If Top 1% Hadn't Ripped Off Trillions, You'd Likely Be Making Thousands of Dollars More Right Now

[Octafish]

Mr. Holland gives us something to chew over:

If Top 1% Hadn't Ripped Off Trillions, You'd Likely Be Making Thousands of Dollars More Right Now

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 5, 2011, Printed on October 11, 2011

EXCERPT...

By the time George W. Bush was elected, they were taking in 21.5 percent. And in 2007, the year before the crash, they were pulling in 23.5 percent of our pre-tax income, leaving the other 99 percent to share just 76.5 percent of the fruits of our output.

According to Paul Buchheit, a professor with City Colleges of Chicago and founder of fightingpoverty.org, “if middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.” The size of our economy, he wrote, “has quintupled since 1980, and we all contributed to that success. But our contributions have earned us nothing. While total income has also quintupled, percentage-wise almost all the gains went to the richest 1 percent.” This upward redistribution of wealth “translates into a trillion extra dollars of income every year for the richest 1 percent.”

There are two things that are vitally important to understand about this. First, those at the top of the ladder aren't any more virtuous, intelligent or hardworking than they were 30 years ago, and this didn't happen by accident. Some part of it may well have resulted from technological innovations, but the lion's share of that shift resulted from specific policy changes that the corporate Right fought hard to enact.

It resulted from the emergence of international trade deals that facilitated offshoring much of our manufacturing base, changes in labor laws and enforcement that cut the unionized share of the American workforce in half, and a shift in priorities at the Federal Reserve that led it to concentrate far more on keeping inflation in check than keeping working America employed.

As a whole, the United States remains a prosperous country, but the economy isn't working for people who make most of their income by working – the share of the nation's income going to wages hit an all-time low last year, while the share going to corporate profits was at an all-time high.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/economy/152621/if_top_1_hadn%27t_ripped_off_trillions%2C_you%27d_likely_be_making_thousands_of_dollars_more_right_now/

Sorry if this is a re-post. Subject is important for 100-percent of us.

[fasttense]

1. I sure could use $12,500 more a year.

“If middle- and upper-middle-class families had maintained the same share of American productivity that they held in 1980, they would be making an average of $12,500 more per year.”

[Octafish]

5. Most of the wealth in human history has been created in last 30 years.

David Stockman, of all people, told me so.

In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five per cent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.” -- David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director



All I want is my fair, let alone rightful, share of the cheese I've collected. Please.

[leftstreet]

7. 'All I want is my fair, let alone rightful, share of the cheese I've collected. Please.'

:applause:

K&R - and greatest mouse graphic ever

[zalinda]

33. I could use $12,500 a year, my income $8532 a year, n/t

[AikidoSoul]

34. My spouse and I now live in abject poverty and cannot afford the barest essentials.

Our computer services business is down over 62% due to the recession and our personal incomes have plummeted to 15,784.86 --that is the COMBINED income figure paid to both me and my spouse in 2010 from our business! Thank God we paid off our land eleven years ago so we don't have a mortgage payment. But we have still not finished building our house and don't even have an indoor shower. We do have a toilet and a sink, thank heavens.

We are now raising most of our own food, and trying to make income from a tiny fruit farm we have incrementally planted over the past 16 years. This year we found out that our persimmons can't be marketed to local health food stores unless we have very expensive liability insurance in case someone gets sick from our organic fruit! Only the biggest growers qualify to sell to local grocers and health food stores. We invested every penny of our savings in planting blueberry bushes. Now we realize that we won't be selling anything --we will have to can and freeze the entire thing.

At least we will eat.

:9

Edit to add the words "recommended and kicked".

[DaveJ]

39. Can you sell to someone who has liability insurance?

I'm very interested in this. Never thought about it before, but I wonder if a seller could make a business by getting LI and then buying from the growers who can't afford it.

[liberal N proud]

2. I am sure of it.

[Octafish]

6. Reverse Robin Hood

And the thieves are proud of it.

[nashville_brook]

3. that seems about right.

[Octafish]

13. WSWS: Workers’ incomes plummet during the Obama 'recovery'

From the good people who bring you the World Socialist Web Site:

Workers’ incomes plummet during the Obama “recovery”

By Barry Grey
WSWS.org
11 October 2011

EXCERPT...

The study, authored by two former US Census Bureau officials, concludes that inflation-adjusted median household income plunged 9.8 percent from December 2007, the official start of the recession, to June of 2011. Moreover, household income fell more than twice as rapidly during the Obama “recovery,” which began in June of 2009, than during the 18 months of official recession.

According to authors Gordon W. Green Jr. and John F. Coder, median real household income fell 3.2 percent during the official recession, a dramatic decline, but one far surpassed by the additional 6.7 percent drop between June 2009 and June of this year.

Calling the nearly 10 percent decline over a three-and-a-half year period “a significant reduction in the American standard of living,” the report notes that while wage gains outpaced inflation during the recession itself, wages failed to keep pace with inflation during the so-called “recovery.” (The report is available at www.sentierresearch.com and a graph here).

SNIP...

Over the same period, bankers and corporate CEOs have grown richer than ever, thanks to trillions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, unlimited cheap loans from the Federal Reserve Board, and the refusal of the Obama administration to prosecute the Wall Street criminals responsible for the financial meltdown or implement any real banking reform.

CONTINUED...

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/pers-o11.shtml

I'm so old, I remember when there were things more important than money.

[Warpy]

4. That's really why it needs to be taxed away

because when the lower 90% is expected to shoulder the entire burden of government and their incomes are steadily falling, government is not able to keep up with things like maintaining the infrastructure.

It's not just your paycheck that suffered. It's roads, bridges, dams, the electrical grid, the electronic grid, the rail system. We've fallen behind most of the rest of the first world on all this stuff because a few rich men have stripmined this country for the last 30+ years.

I still want to start the STEAL IT BACK movement.

[Octafish]

14. ''The STEAL IT BACK Movement''

Love the sound of that, Warp-san. No matter what the generation raised on Reagan says, through Trickle-Down and Permawar, We the People have been given the shaft. Big Time.

One minor semantic side point: We wouldn't be stealing. We would be recovering stolen property.

Perhaps we could put these gangsters, warmongers, and traitors behind bars. There, they can do a bit hard labor by fixing up the roads and digging ditches and such. It's either that or making license plates, the only honest work such would ever have done.

[mod mom]

26. Another great post, Octafish!

rec'd

[Blue Owl]

8. Shit, I swear I can actually feel the nickel and diming

:mad:

[Octafish]

29. The 'Haiti-ization' of America

Haitian Economy is the Blueprint for Future USA

[formercia]

9. Time to harvest the 1%

They have been using us as fertilizer for Centuries.

[Octafish]

30. One Fodder Unit

That's what Poppy calls us proles.

In other words, the electorate votes to "throw out the bums," only to replace them with a new set of bums. The "bums," themselves, have contempt for the populace and have pet acronyms for them, such as "OFU," coined by George H. W. Bush, Sr., which stands for "one fodder unit."

[formercia]

37. I remember that

Perhaps it's better that Junior didn't see Combat. Just think how many people he could have gotten killed with his fuck-ups.

Oh, wait....

[Mimosa]

10. K&R

Excellent.

[Emit]

11. Kick and thanks for posting this!

:hi:

[Enraged_Ape]

12. Biggest smash-and-grab robbery in world history.

People will read about this time for centuries. Of course, it will be on stone tablets.

[krispos42]

15. I figure about $15,000, but I'm just a guy with MS Paint

The two vertical axis are in constant dollars.

[Tsiyu]

16. This

is one of the most important posts I've read in a long time. (AS is any thread Octafish posts :) )

There's plenty of money in America, and worker productivity has done nothing but increase, year after year. Unfortunately, so has corporate greed.

The K and the R

[lonestarnot]

17. K & R!

[Starry Messenger]

18. k&r

[polly7]

19. I saw this and thought it was good:

“No one is confused about the message. Wall Street got bailed out; Main Street was abandoned. The top 1% rigs the rules and pockets the rewards. And 99% get sent the bill for the party they weren't even invited to.” – Robert Borosage

http://www.alternet.org/story/152683/5_conservative_economic_myths_occupy_wall_st._is_helping_bust?page=4

5 Conservative Economic Myths Occupy Wall St. Is Helping Bust

[renate]

41. true dat n/t

:thumbsup:

[progressoid]

20. Kickin' and reccin' and book markin'

[me b zola]

21. K&R

:thumbsup:

[socialindependocrat]

22. They made a lot of extra money during this time

and they should be happy that they got the extra bucks since 1085. Now they need to kick in because the middle class has had salaries cut to the quick and deregulation has increased expences by 25 to 50% for food, gas, oil, health care and power. Now the 1% can see that the middle class has no disposable income with which to fund the recovery. The incidious experiment is over and there is no where to turn but the wealthy and the banks. We bailed them out with our tax dollars and now it's payback time. No more "Too big to fail" - No more "Huge Bonuses" - No more "Representatives who are By the people but FOR the wealthy".

We need to get back to a government that benefits ALL of the people!

We need to stop money from buying more than one vote for each person!
and we need to find out why the Supreme Court voted to allow money
to have a bigger influence in our elections!!!!

We need to start a list of the good people (Like Bernie Sanders) and
start with the next election and vote the morons out.

The GOP should all be fired for doing nothing except making it hard for Obama
to make any forward movement (and then announce it on TV that their sole
purpose is to make him a one term president....

and

we need to have a way to fire elected officials when they tell you they
aren't going to do a single thing to benefit the American people and
still collect their pay and benefits!!!

where is the ethics committee???!!!!!

AND who is that asshole in Boston who is messing up a peaceful protest???
fire his ass along with the idiot from Wisconson!!!!!

LET"S CLEAN HOUSE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!

We've been played for idiots for too long!!!!

It's time to take back our country and the American Dream!!!!!!

[EdMaven]

23. rec

[valerief]

24. I could use a job. Mine ends at New Year's Eve. nt

[tropicanarose]

25. k&r -right on

[AzDar]

27. K & R

:kick:

[snot]

28. K&R'd

[bhikkhu]

31. K&R - though simple explanations are usually incomplete

Its worth noting that the labor force was about 100 million in 1980, and has increased to about 140 million now. So wages have been stagnant, but the quintupling of the economy includes a large increase in the numbers of people working.

The labor force participation rate also went from about 63 percent, to about 67 percent. So you have, on average, a greater percentage of people working now than in 1980 - albeit for no more money.

Two things I think are important issues are - emphasizing the first point - that economic growth has always been sold as the solution to all jobs and prosperity issues, but it has never actually solved anything. You just have larger numbers of people working for the same amount individually to concentrate larger volumes of wealth for a few guys at the top. Economic and population growth both serve the "masters" at the top, though they have been so well-sold that the majority will vote people in or out of office based on promises to deliver growth, or failure to deliver growth.

The second point is that we are at a historic high in labor force participation - that is, the proportion of people who are working for wages. All recessions, depressions, job crises, etc aside, a larger percentage of people are working now than ever. The difference is - as the OP notes well - that there is still not really enough money to go around to support the average household. You could say thats a jobs issue; "we need more jobs - that will fix it!", which is the usual refrain and which is part of what has led us here.

Or you could say its a wages issue - that the less income a household receives for one employed individual, the more likely it is to need two jobs to support. And if two working parents can't support a household on their wages, then second jobs and jobs for the kids are more likely. In the past, wages were better and it wasn't so common.

So I tend to think of it as a "long con" kind of deal that you can make people believe that if there was only more economic growth we could all be working and everything would be fine, and that social equity and any measure of respectability requires everyone to work for wages and "pull their weight", even if it leads to an over-loaded employment market that systematically underpays everyone, so that no individual can support a household.

[ellie]

32. I would

My company cut my pay 25% when this happened.

[blindpig]

35. Yep, Capitalism is theft

They tolerated regulation for not one minute more than they felt necessary. Now they see no need for the charade and it's back to business as usual.

[Beavker]

36. Well said...

[DaveJ]

38. I'd be happier working less than making more

Once one has enough to survive the goal, for me anyway, is freedom.

[Rex]

40. If GWB never became the 8 year dictator

my life would be quite different now...ie...would have a lot higher salary. That is also assuming 9/11 would not have happened on Gore's watch...which it wouldn't have, because he would have handled the Taliban differently from the beginning of negotiations. I blame GWB far more then I do Reagan and Poppy. Really I should blame Dick Cheney, the POTUS from 2000-2008.