The Trillion Dollare Money Pump for the 1%
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/24I saw the movie Inequality for All, where Robert Reich explains the depth and meaning of inequality in America. He paints a compelling picture.
Reich sets up the movie with a teaser: "Something happened in the mid-'70s."
Indeed "something did happen in the mid-'70s." For one thing, since then workers' wages as a fraction of the total economy have lagged by over a trillion dollars per year. If workers' wages had kept up with gains in productivity since the mid-70's, wages would be double what they are now. Most new income goes to the top 1 Percent.
The movie translates my blue squiggly line in the graphic into human terms, seen in the faces of families, students, workers, co-workers and neighbors. Their struggle, disappointment, and diminished prospects answer another key question in the movie: Does inequality matter?
It matters. A lot.
Our current downward spiral leads us to a Lesser America -- less social cohesion, less political stability, less prosperity, less ability to compete globally.
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You see it so often in the MSM that it even gets picked up by some on the left. Some know that kind of bullshit will get hidden here, so they try to say it different ways.
Dems and the GOP do not share "similar goals." The GOP wants to do away with taxes on corporations and kill government (shrink it so they can "drown it in a bathtub"
. Dems want a government that provides a safety net and represents the will of the majority (a democracy). These goals are not even close, let alone similar. If you think otherwise, you are on the wrong site.
the income and wealth of the uber-wealthy and the income of large, profitable corporations to equitable taxation: the higher the income generally, the lower its taxation. This is a virulently right-wing ideology and Democrats have almost fully gotten on board. The meme that America is the best place in the world to live is wholly false imo, as America, having fallen to or near the bottom in all quality-of-life ranking factors among industrialized nations of the world, testifies: it is perhaps the best place in the world for the oligarchs to operate and for the uber-wealthy, who can live in gated/walled-in fortresses if they choose, to live. Of course most Republicans have pledged their allegiance to Grover Norquist not the raise taxes and are demanding social security and Medicare benefits be cut to reduce the national debt, almost all of it at their making, to a level they insist: Speaker Boehner has already gotten 98% of what he had wanted, so look for him to now go for the jugular. 
