the only area where they might agree. The TPP is the largest income redistribution treaty of all time, it will gut the middle class by shipping millions of their jobs overseas and redistribute their income to the 1 percent, it will jack up prices of pharmaceutical medicines and other goods and services, curb Internet freedom, force people to eat GMO poison, drive millions of people illegally into the United States because it will gut millions of jobs in Latin America and redistribute the income from those jobs to the 1 percent, it will reduce US wages and salaries, it will prevent the US government from enacting Wall Street regulations, and on and on. And this information is solely from a few leaked documents. There is much more, but that is secret.

“Trade agreements,” McConnell said at a press conference on November 6, 2014. “The president and I were just talking about that right before I came over here. Most of his party is unenthusiastic about international trade. We think it’s good for America. And so, I’ve got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America. And the president and I discussed that right before I came over here, and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, ‘Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them.’”

The TPP, in effect, is McConnell’s wet dream come true; destroy the middle class and redistribute their income to the 1 percent. That’s why the senator belongs to Wall Street.

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The Accomplishments and Failures of President Barack Obama

President Obama is hardly the worst president in history. He’s had some fine accomplishments, but some of us were dismayed at the president for allowing Wall Street executives to get away Scot free from their massive crimes such as mortgage fraud and money laundering for the Mexican drug cartels, but he did rely on these people for campaign cash. This is the first president in any US financial crisis who directed his justice department not to go after a single one of the alleged criminals. That just shows how corrupt the US government is nowadays, and Obama is a product of his times.

The scorched earth politics of the Republican opposition left millions of people in poverty, and they were led by Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, and they did this all for the political gain of the part of the 0.01 percent the Republicans represent. The Republican Party is the greatest example of corruption in modern American history, but the Democratic party is close behind.

Some of us were sorely disappointed than insurance executives were the creators of Obamacare, and no public option was included in the program.

Some of us were dismayed that 95 percent of all US income growth under Obama went to the 1 percent year after year after year, and the president did nothing about that. But this benefited Wall Street and the 1 percent.

Some of us were disgusted the president continued to press for policies that increased income and wealth inequality, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, the South Korea Free Trade Treaty, and Common Core. Again, this benefited Wall Street and the 1 percent.

As US Senator Elizabeth Warren said about Obama and his economic team, “They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over.”

The next recession will be worse than the last, especially for the 99 percent. The economy recovered in an anemic fashion, with demand terribly low because of the inequality of income brought about by federal legislation. In 2008, this nation needed a strong leader, a new FDR, and we instead elected the best candidate either major political party was willing to nominate; we got a Wall Street drone.

We are currently in one of the most politically corrupt times in US history. Money has saturated the political and court markets. The Reagan tax cuts began the corruption. The corporate wing of the US Supreme court was the first serious victim of this corruption.

The truth is that the two major political parties are controlled by different factions of the 1 percent, although some of the factions play roles in the political direction of both parties, such as Goldman Sachs. The two parties divide the American people via social issues, and then the two unite to redistribute the income of the 99 percent to the 1 percent via legislation and free trade treaties.

President Obama is a product of his times. Despite that, and despite vicious opposition from the Republican Party that left millions more in poverty simply for political gain, history will likely remember the president more fondly than either of the Bush presidents, President Ford and possibly President Nixon, as well. However, it is possible he will land in the bottom ten worst presidents of all time. Among modern presidents, since say Teddy Roosevelt, Obama will definitely rank right there above Warren Harding, and very few others, so that in my list of the bottom ten president’s since Teddy Roosevelt, Obama rates among the not so bad, definitely not good category.

The Great Presidents

1. Franklin Roosevelt
2. Harry Truman
3. Teddy Roosevelt
4. Lyndon Johnson
5. Dwight Eisenhower
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Jimmy Carter
8. Gerald Ford
9. William Howard Taft
10. John Kennedy

The corrupt presidents

11. Ronald Reagan
12. Calvin Coolidge
13. Bill Clinton
14. Richard Nixon
15. Bill Clinton
16. Barack Obama
17. George H. W. Bush
18. Warren Harding
19. George W. Bush
20. Herbert Hoover

Notice those who are the worst president’s were also president’s during the times when the federal government was the most corrupted, the 1920s, and the era from 1981 to the current era.

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US Senator Elizabeth Warren Bashes Wall Street President Barack Obama:

US Senator Elizabeth Warren is an honest politician. And she sounded like a champion of the 99 percent during an interview with Salon.com when she bashed President Obama for kowtowing to the interests of Wall Street ahead of the American people.

Warren praised Obama for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency aimed at enforcing consumer protection laws. However, Obama’s financial ties with the elites of Wall Street came under closer review.

Warren told Salon that “there has not been nearly enough change” in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis.

“He picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street. …They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over.”

On lobbyists: Banks spend millions on “armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” she told Salon, but there are few people at “the decision-making table” representing the concerns of everyday Americans.

“And when that happens — not just once, not just twice, but thousands of times a week — the system just gradually tilts further and further.”

Under Obama, during the greatest crisis since the Great Depression, in which massive fraud and money laundering for drug cartels and other crimes were committed by Wall Street executives and their employees, not a single person was charged by Obama’s Justice Department. “I’m the only one standing between you and the pitch forks,” Obama told a group of Wall Street executives during the height of the crisis. He was right, and he did his job for them. Goldman Sachs was the largest of his campaign financiers.

Under George W. Bush, people actually were charged with crimes in corporate scandals, and sent to prison, such as the Enron and Worldcom scandals. Under President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, over a thousand people were convicted of felonies for their parts in the savings and loan scandal.

This indicates how corrupt to the core the government of the United States has become, and  it’s not just Obama. It’s both major political parties, all Republicans in congress, and 90 percent of all Democratic lawmakers. The system is awash in money and corruption, all the way to the corporate wing of the US Supreme Court. The political and economic games are completely corrupted and rigged against the middle class.

For the complete interview, click on the link below.

Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama: “They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over”–Salon.com

 

 

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How Wall Street Rigged former Attorney General Eric Holder Against the People and the Law

Bill Moyers says that Eric Holder has a mixed record as attorney general of the United States. Moyers gives Holder an A on civil rights, but an F on the frauds of Wall Street. Bill Black, a former bank regulator, calls the latter, “the greatest failure in the history of the department of justice.”

No banking executives have been criminally prosecuted for their role in causing the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression.

“I blame Holder. I blame Timothy Geithner,” Black told Bill last week. “But they are fulfilling administration policies. The problem definitely comes from the top. And remember, Obama wouldn’t have been president but for the financial contribution of bankers.”

“While large banks have been penalized for their role in the housing meltdown, the costs of those fines will be largely borne by shareholders and taxpayers as the banks write off the fines as the cost of doing business. And by and large these top executives got to keep their massive bonuses and compensation, despite the fallout.”

But the story gets even more infuriating, the more Black laid out the culture of corruption that led to the meltdown.

“The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all could have prevented [the financial meltdown],” Black tells Moyers. And what’s worse, Black — who exposed the so-called Keating Five — believes the next crisis is coming: “We have created the incentive structures that [are] going to produce a much larger disaster.”

According to Black, that’s because the bankers have not been proscecuted for their crimes, thanks to Obama and Holder, and federal law prohibits people with criminal records to be in charge of banks. So the same people that brought the economic meltdown are doing the same thing with a nod, a wink, and a helping hand from the white house and both houses of congress.

Check out Moyers interview with Black by clicking on the link below.

Full Show: Too Big to Jail? | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com.

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Modest Income Growth in 2013 Puts Slight Dent in More than a Decade of Income Losses

From the Economic Policy Institute:

“Wage trends greatly determine how fast incomes at the middle and bottom grow, as well as the overall path of income inequality, as we argued in Raising America’s Pay. This is for the simple reason that most households, including those with low incomes, rely on labor earnings for the vast majority of their income. That is why my initial look at the data from the newly released Census Bureau report on income and, poverty in 2013 will look at wages and the incomes of working age households.

The Census data show that from 2012 to 2013, median household income for non-elderly households (those with a head of household younger than 65 years old) increased 0.4 percent from $58,186 to $58,448. However, that modest growth barely begins to offset the losses incurred during the Great Recession or the losses that prevailed in the prior business cycle from 2000 to 2007. Between 2007 and 2013, median household income for non-elderly households dropped from $63,527 to $58,448, a decline of $5,079, or 8.0 percent. Furthermore, the disappointing trends of the Great Recession and its aftermath come on the heels of the weak labor market from 2000-2007, where the median income of non-elderly households fell significantly, from $65,785 to $63,527, the first time in the post-war period that incomes failed to grow over a business cycle. Altogether, from 2000 to 2013, median income for non-elderly households fell from $65,785 to $58,448, a decline of $7,337, or 11.2 percent.”

So the question is: why has average US family income dropped from $65,785 in 2000 to $63,527 in 2007 and then to $58,448 in 2013?

The answer is simple. The money has been redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent, which is why the stock markets and corporate earnings are at record levels and family income has plummeted for fourteen years, and now remains static and historically low.

Free trade treaties, for example, have shipped jobs overseas, and the difference between the old higher US wages and benefits and the new lower overseas wages and benefits has gone directly from the 99 percent and into the pockets of the 1 percent thanks to politicians such as Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. Nearly two million US jobs were exported from the US in 2013, according to the Federal Reserve. Around thirty million have been exported since 1990. Thank you Senator Wyden.

Corporations have also pushed the income of their employees down, except of course, for CEO’s and important members of the major Wall Street investment banks. Many of these Wall Street people earn millions of dollars by illegally ripping off the retirement accounts of working Americans. US politicians make certain they’re able to do it. See the book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis.

There are a myriad of other ways the government acts as a legislative conduit to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. This has been ongoing since 1981.

Essentially, this means that the current massive income and wealth inequality we experience today is a function of tax cuts for the rich, which were then used to corrupt government at all levels, as well as both political parties.

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Obama May Soon Send This Reporter to Jail. Here Are the Embarrassing Secrets He Exposed.

According to Mother Jones magazine, the Obama administration intends to send New York Times reporter James Risen to prison for failing to reveal his sources of information in his 2006 book and best seller State of War.

In his classic work, Risen exposed the illegal NSA spying program, a feat duplicated seven years later by Edward Snowden, which sent him scurrying to Russia as a political refugee. One has to wonder why Snowden had to flee for his life for revealing something that had been exposed seven years earlier in book form, had been a New York Times best seller, and can found be found in any public library. In addition, President George W. Bush didn’t feel obliged to chase Risen and the New York Times editors all the way to Russia. My, how times have changed.

Anyway, Risen’s classic work also exposed other stealthy going’s on in the Bush administration. Check out the link below on those things.

Obama May Soon Send This Reporter to Jail. Here Are the Embarrassing Secrets He Exposed. Mother Jones

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Bill Moyers Video: The 1 Percent are Taking and Spreading the Wealth–to Politicians for Political Gain

There is a straight forward relationship between tax cuts for the rich and growing income and wealth inequality. The conduit for financial inequality is the political markets. Tax cuts for the rich allowed them to corrupt the federal and state governments to the core. The rich used their ill gotten gains from Reagan’s tax cuts to purchase legislation in the political markets that redistribute income and wealth from people like you and me and “Aunt Millie” to the CEO’s and shareholders of corporations, namely the 1 percent. This legislation included free trade treaties that shipped jobs overseas, reducing labor costs while increasing profits. The legislation included privatization scams, deregulation schemes, and actions toward war, such as in Iraq, and Afghanistan, both of which are extremely profitable to the one percent. The rich also purchased the No Child Left Behind Act, which benefited only the major publishing corporations of educational books and tests, such as McGraw-Hil, and the McGraws have been neighbors and best friends of the Bush’s since the Great Depression. Yes, that’s precisely how corrupt President George W. Bush was. There are a ton more legislation that has been purchased by the one percent to redistribute income and wealth to themselves from the 99 percent, but I don’t have that much space. That’s why the economic and political markets are a rigged game.

The press has been a tool of the 1 percent, used to mislead and lie us into wars, deregulation, free trade agreements, privatization, anti-labor union tirades, as well as poisoning ourselves with GMOs by claiming they’re harmless, regardless of what all independent studies show. Yes, they lie to us a lot.

All of this corruption has sent the Dow Jones higher, as well as the NASDAQ and other financial markets. All of which benefits the 1 percent.

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The Myth of Failing US public schools was created by the Corporate Media and Here is the Real Story

We have been mislead and lied to by the US government and the corporate press for a long time. They’ve lied to us about the health hazards of GMOs, (See https://johnhively.wordpress.com/2014/06/08/why-are-the-frogs-dying-and-why-did-the-story-disappear-from-the-corporate-news-hint-gmos-have-cause-the-demise-of-the-frogs/ .

This type of information you can get from from foreign news outlets, such as the Guardian of the UK. But the American press is corrupt to the core. That’s why it helped to lie us into a war in Iraq, and they’ve lied to us about public education reform for over thirty years.

It’s all because of the need to generate ever increasing profits for the 1 percent, and all at the expense of the 99 percent, either in terms of health, money, or education. In other words, due to a news media cartel, the information we’ve been fed and not fed has been carefully cultivated to reflect a world view that best allows the 1 percent and Wall Street to redistribute our money, our wealth, our tax dollars, our jobs, and our health to the 1 percent.

Blame it on President Bill Clinton. He signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed the consolidation of major media outlets so that 5 corporations now successfully collude to determine what we are allowed to see on roughly 90 percent of all media outlets.  That’s right. Five corporations now own 90 percent of all news outlets.

That’s precisely how the massive income and wealth inequality has been covered up, and, in the case of public schools, how we’ve been kept ignorant about how our schools and children have been used as conduits toward enhancing the corporate profits of the testing industry via the testing craze, and how our schools have been become nothing more than laboratories for keeping students focused only on testing, rather than on things more important, such as critical thinking, art, shop, and basic living skills. Rhetoric to the side, this is precisely what education reform is all about.

Most people don’t know that the No Child Left Behind Act was the business plan of McGraw-Hill, and that the McGraws had been long-time friends of the Bush family. And this is precisely why President Bush pushed the act through congress and signed it into law. It was a convenient piece of legislation that redistributed income, tax dollars, and wealth to his personal friends, while leaving our schools wrecked. The corporate press wasn’t going to ever tell you that, thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

This is called market manipulation via legislation.

Check out the links below for more on this.

They Myth Behind Public School Failure–Yes! Magazine

why-corporations-want-our-public-schools–Yes! Magazine

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An Accountant Explains Why 45% Of Her Income Goes To Student Loans

This is an insightful story and you can access it by clicking on the link below, but it doesn’t grasp the big picture about how student loans over the last thirty-four years, beginning with the regime of President Ronald Reagan, became an instrument to redistribute income from working people to the 1 percent.

Wall Street geeks of the 1 percent discovered that if Wall Street investment corporations, such as Goldman Sachs, purchased outstanding student loans they could then issue bonds against the loans, and sell the bonds to rich investors.

Wall Street investment companies steal billions of dollars in the variety of transactions that make up the path of turning student loans into student-loan-backed bonds. Much of this money lines the pockets and election campaigns of federal politicians.

This is precisely why President Reagan, Republicans and Democrats in congress, decided to reduce federal financial aid grants to college students. It was more profitable for Wall Street and the 1 percent to send kids into student loan purgatory than to provide needy students with grants.

Student loan payments go in part to rich investors. That’s precisely why the entire Republican Party, many Democrats, and the Obama white house doubled the interest on  student loans from 3.4 to 6.8 percent last year, at a time when interest rates were at near historic lows. This made the loans more attractive to investors of the 1 percent because the return on investment doubled. This is one way legislation is used to rig the economic and political game on behalf of the 1 percent, and against the 99 percent.

But it also means the middle class is paying more for the loans, or rather, more of their income is being redistributed into the wallets of the rich, so that the affluent can become richer. In other words, student loans became an instrument to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Thank you President Reagan.

That’s precisely why the US senate voted against a bill sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren to provide relief to student loan debtors by lowering interest rates. Doing so would have undermined the value of the student loan backed bonds by lowering return on investment. The 1 percent did not want this to occur.

According to the Federal Reserve, student loan debt has doubled to $1.3 trillion since 2007.

http://www.businessinsider.com/an-accountant-explains-why-45-of-her-income-goes-to-student-loans-2014-5Yahoo! News

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