The respected and non-partisan CBO-Congressional Budget Office in a just released report has confirmed the basic chart and message posted below. Indeed the rich have gotten a lot richer while all other major income groups have lost income in the past 30 years. And in the hard battles to “lower our cost structure substantially” = decrease salary and wages substantially “and to improve our margins notably” = increase our prices notably, top executives for the past 20 years have been increasing their take of National Income by over 100%. And the chart immediately below is just the tip of the iceberg as the graphs here show.
This is the essential message of the Occupy Wall Street Movement – that Ronald Reagan’s Trickle Down policy has only worked for the top 1% of Americans. So don’t believe Republican House Leader Eric Cantor who decribes Occupy WallStreet as ” mobs … pitting Americans against Americans” . Instead the Occupy Wall Street movement has been a revelation about the Wall Street and broader top business elites. Despite their ballooning incomes, those top 1% -ers, having been bailed out by the all the other income classes for the past 30 years and most recently to the tune of $8 trillion and still counting, these elitists are demanding:
1)Stop your protests because they are inciting class warfare which we have been quietly engaged in for the past 30 years;
2)But continue Fed Funding subsidies at nearly 0% money through the Fed Window at the cost to US tax payers and savers;
3)Do not dare to break up the ever bigger banks who are susceptible to more too-big-to-fail bailouts despite Dodd Frank Financial Reforms;
4)Do not demand any guaranteed small business loan levels despite the fact that small businesses for the past 20 years have been the true Job Creators in the US;
5) Do not demand any substantial mortgage loan forgiveness despite the bloodbath incurred on foreclosures, our complicity in the mortgage meltdown and the profoundly negative impact on consumer sentiment and jobs creation due to the continuing housing debacle;
6)Do not prosecute any Walls Street players for what they did during the mortgage meltdown;
7)Give us a huge tax break on the $2trillion in overseas profits that we want to bring back to the US;
8)Do not increase any taxes whatsoever including removal of tax breaks especially on the top 1% of income earners;
9)But cut the US deficits on the backs of the other 4 classes with cutbacks in education, welfare programs, health and social security;
10)And as for environmental, pollution, and climate change regulations – give us a break, none in these times of “we created the Uncertainty”.
What Occupy Walls Street has done has brought these messages to the fore – so that fairness and equity has become as crystal clear an issue as the above chart. Suddenly, the Tea Party has gone quiet. The interest in the Republican debates has gone to up to an unprecedented 20 million viewers as a Nation looks to see if the Republicans have anybody better than Obama. Jobs and fairness has become a major issue eclipsing this Summer’s Cut the Deficits stridency. And lurking in the background is the issue of who is running the government for whom?
So there really should also be a parallel, Occupy K-Street in Washington[where the lobbyists are gathered] demonstration that would highlight:
1)The Senate has dispensed with majority rule as 60-40 votes or better are required for even routine legislations and appointments;
2)The US twice [2000 and 2004] in Presidential elections has failed to count the votes properly;
3)The GOP is engaged in a shrill campaign of “the government does not work” and “President Obama is the cause of all the problems and his policiies are failing everywhere”. The GOP uses its majority in the House and the 60-40 votes required in the Senate to torpedo all of Obama’s policy, budgets and appointments. Then the GOP complains the government is not working after reject everything and proposing deep cuts in popular programs;
4)Campaign financing has gotten completely out of control as federal election costs have doubled over the past 5 elections making influence peddling and lobbying the largest employer in Washington;
5)As Steven Colbert with his SuperPAC has shown, the Supreme Court has sanctioned not only unlimited funding by corporations and groups for election financing and lobbying ; but also now with anonymous donors. The results has been the erosion of “one man, one vote” and the flourishing of influence peddling. A prime example is that the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulations have been done with Wall Street lobbyists and interests having unprecedented access to the process and players.
So the next time you hear “God Bless America for the Best Democracy in the World” consider that it is under full frontal attacks by Wall Street and other financial elites. how long can the US afford the resulting paralysis in Washington policy making while developing countries such as China, Brazil, Russia and others carve up the Economic pie and jobs that the US has been rendered impotent to addressing the issues on. Take a big gulp of a 5th of your favorite for America.