How The
Ultra-Wealthy Have Exploited The System, At Our Expense
Class Warfare In America
The Effort To Destroy The Middle Class NewsFocus. by Tim Watts - 111410
Since 1992, the bottom 90% of Americans have had their
incomes rise by a mere 13%, compared with an outlandish
increase of 399% for the top 400.
Under the Bush II tax cuts for
the wealthy, the richest 400 Americans doubled their personal wealth, while
at the same time cutting
their tax rate in half.
In
case you haven't noticed, there is a growing sentiment among a great many in
this country, questioning the devastating economic collapse and how it is that
so many incredibly intelligent people from the Federal Reserve, the central
banks, the Wall Street financial sector, and the government, all failed to see
this giant economic tsunami coming. With all of its close ties with the US
government, you would think that the vaunted brain-trust of Goldman Sachs would
have seen this coming. Well, perhaps I should maybe rephrase that a little...
you would have hoped that Goldman Sachs and the other megalithic titans of
the financial sector would have warned the government. By their own admission,
they excel at the business of recognizing financial trends, yet we're expected to believe that these
self-professed money masters didn't see this
coming, until it was too late.
Right.
How does something so monstrously devastating and earth
shattering just creep up all of a sudden on the country, unbeknown, out of the
blue, like this did?
The official stance is that Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke
and the entire banking cartel that runs the Federal Reserve had no idea
this was coming. Not a clue. Zip.
Seriously?
Is it reasonable to believe that no one
actually saw this coming? Not Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, or anyone
else financially savvy on Wall Street or at the Fed... not one person
saw this coming?
Really?
If this is so, it's a pretty damn scary thing to
admit, because what
then does that say for our economic system? How can we expect to be
protected in the future, if they were truly incapable of seeing this coming?
Many with severe short term memory attempt to place the blame for
the economic crisis on
the Obama administration, however they would be remiss in failing to attribute
that the true origins of the economic collapse were engineered during the previous
Bush-Cheney administration, just one more life altering major disaster to add to their
eventful watch on America.
An Unforeseen Disaster?
As insidious and awful as it sounds, many are now taking a
9/11-type position on the collapse, alleging that this economic crisis has
been carefully engineered and orchestrated for a calculated effect, in this
case, an assault on the middle class of America, to bring it to its knees.
The first tip is that allegedly no one saw this coming.
(Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.)
The second tip was the urgent, "no time left" scare tactic, the outrageous
extortion threat from Henry Paulson demanding $700-billion
immediately from Congress. According to the heavy hand of Hank, either we were to pay the TARP or suffer the consequences. Paulson
then actually had the audacity to threaten the possibility of martial law in America.
That is blatant, clear-cut
criminal extortion.
A third tip that one might openly entertain... despite the
worst economy since the great depression, the vast majority of the
ultra-rich have profited wildly under the Bush tax cuts, even more so during the last two years
of a crippling economic nightmare. How was that inordinately large
profit possible during such a crisis, when the
rest of middle-class America was in the midst of losing its wealth, its housing, and its jobs?
So Bush bailed out the corporations and the bankers with the first of two
$700-billion+ TARP payments, with President Obama coughing up the second extortion
payment. Once again, despite the dire economic crisis, the
ultra-wealthy have profited hugely,
just as they did during the first great depression.
The paper trail left behind so far for this devastating
economic disaster is rife with evidence of manipulation, unethical behavior,
and treacherous greed, so Americans are wise to ask questions about how and
why this happened. If things were truly that bad off, then how were they able to
profit so successfully during such a near-nuclear economic meltdown?
In the world of high finance, heavy profits generally come
from direct involvement.
Those
that openly question this event have every right to do so, given the
numerous documented
unethical circumstances involved. In the days of "Perry Mason," profit
from a crime was always considered motive for the crime. From the
financial numbers coming in so far, there are enormous profits to
take note of, literally hundreds of billions in good old fashioned
"motive."
If all of this sounds too much like conspiracy talk or
something out of the lunatic fringe, then you might want to delve back into history and
examine the nefarious machinations behind the Great Depression. That
event was manufactured
for the prosperity of the banking cartel that owned the Federal Reserve.
Ultra-rich banking tycoon
JP
Morgan leaked word that a New York bank was about to go insolvent, causing an
overwhelming run
on the banks, helping to facilitate the economic collapse and great
depression. [Life
magazine, April 25, 1946,
"Morgan The Great"]
The current economic crisis very much seems to be a carbon copy repeat
of the Great Depression, with the ultra-rich buying up struggling companies
for mere pennies on the dollar, shamelessly increasing their greedy
stranglehold on the American way of life, while vastly increasing their own
personal fortunes.
There is solid IRS evidence to back up the allegation that the
rich have prospered excessively under a rigged system in their favor, while
at the expense of the poor and middle class. Under the Bush II tax cuts for
the wealthy, the richest Americans doubled their fortunes while also cutting
their tax rate inhalf. That is clearly an extraordinary
feat, yet at the same time is a vile, disgusting, economic
perversion, considering the disparity that the poor and middle class have to
contend with daily. The result of this unbridled
greed is not just bad news for the lower class, but a direct threat against the
middle class as well.
It should be
readily admitted by most now that the
Reaganomics "trickle-down" theorysimply does not
work as a reliable economic engine.
The ultra-wealthy do not always reinvest, more often than not pocketing their
tax breaks to inflate their wealth. Rather than increasing
production or investing in research & development, the majority
just grow
richer and far more powerful when given generous tax breaks from
the government. This is now
a proven historical fact, substantiated by IRS data that proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the rich
became vastly richer after the Bush tax cuts for the
ultra-wealthy.
If the Reaganomics
"trickle down" theory actually worked, then ask yourself
why we have spiraled into an economic meltdown WITHIN seven to
eight years after the Bush tax cuts for the 1% that own it all.
Apparently a
"trickle" is all that came down.
This is a damning
indictment on the conservative theory that giving tax breaks to the
ultra-rich will eventually trickle down to the middle and lower
classes. If indeed that principal were true, we wouldn't have
had the horrific economic disaster that
erupted from
eight years of Bush II.
Who Benefits?
One of the first things the Bush-Cheney administration did was
to cut the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, thus the
extraordinary income growth for the rich. This was the main
catalyst for the
richest 400
Americans to
double their incomes during
that time, all the while their tax rate was nearly
cut in half, dropping from 29.4% to a paltry 16.6%.
That tax rate is much lower than the typical rate
paid by Americans with low six figure incomes. For the
wealthy elite, this costs them about as much or basically equal to what they earned in
the first three hours of 2007.
Okay, so
let's get this straight now... they DOUBLED their incomes during
Bush II, while at
the same time getting their tax rate cut nearly in HALF.
Wow! What a sweet
deal for someone who doesn't need the financial help.
Warren Buffet, the third wealthiest man in the
world, worth an estimated $47-billion,
spoke once at a
$4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton
where he said to the wealthy
before him, “The
400 of us pay a lower part of
our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning
ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of
humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the
other 99 per cent.”
According to Buffett, he was taxed at 17.7% on the $46-million
he earned that year, without doing anything on his return to
avoid paying higher taxes, while at the same time his secretary,
who makes $60,000 a year, was taxed at 32%, nearly double the
rate. Buffet
spoke out again recently,
saying the richest need to be taxed more. Whether he's posturing
to the public, or not, the fact of the matter is, the ultra-rich
used to be taxed more, until the Bush tax cuts
were enacted.
In regards to the Republican argument on
extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, Buffet is not a
subscriber of the argument that letting tax cuts expire for the
wealthy would hurt economic growth.
Buffet reiterated his stance in an interview
with ABC's Christiane Amanpour saying,
"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe
even the upper middle class should even probably be cut
further, but I think that people at the high end
-- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes.
We have it better than we've ever had it."
Amanpour challenged Buffet's comments by
stating, "They say you have to keep
those tax cuts, even on the very wealthy, because that is what
energizes business and capitalism."
Buffet replied, "The rich are always going
to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out
and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of
you.
But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I
hope the American public is catching on."
He then
punctuated that position by saying,
"There's no sacrifice among the rich."
So there really
need be no government care whatsoever for the rich, because
they quite obviously don't need it. The necessity for government
in regards to the wealthy should be in a regulatory role, to
protect the rest of society from the extremely rich who
historically tend to oppress, if not enslave, the middle and
lower classes, when they are given no oversight.
One can make
a factually compelling and very strong argument that the present
system is not spreading the wealth with any sane, rational
proportion for a healthy society. Instead, it is dangerously
coalescing it into concentrated elite groups that are already
fabulously wealthy, increasing their long established wealth and
power.
In a one-year
time span during the Bush-Cheney administration, the average
income of these wealthy-elite increased from $263.3-million in
2006 to a whopping $344.8-million per year in 2007. Obviously the very well
off affluent wealthy now want to keep this recent gift horse
from Republicans as a permanent tax cut, but for what morally
responsible reason?
Extending the
Bush tax cuts
would give millionaires more in tax breaks
than 90% of Americans will actually earn for the entire year.
That is an abomination of good conscience, most especially
during the current economic conditions.
The wealthiest one percent of
the U.S. has received $715-billion from the Bush tax cuts over the
last ten years, nearly
three-quarters of a trillion dollars!
By
extending the Bush tax cuts, the
richest 1% would get $60,000 in additional tax breaks per year.
Millionaires would receive a $150,000 annual break. In a ten year period, that totals $1.2 trillion in lost revenue.
These ultra-wealthy
elite received a 27 percent increase
in their annual income. This is nine times the rate of increase
for the bottom 90 percent. Here's an extra piece to chew on.
Since 1992, the bottom 90 percent of Americans have had their
incomes rise by a mere 13 percent, compared with an outlandish
increase of 399 percent for the top 400, and yet in 2010, the Republicans are bashing the Obama
administration for having the temerity to undo the sinful
Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the rich.
Republicans want to keep the Bush tax cuts for
the wealthiest Americans, people who are exceedingly well off, many who helped create this
current economic crisis. At the same time they are
talking about digging us out of the hole they created by taking
it out on the poor, those affected most by the crisis.
And this is the "religious" conservative right?
Wow, way to embrace Christianity. So much for "WWJD."
(What would
Jesus do?)
Greed of the Wealthy
The disparity of wealth in the world today is
an aberration for a self proclaimed civilized, moral society.
The divide that exists has grown ever wider between the rich and
the poor. According to a new study, the Credit Suisse Research
Institute in Zurich has found that the number of global
adults worth over $50 million each appears to be considerably
greater than a decade ago. Even with the financial industry
meltdown, Credit Suisse reports, “the past decade has been
especially conducive to the establishment and preservation of
large fortunes.”
The total inflation-adjusted net worth of
the Forbes 400 has rocketed from $502 billion in 1995 to $1.3
trillion in 2009.
Since 1980, the wealth of the top 5%
wealthiest Americans has vaulted from $7 trillion to $44 trillion.
In 1980, the average income of the top 5%
richest was 10.9 times as large as the average income of the
bottom 20%. That ratio has grown over the years,
hitting 20.6 in 2008.
The top 5% of American families saw their
real incomes increase 73%, between 1979 and 2008. During that
same period, the lowest-income fifth saw a decrease in real
income of 4.1%.
According to data from the Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) the difference in after-tax income between
the wealthiest 1% and the middle and poorest fifths of the
country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.
The richest 1% more than
doubled their share of the total US income, from 10% to 23% from
1979 to 2006.
The bottom 90% of Americans have been
saddled with 73% of all debt.
In a recent newspaper article, "The
fast track to inequality", reporter Bob Herbert of the St. Louis Post
Dispatch observes that the top CEOs in America all saw their incomes increase
5 times during just the last year of the Bush administration.
Fives times in one year! What American worker ever gets
more than one raise in a year? FIVE raises for corporate CEOs in the last
year of the Bush administration. Absolutely unconscionable.Talk
about outrageous avarice, audacity and just plain blind hubris... Five!
A case could be made that capitalism and wealth are out of
control in America. Morality within the industry of big money is simply not
part of the equation when it comes to the bottom line, with ethics taking a
distant backseat to profit and wealth. Being rich isn't just enough for
some. Many have taken the Parker Brothers game of Monopoly to the real life
extreme, and we all know how miserable the game can be when one person
dominates the board and owns it all. People need to come to grips with the
fact that our U.S. brand of capitalism has been running unchecked for years,
in a rigged game that favors the outrageously wealthy elite.
Keep in mind
that these
are the same obscenely rich families that changed the language of the
"estate tax" to the "death tax." The ultra-wealthy
want the middle and lower classes to falsely believe that there
is a tax upon our death, when nothing of the sort is true. What
is true is that there is a tax upon large lucrative estates of
the wealthy, an attempt to keep the outrageous vast fortunes of
this 1% in check, lest they become more powerful than the
government. They have manipulated the language to get the middle
and lower classes to say no to a tax that is meant only for the
wealthy upper class. So not only are they dishonest and greedy, but
conniving and immoral comes to mind as well.
The Numbers Don't Lie
The new
Global Wealth Report crunched
financial data from over 200 countries worldwide. The following
is what they found...
There are roughly 4.4 billion adults
combining for $194.5 trillion in wealth.
There are
now 1,011 billionaires
worldwide, as of 2010.
There are another 80,000 individuals worth
over $50 million each.
There are another 24 million adults
worth $1 million to $50 million.
The
world’s richest 1 percent hold 43 percent of the
world’s wealth.
Fact: No other nation on Earth has
as much total wealth as the United States.
A new book by political
scientists Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of the
University of California-Berkeley, titled, "Winner-Take-All
Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the
Middle Class," makes the case that since the late 1970s there have
been dramatic policy changes in the U.S. government that favor
the wealthy, hands down, over middle America. Huge corporations
coalesced to overwhelm our system with the big money lobby,
tilting the laws in favor of the extremely rich.
In just two or three decades, the
course of the U.S. has been bought and paid for by big money,
steered by the ultra-wealthiest of the US (less than 1% of the
total population) so that the laws favor the wealthy elite and
not the average American. As a result, the middle and lower
classes have been in decline ever since.
Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, the top 1%
wealthiest are earning as much today as they did at their
all-time peak, in the 1920s, just after the formation of the
Federal Reserve cartel, when the ultra-wealthy took control of
the nation's monetary system.
This graph, like the one below, shows the top 1%
earning as much as in the 1920s.
Graph from CrooksandLiars.com
Just recently the
New York Times reported that corporate profits were the
highest ever recorded, at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in
the third quarter,
according to a Commerce Department report released on
November 22, 2010. According to the Times,
"It is the highest figure recorded since the
government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in
nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms."
Arguably the most damning statistic of all
would be IRS data on income before taxes, considered pre-tax
income. According to IRS data, the top 1% wealthiest more than
doubled their pre-tax income from 1976 to 2007, vaulting from
8.9% to 23.5%, the second highest figure ever since the takeover
of the Federal Reserve. This was to be a critical juncture for
our economy and the harbinger of disaster.
Ever since the Federal Reserve took over US
monetary policy, there have been two peaks in the pre-tax income
of the top 1% uber-rich, in 1928 (23.9%) and again recently in
2007 (23.5%). Both times this has happened we have had the
largest economic catastrophes in our country's history.
Using history as an indicator, high
percentages of income such as these for the top 1% wealthiest
appear to be a foreboding indicator for economic disaster. One
year after each peak, the US stock market crashed. After
the 1928 peak, it crashed one year later in 1929. After the
recent 2007 peak, once again the market crashed just one year
later in 2008.
It indeed seems that a direct
correlation can be made to these peaks of wealth.
The question should be asked, why was nobody
paying attention to this?
Pre-Tax Income for the Richest 1% of Americans
since the Beginning of the Federal
Reserve Takeover.
Source: Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez,
“Income Inequality in the United States, 1913-1998,” Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 118(1), 2003. Updated 2007, http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/saez.
One other question might be asked... now that
we've given the rich even more money and further expanded their
wealth through a $1.5 trillion bailout... that 2007 peak figure
of 23.5% is sure to grow even higher, likely breaking the record
set in 1928 just before the great depression.
With the last thought in mind, there are some
very bright people in Washington and on Wall Street. Knowing
full well the historic consequences of what happened the last
time the pre-tax income was over 23%, why then didn't someone in
the Bush administration act sooner?
Again, they all claim nobody saw this coming,
but with available stats like the graph above, how does anyone
miss or ignore the potential ramifications?
The Rich
Get Richer: Blind Luck or Manipulation?
Apparently despite the horrible economy, the
world's wealthiest are making money. As we've seen so far, it's
not just small change
either, but a doubling of fortunes for many of the
richest.
To see so many of the ultra-wealthy
becoming far richer under allegedly horrible economic
conditions, you have to wonder just how bad things really are
for them. Just as in the first great depression, the wealthy
elite have profited handsomely while snapping up struggling
businesses for mere pennies on the dollar. At some point, considering that the genesis of the crisis originated with Wall
Street and they're the ones profiting, you have to give serious
consideration to manipulation and motive, as was
the case in the first great depression.
[Life
Magazine 04/25/46]
One fact that might support the engineered
economic collapse theory is that despite the horrible economy,
the number of billionaires in the world rose from 793 in 2009 to
1,011 in 2010. That's 218 new billionaires, created during
arguably the worst economic downturn in history! Those of
extreme wealth are profiting big time.
The average worth of the world's billionaires
today is roughly $3.5-billion. That is an increase of $500-million
from 2009.
The richest 400 people in the US grew their wealth by 8% to $1.37 trillion
in 2009, all during a supposedly horrible economy.
The overall net worth of these same
billionaires is collectively $3.6-trillion. That is also a staggering
one year increase of $1.2-trillion from
2009.
To see a net growth of $1.2-trillion for this
group during such a crippling economic environment is notable
and most eye opening. Questions do arise.
During the Bush-Cheney years, from 2001 to
2008, the income gains of the top 1% increased a whopping 62%.
After-tax incomes for the top 1% soared by an average of 281%,
or $973,100 per household.
Within this 1% the largest increase went to
the top 0.1% who had the highest total ever since 1913, the year
the Federal Reserve took over the US currency system.
According to David Cay
Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for The New York Times,
the incomes for the biggest earners in the
US, ($50 million-plus
annually) grewover fivefold from 2008 to 2009, a remarkable feat
considering that the country was in the midst of the worst economic
collapse since the
Great Depression.
The disparity in wealth is shameful for any society that
deems itself to be moral.
When we have a very small elite group of people earning
multiple-billions in just one year, something is out of line with our
brand of capitalism. One could make the case for a rigged or unfair game.
At this point, it is time to consider more regulatory oversight,
not less, to make sure
all business practices and ethics are above board.
For example, the top Hedge Fund Manager of 2009 (David Tepper)
made $4 billion
in income. Four BILLION dollars in just one year! That is unfathomable for
most.
As for
the rest of the top ten, they each respectively earned: $3.3 billion, $2.5 billion,
$2.3 billion, $1.4 billion, $1.3 billion (tie for 6th and 7th place), $900
million (tie for 8th and 9th place), and
$825 million (10th place).
Wow. That's a boatload o' cash for a one year salary!
Are you starting to get the picture here with all of
these prosperous stats?
The system is lopsidedly rigged in their favor,
a fact which is substantiated by their continued obscene profits, even
during a horrible economic collapse. Its almost as if they just can't
lose. Oh sure, they lost a little overrated stock value at the start of
the crisis, but in the end they are still opulently wealthy beyond any
comparison for 90% of Americans.
It should be quite clear to all that the rich are doing very well
indeed, prospering outrageously during one of the worst top two economic
disasters of all-time, so we certainly don't need to worry about extending
the Bush tax cuts any longer for the top 10% richest to insure their
survival.
A case could be made that the current crisis is evidence
that there was no tangible stimulation of the economy, no "trickle-down
effect," due to the Bush tax cuts. Just look where we ended up. All we
did was to inflate the value of the richest on Forbes' list of wealthiest
Americans.
Question... so is this indicative of a system that
works for a functioning society or is it a sign of a flawed system that
works againstit, one that is
broken and easily exploitable for those with no moral scruples? Sadly, the
rich Republicans and the wealthy elite will always defend this type of system, no
matter how detrimental it is to society, while the middle and lower
income classes are forced to bear the brunt of its shortcomings.
The disparity in income in the U.S. is the worst now
since the formation of the Federal Reserve, just before the Great
Depression, the first "engineered" economic collapse in U.S. history.
According to
figures from the last quarter century, over 90%
of the total growth in income went to the top 10% earners in the US. This
leaves a diminutive 9% of all income to be shared by the bottom 90% of
Americans.
The enormous disparity of wealth is troubling
on a societal scale, however when the game is purposefully
rigged to favor the elite, that chasm is criminal and immoral
and needs to be rectified before the middle and lower classes
are totally destroyed.
The Dangers of Excessive Wealth
The elite
ultra-wealthy that own it all, the 1,011 billionaires of the
world, are the ones to keep a watchful eye on. The U.S. has 403
of those billionaires, a disproportionate figure when compared
to the rest of the world.
The U.S. also has 41 percent, of the world’s
millionaires, despite having only 5.2 percent of the world’s
population. That is an inordinate percentage of total
international wealth to come from one country.
The
top 400 in American wealth are all billionaires. From
William Ford Sr. (Ford Motor Company) with $1-billion, to Bill
Gates (Microsoft) with $54-billion, the richest top 400 are but
only 0.00013029037979808572 percent of the U.S. population. This
tiny number isn't even close to the 1% figure that is said to
own it all, yet these 400 individuals are without a doubt the
richest of all. Even though these wealthy elite are an
infinitesimally diminutive figure in comparison to the
310-million
plus Americans, they own an
overwhelming vast majority of the nation's property and wealth.
The real danger that
exists is, what happens if two or more of these members of
outlandish wealth should ever ally together in a criminal cause?
The disposable income that they can afford to lose on a cause or
for an agenda is an imposing and dangerous figure, one which is
offset and made possible due to the tremendous money stream of
continual income that they receive. They can throw millions into
a project, knowing full well that they literally have millions
more coming right back in, without ever jeopardizing their
overall total wealth. An ever flowing fountain of disposable
cash to fight their battles and serve their agendas. That is a
formidable opponent in any arena.
That is the danger of having too much money.
That concept may seem strange to some because of the "winner
take all" capitalism we've been taught to espouse, but truth is
reality and anytime a private citizen has enough money to
threaten the state and the well being of the public, then that
is simply too much.
Some might claim this to be
nothing more than paranoid delusion, but they would be remiss
in recognizing that
such a threat from the wealthy has already presented itself and
has been documented at least twice in the last one
hundred years alone, both times with significant adverse
consequences for the poor and middle class of the U.S.
(See the 1910 Jekyll Island coup and also the 1933 bonus
army rebellion.)
The Ultra-Rich Takes, But Gives Not
Conservatives should take a hard look at the
August 2008 GAO report which states quite clearly that nearly
two-thirds of U.S. companies and nearly 68% of foreign companies
do
not pay federal income taxes. The Government Accountability Office
(GAO) examined samples of corporate tax returns filed between
1998 and 2005. In that time period, an annual average of 1.3
million US companies and 39,000 foreign companies doing
business in the United States paid no income taxes,
despite having a combined $2.5 trillion in revenue.
These corporate free loaders
burden our tax-paid infrastructure by wearing down our roads
with their massive delivery trucks, yet they essentially leave
it up to us to pay the bill for our nation's highways and roads.
They burden us with environmental pollution, but expect the
American taxpayer to clean up after them for their spills and
other ecological
disasters.
They deplete our raw materials for their own
profits, all the while destroying our basic infrastructure.
That's capitalism from the world of
Bizarro.
Corporations fight for our
personal retail patronage, while also fighting for our state
and federal tax money, then they reap the benefits of
tremendous wealth, all the while
paying
no taxes back into a rigged system that is forced back
upon the middle and lower classes, leaving us to pay for
everything.
Where is the fairness in that?
We continue to spend at
historic levels for military defense, as much as $708-billion
under the Obama administration. That is a 6 to 1 ratio over our
next closest rival, Russia, and a 7 to 1 ratio over China. We
are clearly overspending on defense and burdening our society as
a direct result. We are feeding the military industrial complex,
rather than caring for our own, or furthering our society.
The U.S. far outspends
the rest of the world on arms, combined. If it was Russia
or China spending that much on their military, most Americans
would find that to be overly aggressive, so where do we morally
draw the line so that defense spending does not inhibit the
advancement of society?
A great many of the wealthy helped contribute to this latest economic catastrophe, yet who did we bail out? The rich!
The US government all but guaranteed that the ultra-rich would be
financially protected and thus be able to maintain their
immense personal fortunes through the government stimulus bailouts, all the while
average everyday Americans were
having their home mortgages foreclosed on and having to declare bankruptcy.
And it's still going on! Again, where is the fairness?
The everyday taxpayer received a couple small token checks
for a few hundred measly dollars, but those that were the most well off were
lavished with a personal safety net of hundreds of billions. The
obvious message there is that you can't have the wealthy losing their own
money to save their own businesses. Instead, they try to protect the upper
class because they're considered by some to be the engine of society, but
there is no gas from the middle class to run that engine with when the
middle and lower classes are bled to death financially.
Righting The Ship
The fight is now on between Democrats and
Republicans in an attempt to propose a workable solution to the economic
crisis. The Democrats are fighting hard to save the middle class,
while trying to lift the lower class up. Meanwhile, across the aisle, the
Republicans are fighting fiercely for some of the richest people on the face of
the earth, trying to make the lives of the ultra-wealthy even more profitable, even though they
are well enough off and need no help whatsoever, most certainly not
from our hard earned tax dollars.
As a responsible society, we cannot possibly,
in all good conscience, take from Social Security, Medicare and necessary social
programs to balance the budget. That would have to rate as one of the most
immoral proposals that anyone could ever consider. Those particular social
programs did not carry this country into debt, it was the runaway defense spending, a
corrupt Federal Reserve system, and out of control pork-barrel political spending excesses,
all way beyond
good reason.
We need to cut from our number one excess and
that is clearly defense spending. Let's face it, we are over
spending now and could easily cut $300 to $400-billion
out of the annual defense budget and still continue outspending opponents by
a ratio that is nearly four to one. Taking hold of excessive pork barrel spending would also
make a huge dent in our yearly national budget.
Rescinding the Bush
tax cuts for the ultra- wealthy would easily bring us close to
$1-trillion in annual revenue to help pay down the national debt. America has always prospered when the excessively wealthy
were held
accountable for taxes, something we are not doing at present, due to the Bush
tax cuts for the extremely rich.
Those tax cuts for the rich were just that, "cuts,'
but times are now tough and the rich had ten years to make hay, a great many of
them actually doubling their vast fortunes during that period, so it's time
now for the wealthy to understand that those cuts did not help our
economy. The IRS data proves that the 1% richest did not invest those tax
cuts back into the economy, but instead pocketed them for their own personal profit.
Matt Krantz from USA
TODAY reports that “Cash is gushing into company’s coffers as they
report what’s shaping up to be a third-consecutive quarter of
sharp earning increases. But instead of spending on the typical
things, such as expanding and hiring people, companies are
mostly pocketing the money or stuffing it under their
mattresses.”
According to the
Washington Post: “Sitting on these unprecedented levels
of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in
droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will
purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five
times as much compared with this time last year… But the rise
in buybacks signals that many companies are
still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating
activities that could produce economic growth.”
Wow. So the fat
cats that own it all would rather pocket that money instead of
increasing their hiring and production. The reality is, the rich
have been investing instead in their own corporate shares, to prop up share prices and
artificially inflate their stock to be more attractive to Wall Street.
They're not worried about middle-income Americans. Their
religion is the bottom line in the corporate ledger book.
The fact is, we are not raising taxes on the rich as much as we are
merely going back to a previous tax rate that made sense for the
country in meeting its bills. The privilege of wealth and being able to
profit from the people, or at the expense of the people, should involve a
plan for giving back. There used to be such a scale in place, however the
Bush tax plan for the 1% ultra-rich was allowed to cut that
rate, for a time. Those cuts are now set to expire at midnight on December 31st, 2010.
If we're going to right our economy, it should no longer
be off the backs of the middle class. You do not improve a society by
spending more on war and weapons, while also cutting from education, Medicare and
Social Security. If the rich want weapons and war to protect and fight for
their corporate hegemony, then it's time that they pony up from their own wallets
and quit sucking the life out of necessary social programs for the needy.
The War Is On
There is class warfare in this country, make no
mistake about it. Just as the super-rich tried to do-in FDR and
establish a fascist regime in America, with the Morgan family,
the DuPonts, the Remingtons and Prescott Bush's involvement,
etc, (see bonus army revolution and General Smedley D.
Butler) they are now working to do it again.
What is increasingly clear is that
capitalism, in its
present form, is a perversion against humanity, no better than
the alleged oppressions of communism, or the fabricated false
charges that are made against
socialism. Our capitalism has
sadly turned to fascism, with a fancy new name,
"corporatism."
No one wants
to admit that we're now under the trappings of fascism, so they try to
wrap it up in a new less-Nazi associatedterm.
Corporatism or fascism, whatever you want to call it, is a
system that looks at "we the people" as merely labor and
consumption.
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my
class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
-Warren Buffett, 112606 NY Times
With so many middle and lower
class Americans hurting to the point where they have lost their
jobs and homes, it's quite unsettling to see those that don't
need the money being catered to at the expense of those who are
hurting the most.
To see the 1% wealthiest become
even richer during an economy said to be arguably the 2nd worst
ever, if not the worst in the modern era, well... you
have to ask yourself just how grave the situation truly was to
begin with. Many are starting to believe that we've been had,
set up and duped in one of the biggest scams ever in history,
just as we were for the first great depression.
The argument in this country
should not be about left versus right, but rather should be
about society versus huge private wealth. We should be concerned
with fixing an unfair
economic system that has long been taken over by an elite
banking cartel that oppresses "we the people," while severely
threatening the foundation of our country and the dream that our
forefathers so valiantly and persistently fought and died for.
Yes Dorothy, there is a huge
distinction in class in the US, but this isn't just class warfare,
it'sfast becoming class Armageddon, with the
middle class square in the cross-hairs.Orchestrated or
not, the net effect of this latest economic collapse is that the
obscenely wealthy of America are growing much richer and more
powerful, all at our expense.
And when those who are the most
well off shout vehemently against a redistribution of wealth
in the US, then you know that there is indeed class warfare in
America.
Most disconcerting of all, as
Warren Buffet says, their side is winning.
CBS :60 Minutes
Explanation On The Economy
10/31/10
BAILOUT STIMULUS: We're On The Hook
Bush $700-Billion + Obama $800-billion =
$1.5-Trillion
$1.5 Trillion ... divided by 310,639,619 US pop = $4,828.74 each
This money could have been given to the American people, but
instead it has been charged to them as the outstanding bill for bailing out
the rich from a man-made economic disaster caused by Wall Street and the
policies of the Federal Reserve.
The L
Curve: Income Distribution In The US
The graph in this video will amaze and anger you.
(Unless you're a billionaire)
Predatory Capitalism: How The Poor
Get Poorer
American Capitalism
The system is lopsidedly rigged in their favor,
a fact substantiated by their continued obscene profits,
even during a horrible economic collapse.
Its almost as if they just can't lose.
After Tax Income From 1979 Through 2007
Source: Congressional
Budget Office (CBO)
Real Family Income (click on the graph above for a larger
version.)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables,
Table F-3 (for income changes) and Table F-1 (for income ranges in 2008
dollars).
After Tax Income (click on the graph above for a larger
version.)
Source: Congressional Budget Office, “Average
Household After-Tax Income,” Data on the Distribution of Federal Taxes and
Household Income, April, 2009.
(The United States also has 7.8 million millionaires)
Bill Moyers: Plutonomy And Democracy Do Not Mix
MONEY
IN AMERICA: THE FACT$
THE RICH
83% of all U.S.
stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.
66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the
top 1% of all Americans.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned
enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater
share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all
individual Americans put together.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to
the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that
ratio has skyrocketed as high as 500 to one.
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent
compared with 2008.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as
much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires
in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent
of our national income.
THE POOR
The bottom 90 percent have been saddled with nearly 75 percent of all debt
(73%).
61% of Americans live
paycheck to paycheck. (49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.)
The bottom 50 percent, half of income earners in the
United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s
wealth.
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are
employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million
Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011. (Nearly
1/7th of Americans, or roughly 13%.)
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United
States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20
years.
Forty-nine million people
in the US are able to eat only because they receive food stamps, or visit
food pantries and soup kitchens for help. That is an outrageous and
disgraceful number for the wealthiest nation on earth, nearly 1/6th of
the population.
Sixteen million are actually so poor that they missed
regular meals or were forced to forego eating in the last year, due to
lack of food. This number is alarming because it is the highest level
since statistics have been kept, according to the US Department of
Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
A record 2.8 million homes received a foreclosure notice in 2009,
up from the two years previous. That rate is expected to be rise
to 3 million homes in 2010.
Eleven million homeowners in the United States, nearly one in four homeowners, are
technically “under water,” a dire situation where they owe more on their
home mortgages than their house is actually worth.
The largest inequality in the world today between rich and poor, among all
Western industrialized nations, is in the much vaunted United States,
"land of the free." The divide has continually been exaggerated
and forced even wider over the last forty years by the ultra-rich lobby on
Capitol Hill.
The basic cost of living in America, housing, education and health care have all increased at a
dramatically much higher
rate than wages and salaries.
Over 2/3rds of global adults have an
average wealth of less than $10,000.
About 1.1 billion of these adults hold
a net worth of less than $1,000.
Rachel Maddow: Bernie Sanders Message On The Rich Ignored By Media
Listen to the facts that Sanders and Maddow deliver on the ultra-rich.
The GOP Tax Bonus For
The Rich Ignores Failed Reaganomics.
Only those with soulless greed could ever promote such a horrible idea.
If the
Reaganomics "trickle down" theory actually worked,
then ask yourself why we've spiraled into an economic meltdown
WITHIN seven to eight years after the Bush tax cuts
for the 1% wealthiest that own it all.
Voters last week sent Washington a strong message about
fixing the federal budget, according to exclusive numbers
from a new poll obtained by TPM: Raise taxes on the wealthy
and cut the military budget before you touch the nation's
largest entitlement program, Social Security.
The survey of voters who cast ballots last Tuesday --
conducted by Democratic pollster PPP and commissioned by the
Progressive Change Campaign Committee -- found that when
respondents were given the choice between cutting the
defense budget, raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting
Social Security to reduce the deficit, just 12% said they'd
like to see the entitlement program cut. Forty-three percent
said they'd prefer to see taxes on the wealthy go up, and
22% said cutting the huge defense budget was the best way to
go.
The PCCC hailed the result as evidence that voters are
not ready to embrace the conservative economic agenda, even
after they just voted a huge number of new conservatives
into Congress...read
on
No matter how loud Conservatives scream about tax cuts and
the dismantling of Social Security, Americans overwhelmingly
do not want their SS messed with, and they are all for taxing
the rich. Real Americans aren't buying the bullshit
trickle-down theories that FOX and other Wall Streeters demand
their zombie-like followers consume like dead brains. The
idiotic
Cat Food Commission is going to advise that entitlements
gets cut. That will only lead to another disaster for the
working class that families cannot withstand.
About The Author:
Tim Watts is a veteran San Francisco
broadcaster with 25 years experience in the industry as
an on-air talent, Program Director, and consultant. He
is the creator and sole author of the websites
NewsFocus.org, and
TheAmericanTruthNetwork.com. He has been
writing about U.S. corruption, while also investigating 9/11 from the moment that the first tower
fell. He has documented his 9/11 research on a website
called
A September Coup.