MEDIA ROOTS- This segment from the Daily Show breaks down how class warfare is perpetrated by the rich to phase out the middle class in this country. Stewart explains that the government could raise $700 billion by either taking half of
everything earned by the bottom 50% or by raising the marginal tax rate
on the top two percent. The video is followed by a great article from In These Times that further details the war being waged on the poor.
Abby
***
IN THESE TIMES– For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.
But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.
What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?
Significantly, the plight of the broad American middle class has been closelylinked to the fate of the labor movement as it has come under siege in the last 35 years. While many middle-class people have long resented the gains made by blue-collar workers who often lacked higher education, the fact remains that as labor has lost ground in terms of real wages, so has the middle class.
Prof. Bruce Western of Harvard concluded in a study this month:
From 1973 to 2007, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent among men, and by about 50 percent among women. […] deunionization—the decline in the percentage of the labor force that is unionized—and educational stratification each explain about 33 percent of the rise in within-group wage inequality among men. Among women, deunionization explains about 20 percent…
Having invested in union-busting lawyers, private police, and anti-union politicians, America’s rich benefit immensely from such de-unionization. The most affluent Americans and big corporations have enjoyed a spectacular recovery from the deepest recession in 80 years.
While effects of the recession linger for working-class families in America—joblessness and insecure employment, loss of health coverage, exhausted unemployment benefits, falling home values, the threat of home foreclosure, to name a few—the prosperous and Corporate America have almost entirely avoided this pain. In fact, corporations saw their profits soar 243 percent in 2009 and another 61 percent in 2010. The wealthiest 10 percent nowaccount for 60 percent of all consumer spending.
For years, America’s super-rich and their allies in Congress and the media have tried to deny that a tiny elite was growing astronomically wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans.
But the vast gaping canyon between the richest 1 percent and Corporate America, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, has become so large and well-documented that denial no longer works. The ideological combat gets especially intense when it turns to the relatively minimal taxes that corporations and the rich pay.
What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admitsthat he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?
Significantly, the plight of the broad American middle class has been closelylinked to the fate of the labor movement as it has come under siege in the last 35 years. While many middle-class people have long resented the gains made by blue-collar workers who often lacked higher education, the fact remains that as labor has lost ground in terms of real wages, so has the middle class.
Prof. Bruce Western of Harvard concluded in a study this month:
From 1973 to 2007, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent among men, and by about 50 percent among women. […] deunionization—the decline in the percentage of the labor force that is unionized—and educational stratification each explain about 33 percent of the rise in within-group wage inequality among men. Among women, deunionization explains about 20 percent…
Having invested in union-busting lawyers, private police, and anti-union politicians, America’s rich benefit immensely from such de-unionization. The most affluent Americans and big corporations have enjoyed a spectacular recovery from the deepest recession in 80 years.
While effects of the recession linger for working-class families in America—joblessness and insecure employment, loss of health coverage, exhausted unemployment benefits, falling home values, the threat of home foreclosure, to name a few—the prosperous and Corporate America have almost entirely avoided this pain. In fact, corporations saw their profits soar 243 percent in 2009 and another 61 percent in 2010. The wealthiest 10 percent nowaccount for 60 percent of all consumer spending.
With most U.S. consumers having little money to spend, American corporations see little reason to crank up production and hire new workers in America. Corporations are sitting on at least $2 trillion in savings (plus another $1 trillion or more stashed outside the country) but have no reason to invest in the U.S. The consumer demand simply doesn’t exist in America, and corporations can sell to the engorged elites of emerging nations like China, India, Brazil, and Mexico.
Perhaps that explains why major corporate leaders seem perfectly complacent with the obstructive hijinks of Congressional Republicans, in whom they invested so heavily with campaign contributions (out-spending labor in 2008 by a ratio of 15-1) and who are committed to crushing any and all programs that might serve as a badly-needed economic stimulus.
Read more about America’s Rampant Inequality Impossible to Deny
© 2011 In These Times
Photo by Flickr user daliphoto
What defense can be offered when billionaire investor Warren Buffet admits that he pays a 15 percent capital-gains rate on most of his income, while everyone else in his office (including the secretary) pays a considerably higher rate?
