The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen
Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.
The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."
So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?
In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.
The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.
In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.
This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.
The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.
What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.
In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.
In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.
Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.
This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.
It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.
There was a small demonstration by Occupy Miami today. Unfortunately, only 20 or so people were there. I dont agree totally with the OWS movement but they do bring out some very good points. How many times do you pick up a paper and Corporation X, made X amount of profit this quarter? Yet there are no jobs with unemployment just over 8%. Then the politicians in Washington play games. The United States use to be government by the people for the people. That has shifted to government by the corporations for the corporations.
African women? Come on...
They shell peanuts by hand until some engineer/entrepreneur shows them how to do it more efficiently. That entrepreneur/engineer should get rewarded right? Or should everyone eat beans and rice everyday? You know what happens when there is no incentive to achieve greatness? Or to be "lucky"
Nothing happens. I am not working for you. I am not risking for you.
I do it for myself, my family and my friends.
Then, I will kick down to others as I see fit. Not have the government take my hard earned monies and give them to people hand in hand.
I wish the populace of the United States that agrees/sympathizes/believes the current system as structured is unfair would have the gumption to walk out or off their jobs, en mass, in the millions and not for a day or two but for a week or two or more. Just to show the 1% and the "corporations", em, I mean "people" that they aren't getting rich on their own. And to be honest, if it happened, nationwide, I'd join them. And just like in Alabama, after they ran the immigrants out of town, you'll see "corporations", hmm, I mean "people" begging us to come back to work. I wonder how many registers a manager at Walmart can work at the same time?
Usamaman, you and your viewpoint are in the minority on this issue and not just on this board or in this forum. The facts point this out to you but you choose not to believe the facts. But then again the republicans haven't had much use for facts of late either. So continue to support failed economic policies if you so choose. But don't blame the dems or the liberals or the OWS when the US is at or near the bottom in every ranking amongst industrialized countries except for concentration of wealth amongst the top .01%. A sad vision for our country indeed, winning the race to the bottom. And I support what gimmie said about speaking up. I'm sick of it too. I'm working my ass off and I'm not getting ahead, despite playing by the rules and being responsible.
Byrnzie, nice posts. I intend to read up more with the sources you provided. Thanks! :thumbup:
Also, goes to my post above, BO thinks all the ills will be solved by taxing the rich.
Can you enlighten us as to when a tax cut for the rich solved anything?
No. You said "taxing the rich has worked."
I still want to know where and when.
Umm in just about every country that has a better standard of living that the US - namely Scandanavia. Not taxing the rich is far more dangerous - be it communist, capitalist, dictatorial regimes, etc. Look at what happened to Iceland after they broke off and tried capitalism for a minute, or how about Argentina the test ground for our current neoliberal economy, or Chile where Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys got the chance to start practicing neoliberal economics when a democratically elected socialist leader was murdered by a US-led coup on 9/11/73. If we live in a world run by the pursuit of profit and money, then putting more money into the hands of the few is about the most idiotic thing that I have ever heard.
Does this even have any logic? Just think about it for like 10 minutes. So we reduce taxes on the wealthy because they "took the risk" (even though we found out after the banking crisis that they actually didn't take any risk) and they get more money. Then, through their own benevolence, they will surely share that money with their workers, spend it to keep our economy rolling, and the working and middle classes will prosper. Are you fucking kidding me? No seriously are you fucking kidding me? Are you really that arrogant to suggest that you "worked harder" than everyone else to get where you got? You got NO help whatsoever? What a joke.
Here are the facts: What we have seen under neoliberalism is a stagnation of wages for everyone except the top 1%. The middle and working class have been hidden from this reality because, among other things, the rich are able to sell things for cheaper and cheaper because they are using labor that has been outsourced for pennies on the dollar. So those jobs you so desperately suggest people get (blue collar jobs for those who couldn't afford, shouldn't have attempted, and didn't have the ability to go through college) are largely gone. The jobs that are open and some on this board keep suggesting people should apply for pale in pay for what a student loan costs to pay back - and what if life happens (sickness, child, marriage, etc)? The bankowners who still have homes and children and lives because they got bailed out for their "mistakes" (could also be evil doing but let's just stick with mistakes) while those they (being nice) convinced it was a good idea to purchase a house have nothing. Add to that the fact that New Orleans couldn't afford levies to save thousands, Minnesota has a bridge fall and kill dozens, and we keep building sports stadiums (At this point nearly 100 with taxpayer dollars even Tom fucking Benson got $344 million from FEMA to fix his stadium and kick the poor out of the Superdome) and giving tax abatements and free land to businesses to provide a pretty facade for the crumbling realities that our cities face (think Philly/Baltimore/Detroit/Minnesota/Miami/Pittsburgh). And now the conservatives have the audacity to suggest that wanting a piece of the pie back is class warfare? They are walking right into a nest of some really pissed off snakes, and this isn't gonna be pretty.
I agree with you though, I am in the minority. Especially on this forum.
BUT, this isn't about me. Please stay on topic and don't discuss the person (me)
Thanks.
The snake imagery is picked up in Genesis 3:15 when the snake is told: “he [the woman’s seed] will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” The snake was cursed to crawl on the ground and therefore susceptible to man’s heel crushing its head (this vulnerability is a direct result of Satan’s sin). This is a foreshadowing of what will really happen to Satan someday. The seed (Jesus Christ) of the woman will crush the head of Satan and His heel will be struck (the crucifixion) in the process.
In addition, the curse upon the physical snake was reflective of the actual curse upon Satan himself: crawling low on the belly was a mark of deep degradation (Lev 11:42) and eating dust was also a sign of despair (Micah 7:17). All these factors combine to form very vivid symbolism of what awaits Satan in the end.
I was referencing Mayday asking about how taxing the rich worked. I'm pretty sure I stayed on topic and used logic and reason to respond to the question. I'm also pretty sure I stayed on topic by responding to the idiotic notion that Barack Obama has caused this anger (he's certainly a part of it) when in reality this has been a class warfare that was started by Ronald Reagan and his cronies in the 1980s intermixed with the rise in power of the WTO and IMF.
As an aside (note: this is an aside so not on the topic of this board but I'm admitting this right now). If this is a discussion board that the moderators suggest is based in 'reasoned argument' could you please provide any examples where you offer this? Mostly, it seems, that you throw out sound bite one liners from Fox News and take them as gospel. Then when others on this board, many better than me, offer a different way to look at your argument you tell us to stay on topic. Almost every single time you say this the people on the thread have used your starting point to get somewhere with an argument, but because you don't like it you complain or threaten to warn the moderators. Actually I have a sneaking suspicion that you are deviously playing the part of a far-right wing nut while actually being pretty liberal outside of the board just so other conservatives see how illogical and ridiculous they are. Either way next time you warn us to "stay on topic" please check and ask yourself "what have I actually contributed to the 'reasoned debate' that we are supposed to be having"? As I noted elsewhere there are several conservative/libertarians on this board that actually do this, and while I don't agree with them it's far more productive and less frustrating. What do you hope to accomplish by pissing people off? That's not a train moving forward for sure...whatevs though I just put up a paragraph that will get a one line response and a warning threat so I'm pretty sure I just made your day.
Others in the crowd booed the hecklers while Christie chuckled and egged them on.
“You are so angry, aren’t ya?” Christie badgered. “It’s so terrible... Oh work it out. Work it all out for yourselves. Work it all out for yourselves.”
It took Romney staffers roughly three minutes to remove all the protesters -- who were shouting and howling over Christie -- from the building.
“You know what, we’re used to dealing with jokers like this in New Jersey all the time,” Christie said, as the protesters filed out. “So you guys go all out and chant and do what it is that you want to do.”
Once the room quieted and the protesters were locked outside, Christie resumed speaking and offered his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.”
Christie called them disillusioned and said he “feels bad” for them.
“Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves,” he said.
Calling that an "idiotic notion" is funny.
From my earlier post.....
As Dr. Kenneth McFarland said, “There is no arrogance more vicious than the arrogance of ignorance.” Some observers say that it appears that all that happened in professor Mankiw’s class was a temper tantrum by intemperate, ignorant, and immature young people who have been educated beyond their intellect.
You bring up Scandanvia again? :roll:
One more thing, REAGAN was the fucking man! Best President in my lifetime for sure. Maybe ever!
Woot!
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,430
Actually I have a sneaking suspicion that you are deviously playing the part of a far-right wing nut while actually being pretty liberal outside of the board just so other conservatives see how illogical and ridiculous they are.
My response here is also obviously off topic is also off topic so maybe I'll see you in the forum jail ( :( ) but your point is a good one. I made a similar postulation a while back but it was pretty much avoided. My theory about posters pretending to be far-right to make a point was the same not just regarding posts here on AMT but elsewhere on other forums. If true, it's an interesting tactic but I'm not sure how effective it is. It would make a good subject for a Sociology masters thesis. It bears considering in any case, although if it's true I doubt any of the far-right imposters would come forward.
So on topic- no offense intended to the author of this post but I just don't get the idea that OWS represents anger toward Obama at least not alone. He may or may not be continuing the stranglehold that the 1% have on everyone else but he certainly didn't create it. Only May Day has responded to me on this point (thank you, May Day.)
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Actually I have a sneaking suspicion that you are deviously playing the part of a far-right wing nut while actually being pretty liberal outside of the board just so other conservatives see how illogical and ridiculous they are. What do you hope to accomplish by pissing people off?
Name calling is not ok. I am not a nut nor am an imposter of a nut. If I piss you off that is probably because you can't see through anyone elses lense but your own. That is a personal problem and this is not the place to address it so I won't.
"see how illogical and ridiculous other conservatives are". Did you really say that in the same paragraph as where you were questioning my ability to add to a topic and debate reasonably?
In related news, I read something about occupy wall street types doing a hunger strike. Now that is a GREAT idea that I can support!
Actually I have a sneaking suspicion that you are deviously playing the part of a far-right wing nut while actually being pretty liberal outside of the board just so other conservatives see how illogical and ridiculous they are. What do you hope to accomplish by pissing people off?
Name calling is not ok. I am not a nut nor am an imposter of a nut. If I piss you off that is probably because you can't see through anyone elses lense but your own. That is a personal problem and this is not the place to address it so I won't.
"see how illogical and ridiculous other conservatives are". Did you really say that in the same paragraph as where you were questioning my ability to add to a topic and debate reasonably?
In related news, I read something about occupy wall street types doing a hunger strike. Now that is a GREAT idea that I can support!
So lets deal in facts. Okay? Can you address the facts? Just the facts, m'aam, just the facts (in my best Dragnet voice over ever).
Reasoned debate is what democracy is all about and I don't fathom for a moment that"ll I'll change your mind. But hey, let me ask you a question, do you know what Reagan had that Obama doesn't, if he is your "fucking man!?" Let me know when you want to debate "facts."
Others in the crowd booed the hecklers while Christie chuckled and egged them on.
“You are so angry, aren’t ya?” Christie badgered. “It’s so terrible... Oh work it out. Work it all out for yourselves. Work it all out for yourselves.”
It took Romney staffers roughly three minutes to remove all the protesters -- who were shouting and howling over Christie -- from the building.
“You know what, we’re used to dealing with jokers like this in New Jersey all the time,” Christie said, as the protesters filed out. “So you guys go all out and chant and do what it is that you want to do.”
Once the room quieted and the protesters were locked outside, Christie resumed speaking and offered his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.”
Christie called them disillusioned and said he “feels bad” for them.
“Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves,” he said.
Calling that an "idiotic notion" is funny.
From my earlier post.....
As Dr. Kenneth McFarland said, “There is no arrogance more vicious than the arrogance of ignorance.” Some observers say that it appears that all that happened in professor Mankiw’s class was a temper tantrum by intemperate, ignorant, and immature young people who have been educated beyond their intellect.
You bring up Scandanvia again? :roll:
Woot!
What a dick.
He gets his heavies to lock the protestors outside and then tells the crowd what he thinks these protestors are angry about.
One more thing, REAGAN was the fucking man! Best President in my lifetime for sure. Maybe ever!
Reagan was a criminal with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. He should have been sent to the Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
Still, when have you ever let the facts get in the way of your gibberish?
As the mass media engaged in an orgy of adulation for Ronald Reagan in June of 2004, many thinking persons were remembering and mourning the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Ronald Reagan's policies and pondering the lasting damage that the man did not only to the United States but to the world.
During Reagan's reign the United States experienced the beginning of the end of what could have been a great nation. Under Reagan, elements within the government engaged in massive criminal activity that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the entrenchment of a vicious and evil criminal organization that is now firmly in power of not only the United States but much of the world.
Reagan's crimes are many and started well before he was President when he and Bush committed treason and paid the Iranian's to not release the hostages in order to prevent the re-election of Jimmy Carter in 1980, not mention his reign of stupidity as Governor of California. The hostages were released as promised as Reagan was sworn into office. Reagan then secretly sold chemical & biological weapons to Iraq and told CIA buddy Saddam Hussein to step up bombing of Iran while still selling weapons to Iran in a war that claimed an estimated one million victims. The criminal activities in the Mid East stretched around the world to Central America in the spectacle that came to be known as Iran-Contra.
In Afghanistan, Reagan was busy funding Ossama bin Laden and a terrorist army to displace the Russians. Once the mighty 'Muhjadeen' had completed their task they were partially abandoned and became the Taliban and Al Queda. With no real replacement intended for the Russian backed government, the radical muslims quickly took power. Only later did the army without a war become the enemy so desperately needed by the US defense industry.
In Central America, Reagan-Bush ran a massive criminal operation that imported hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US and shipped arms illegally to the terrorist Contras that Reagan affectionately called "Freedom Fighters". Coca paste was brought in from South America by plane to an airstrip near Puntarenas, Costa Rica owned by Reagan/Bush supporter Julio Calleja and processed on the ranch of CIA operative John Hull. From there the high-grade coke was shipped by plane to the Mina, Arkansas Airport under the protection of Bill Clinton and to various Air Force bases..
Under direct US control, Reagan's 'Freedom Fighters' raped, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Nicaragua in an effort to bring down Nicaragua's first democratically elected government. The US had previously ruled Nicaragua through the brutal Somoza family dicatorship, once the dictatorship was overthrown by a popular revolution the US was quick to start an criminal campaign of terror against the government and civilians. The campaign of terror claimed 50,000 lives and crippled the entire nation.
Nicaragua took its case to the World Court. The court found that the U.S. actions constituted "an unlawful use of force .... [that] cannot be justified either by collective self-defence ... nor by any right of the United States to take counter-measures involving the use of force." The court ordered the United States to pay reparations, estimated at between $12 billion and $17 billion, to Nicaragua. Two weeks after the verdict was issued, the U.S. Congress voted to give the Contras $100 million to continue their war of terror against the people of Nicaragua. The US has never recognized the World Court's ruling nor paid any of the compensation owed to Nicaragua.
"The ripple effects of that criminal murderous intervention in my country will go on for 50 years or more." Fr. D'Escoto, Priest and former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister
Reagan's blood-fest wasn't limited to Nicaragua, his puppet military dictators abducted, tortured, murdered and mutilated over 200,000 civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the name of 'democracy' and fighting communism. Nor was the slaughter done only through the US controlled dictators. In operations that are still highly classified, US AC-130 gunships, crewed by US personnel, flew at night over mountainous areas with potential rebels and killed anything that gave off body-heat. The AC-130 is a highly sophisticated computerized killing machine that "incorporate side-firing weapons integrated with sophisticated sensor, navigation and fire control systems to provide surgical firepower or area saturation during extended loiter periods, at night and in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of a television sensor, infrared sensor and radar." - US Air Force
In 1999 the United Nations determined that the wholesale slaughter of Guatemalans, constituted "genocide." It was a genocide ordered and managed by the White House under Reagan.
For their part in Iran-Contra fourteen high level government officials were charged, yet few of them were convicted and received any real penalty. Bush pardoned six of the criminal conspirators. Some of those involved in the Iran-Contra crimes are now back in power under the current Bush administration.
Despite some environmental concessions to voters while Governor of California, Reagan's real views on the environment became clear during his Presidential campaign when he claimed that trees caused more air pollution than cars. During his criminal reign of terror he systematically dismantled environmental protection laws and rolled back decades of hard-won progress to protect the Earth and the health of its inhabitants.
To help ensure the rape of the land he appointed lunatic James Watt as Secretary of the Interior who claimed "We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming [of Christ] is at hand." It wasn't until Watt was trying to defend his decision to give away more than 1 billion tons of coal from federal lands in Wyoming that he was finally acknowledged for what he was. His defense for the coal giveway was that he was immune to criticism because members of his coal-advisory panel included "a black ... a woman, two Jews, and a cripple." This comment got finally him fired in 1983.
His appointee for the EPA was the environment molester Anne Gorsuch who tried her best to gut the hard-won Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Gorsuch's Superfund Director, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for lying to Congress under oath about the corruption in her division. Gorsuch was fired in 1983 when documents exposed by Congress revealed the corruption and crimes committed by the EPA under her direction.
...America's worst financial disaster since the Great Depression occured under Reagan with the collapse of the Savings & Loan system. Nearly $500 billion was looted from thousands of Savings & Loans by a criminal ring that included the Mafia, CIA and the Bush family. Neil Bush was involved in the collapse of Silverado Savings & Loan but never served any jail time. By the time the Federal government and elite is done milking the scam further, US taxpayers will have paid well over a trillion dollars.
The full extent of Reagan's crimes may never be known because George W. Bush issued an executive order which countermands the 1978 Presidential Records Act and prevents the release of 68,000 pages of Reagan era documents. Given that Reagan lacked the intelligence to carry out most of the more elaborate crimes, the records are likely to shed light on the true role of the Bush crime family.
Let us remember Reagan as he really was...
o Liar
o Thief
o Mass murderer
o War criminal
o Traitor
o Destroyer of freedom
o Destroyer of the environment
While Reagan may have not been entirely aware of what he was doing and how his decisions would impact the world, he was also much more sinister than the media has portrayed him. We can only hope that he gets to meet some of his many victims after joining the other thugs in hell.
Everybody has a right to their opinion. At least, in a free country.
That is why I support the GOP. Beacons of light and freedom across the globe. Freedom in Iraq! Freedom for all! Freedom to fail, to win.
Freedom to be lazy and starve.
Back on topic, occupy wall street is mad at the wrong people. They should probably not be throwing blame at successful people. Maybe many of them need anti depression meds? What do you think about that? I bet anti depressant meds might help many of them...
Does Obamacare give people free meds (because I bet many of them have no health insurance right?). If so, why would the evil pharma companies invest in R&D without profit motive?
Hmmm
No investment, no breakthroughs. No new meds. People die. That would suck huh?
Who's gonna pay for that "general care"? Who is going to work for the money to pay for that?
Oh, wait...the evil 1% should right? That will be Barack Hussein Obamas platform for everything in his reelection bid since he can't run on accomplishments. Just try to convince the have nots to vote for him again thinking that he will be robin hood or something. This is why OWS is here (soon to be a memory when it gets to cold outside). They believed his jive turkey. Now they are left holding the bag and he vacations in Hawaii.
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,430
I give 10% of my income to social and environmental issues- that may not be very much in the big picture but if you join me in that, we'll change the world.
p.s That's on top of taxes and I my wife and I are self employed so we pay more than most in our income bracket. Yes, the 1% should pay more because I guarantee they don't work harder than we do. Guarantee it.
And look, I'm not trying to make points for myself here. Really, if you and I pitch in, help others maybe the 1% will begin to envy how good we feel and they'll want to top that. That would be one-upping us, that would be winning. Good!- let them win that one!
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Who's gonna pay for that "general care"? Who is going to work for the money to pay for that?
The government can pay for it with your tax dollars. The same tax dollars that they currently feed into two wars of occupation and into Israel's coffers every year.
Everybody has a right to their opinion. At least, in a free country.
That is why I support the GOP. Beacons of light and freedom across the globe. Freedom in Iraq! Freedom for all! Freedom to fail, to win.
Freedom to be lazy and starve.
Back on topic, occupy wall street is mad at the wrong people. They should probably not be throwing blame at successful people. Maybe many of them need anti depression meds? What do you think about that? I bet anti depressant meds might help many of them...
Does Obamacare give people free meds (because I bet many of them have no health insurance right?). If so, why would the evil pharma companies invest in R&D without profit motive?
Hmmm
No investment, no breakthroughs. No new meds. People die. That would suck huh?
Why is OWS mad at the wrong people? Why? What facts do you have to support your argument? Why? What? Pain meds? Throwing blame at "successful" people? Excuse me. Please explain as I don't understand your rationale. Please. Facts. Interesting how you insist that whatever Obama does, formulates, espouses, articulates, advocates for is somehow suspect for lack of a profit motive. No profit motive, no worth? Big pharma? Well, geeze finding cures for common illnesses used to be, used to be, for the common good. Polio anyone? Bubonic plague? How about CANCER? But now, they're all a PROFIT center. So, how's that hard on doing for you? VIAGRA anyone? So, when do you except to cure the bird flu? Or maybe lead poisoning? Maybe you'll survive the fracking but I doubt it. Good luck to you and the little angle you comfort. But, a little advice, light a match before you turn the tap to fill the bottle for your own sweet baby Jesus.
PS: Little surprised you haven't posted the pic of Perry with the Tommy. Given up so soon?
Still waiting for "facts" from the "corporations" or ha, hem, "people."
Who's gonna pay for that "general care"? Who is going to work for the money to pay for that?
Oh, wait...the evil 1% should right? That will be Barack Hussein Obamas platform for everything in his reelection bid since he can't run on accomplishments. Just try to convince the have nots to vote for him again thinking that he will be robin hood or something. This is why OWS is here (soon to be a memory when it gets to cold outside). They believed his jive turkey. Now they are left holding the bag and he vacations in Hawaii.
Can't run on accomplishments? Excuse me? And I'm not a "have not" nor did I drink the "Cool Aide"1. Saved the auto industry but didn't have to stop campaigning to do it. 2. Eliminated don't ask, don't tell. 3. Passed health care reform (warts and all). 4. Withdrawing from Iraq (despite the naysayers, hell democracy is ugly, right? We have other things to do). 5. Looking out for the middle class, yea, you know who they are, you're not stupid, by advocating a tax break just for them. 6. Being squeeky clean, and I mean squeeky clean, like hey, he's still married, he's still Christian, and he's still with his daughters and wife raising a cohesive, functional, "normal", you know, typical American family who was born in the USA (ask Bruce). 7. Hasn't entered into any "dumb" wars, hello Libya, 8. is staying on track with Afghanistan as far as being honest to what we all know is a fucking suck pit of resources and truly, if you have an argument, lets hear it, but it's time to go, 9. Oh MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, OSAMA BIN LADIN IS DEAD, Oh so VERY DEAD, and 23 of 30 known terrorists are also dead, not that I'm proud of that but Obama did it in 3 years and did it as opposed to 8 years of talking about it (be afraid, very afraid) and convincing you of just going shopping. 10. Would have closed GITMO but for the republicans who are afraid of our Constitution by transferring defendants to an Idaho prison and trying them in court, similar to what Clinton did with great success and relying on our greatest process but also realizing that the previous Admin, was too DUMB struck to do things "under the law" and listened to "I have a pulse but no heart Cheney but I'll shoot you anyway." So yea, I'll vote for Obama and not that he's perfect but he's clearly more in my corner. 11. Advocating for a Palestinian homeland, despite the Israeli lobby and the Rupert Murdock swing fest, "I like the way they swing" (thats a Digital Underground reference yo), and the republifucks, I'm sorry I couldn't help myself but this issue really blasts me, because its right (remember South Africa and aphartied? Didn't think so, but I don't hold it against you) and the candidates for the republican nomination, of which, having read your posts, I assume you support, at least one if not more, have all come out further right in their positions than the populace of Israel (Sarah Palin and her Star of David anyone?, anyone?).
So, you got facts? Or ignorance?
Peace.
PS: Did I spell "squeeky wrong? From just wondering.
Back on topic, occupy wall street is mad at the wrong people. They should probably not be throwing blame at successful people.
Successful people? You mean the criminals who have bled America dry and shipped the U.S manufacturing base overseas where labour is cheap and health and safety standards can be bypassed?
Yeah, these successful people you love so much really have the interests of the American people at heart.
Meanwhile:
Land of the free, home of the hungry
Nowhere is the chasm between America's political class and its working poor more vast than in the demand to cut food stamps
Gary Younge
guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 December 2011
On Monday afternoon this week, Rachelle Grimmer went into a Department of Health and Human Services in Texas with her two children, Timothy, aged 10, and Ramie, aged 12, and asked for a new case worker who could assist her application for food stamps. She had first applied in July but had been told she hadn't provided enough information and, by most accounts, had been struggling to get by and get help since she moved from Ohio.
She was taken to a small room, where she pulled a gun, sparking a seven-hour standoff with police. Shortly before midnight, three shots were heard. Rachelle had shot both herself and her kids. Police rushed in to find the mother dead and Ramie and Timothy in critical condition. Earlier that morning, Ramie had posted a Facebook message, saying: "may die 2day". She actually hung on until Wednesday. Timothy's condition remains critical.
The tragic unravelling of this particular episode is hardly typical. But the desperation that underpins it is. For, in this period between Thanksgiving and Christmas (when many Americans are worrying about what overindulging will do to their waistline), a significant number is wracked with an entirely different concern: not having enough to eat.
This is no marginal group, no handful of unfortunates and ne'er-do-wells in a time of crisis. Indeed, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months – the highest level since the month Barack Obama was elected. Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare.
An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now. In Rockdale County, east of Atlanta, 63% of students now have subsidised food – up from 46% four years ago.
Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme. Catholic Charities recently revealed that requests for the working poor were up 80% over the second quarter, and up 59% for the middle class.
Similarly, Operation Homefront, a national organisation that feeds the families of military personnel, has seen demand for help double over the last two years. The Washington Post reported that in Fort Hood, Texas, military families stayed up after midnight to register for a free turkey online for Thanksgiving. The 450 birds were gone within an hour. Even as soldiers fight for empire abroad, their families struggle for food at home.
You would think this would be a national disgrace. The land of the free – and the home of the hungry. The sheer scale and intensity of the problem refutes any suggestions of the undeserving poor.
But want has become a term of political abuse, with Newt Gingrich launching his campaign earlier this year by branding Obama "the food stamp president" and continues to berate him as such. Indeed, behind the partisan posturing over deficit reduction, it is rarely noted that rather than impose taxes on millionaires, Republicans are eager to balance the budget on the stomachs of the hungry.
As editor of the Left Business Observer, Doug Henwood, points out in a recent blog posting, these benefits are not particularly generous. "The average [food stamp] recipient gets $134 a month in assistance, which works out to $4.40 a day. That's 10% less than the US Department of Agriculture's "thrifty" meal budget, and about half its "moderate" budget. For your average well-fed American, living on a daily ration of less than $5 for food prepared at home would be hard to imagine. But without SNAP benefits, 46 million people would be in a state of anguish rather than just scraping by."
Yet, this is one area the Republicans are keen to target for cuts. They want to reduce spending on food stamps by around 20%, and in June, voted to slash a different health and nutrition scheme (WIC) for poor pregnant women and children by 10%, which would have denied assistance to around a quarter of a million people.
This will be the primary terrain on which the forthcoming elections will be fought: the needs and aspirations of the working poor. Not so much the destitute – America is always forgetting about them – but the working poor and those who fear descending among them. But for the Democrats to capitalise on these anxieties, they will have to shift the country's sense of what it takes to be poor and convince them that government has a role in alleviating that condition before desperation kicks in.
You'd think that would be straightforward. But illusions of meritocracy, equal opportunity, class fluidity and social mobility die hard. This a country where, according to a Pew survey in 2008, 91% believe they are either middle-class, upper middle-class or lower middle-class, and a Gallup poll in 2005 showed that while only 2% of Americans described themselves as "rich", 31% thought it very likely or somewhat likely they would "ever be rich". Sooner or later, though, reality tends to intrude.
As thousands of people gathered at New Orleans convention centre following Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown, the hapless head of the disaster relief agency, Fema, was asked why he was not tending to them with shelter and water.
"We're seeing people that we didn't know exist," he said. This has been the official policy of America's political class for some time. "This is a special interest group that not many people talk about because they don't have the wealth to lift a candidate to be president of the United States," explained D Jermaine Husser, the former executive director of South Carolina's Low Country Food Bank.
But there is only so long you can pretend that such a large group of people doesn't exist, and as the poverty rates grow, more and more people who are likely to vote become ensnared in it. Gallup's Basic Access Index, which tracks access to basic needs like food, shelter and healthcare or medicines, is at the lowest it's been since its inception in January 2008. A new measurement of poverty by the Census Bureau, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses that do not intrude on the official poverty count, found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it.
"These numbers are higher than we anticipated," Trudi Renwick, the bureau's head poverty statistician, told the New York Times recently. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."
Poverty may be relative but hunger is absolute. The third world is alive and struggling in the heart of the first. No one can deny it exists. And those who claim they can't see it, either refuse to see it for what it is or simply do not want to look.
Maybe if the "corporations" or "people" raised wages and benefits, the Obama administration wouldn't have to redistribute the wealth. The family that owns Walmart possesses more wealth than 35 million Americans combined. The wealth of the top 1% is up over 200% since 1975, while average wages have remained stagnent. "Corporate" or "people" profits have also increased significantly since 1975 while wages have remained relatively stagnent, even while the American worker has raised their productivity by close to 60% in that time. And the "corporations" or "people" also use public roads, bridges, police, fire and other TAXPAYER funded goods and services to become what they are. IMO, we all suck from the teet of government. The 1% don't exisit in a vacuum nor are they completely responsible for their success.
Its time to start spreading the wealth. The 1% could do it voluntarily as Warren Buffet recommends or the government can do it. We know what works and what doesn't and republicans just saying no to everything is not working.
Peace.
I totally agree with you. My poltical leanings use to be conservative until a few years ago. Until I opened my eyes and mind. My country, the one I served in the military and felt we as individuals could acheive anything we wanted, was being taken over by corporations. The event that ultimatley affected me was when my wife lost her job and a year later I took a 30 percent pay cut. My wife spent alomst three years without work and I have only being able to reciver 5 percent of the pay cut I received. All this while the company I work for has posted huge profits. I have two Masters and a certification in a highly technical field.
I have tried to look for other positions but I have not found anything. I worry about my childrens future. While I understand that corporations must exist, how much is enough? While CEO's make millions, the worker who helps produce the products get penny's. That to me is morally wrong. While I understand that not everyone is going to be rich, it is about providing fair compensation. Wall Street got bailed out and We pay for it, while we get nothing in return. This is NOT the America I grew up in and the world admired at one time. America use to be the place that if you worked hard, eventually you get to have a nice life. Nowdays it seems that it doesn't matter how hard you work because eventually your gonna get shafted. Sorry for rambling on.
I give 10% of my income to social and environmental issues- that may not be very much in the big picture but if you join me in that, we'll change the world.
p.s That's on top of taxes and I my wife and I are self employed so we pay more than most in our income bracket. Yes, the 1% should pay more because I guarantee they don't work harder than we do. Guarantee it.
And look, I'm not trying to make points for myself here. Really, if you and I pitch in, help others maybe the 1% will begin to envy how good we feel and they'll want to top that. That would be one-upping us, that would be winning. Good!- let them win that one!
Word.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win ."
I totally agree with you. My poltical leanings use to be conservative until a few years ago. Until I opened my eyes and mind. My country, the one I served in the military and felt we as individuals could acheive anything we wanted, was being taken over by corporations. The event that ultimatley affected me was when my wife lost her job and a year later I took a 30 percent pay cut. My wife spent alomst three years without work and I have only being able to reciver 5 percent of the pay cut I received. All this while the company I work for has posted huge profits. I have two Masters and a certification in a highly technical field.
I have tried to look for other positions but I have not found anything. I worry about my childrens future. While I understand that corporations must exist, how much is enough? While CEO's make millions, the worker who helps produce the products get penny's. That to me is morally wrong. While I understand that not everyone is going to be rich, it is about providing fair compensation. Wall Street got bailed out and We pay for it, while we get nothing in return. This is NOT the America I grew up in and the world admired at one time. America use to be the place that if you worked hard, eventually you get to have a nice life. Nowdays it seems that it doesn't matter how hard you work because eventually your gonna get shafted. Sorry for rambling on.
Situations like yours are all too common in today's America. Personally, I find that many of the so-called advocates for big business are simply defending their stake in capital they didn't earn. Fair compensation for the middle class is becoming a rarity while an executive class steal a bigger stake than ever before. The amazing thing is that American values have become so corrupted that the uber rich have actually been able to cry foul while pointing a finger at the unemployed, the homeless and the elderly.
I can only hope that your situation improves. It makes me sick when others accuse somebody such as yourself as being lazy or looking for a handout. In my experience, most people are just looking to work for a fair wage. It's a shame that you can't really expect that in today's economy.
I totally agree with you. My poltical leanings use to be conservative until a few years ago. Until I opened my eyes and mind. My country, the one I served in the military and felt we as individuals could acheive anything we wanted, was being taken over by corporations. The event that ultimatley affected me was when my wife lost her job and a year later I took a 30 percent pay cut. My wife spent alomst three years without work and I have only being able to reciver 5 percent of the pay cut I received. All this while the company I work for has posted huge profits. I have two Masters and a certification in a highly technical field.
I have tried to look for other positions but I have not found anything. I worry about my childrens future. While I understand that corporations must exist, how much is enough? While CEO's make millions, the worker who helps produce the products get penny's. That to me is morally wrong. While I understand that not everyone is going to be rich, it is about providing fair compensation. Wall Street got bailed out and We pay for it, while we get nothing in return. This is NOT the America I grew up in and the world admired at one time. America use to be the place that if you worked hard, eventually you get to have a nice life. Nowdays it seems that it doesn't matter how hard you work because eventually your gonna get shafted. Sorry for rambling on.
Situations like yours are all too common in today's America. Personally, I find that many of the so-called advocates for big business are simply defending their stake in capital they didn't earn. Fair compensation for the middle class is becoming a rarity while an executive class steal a bigger stake than ever before. The amazing thing is that American values have become so corrupted that the uber rich have actually been able to cry foul while pointing a finger at the unemployed, the homeless and the elderly.
I can only hope that your situation improves. It makes me sick when others accuse somebody such as yourself as being lazy or looking for a handout. In my experience, most people are just looking to work for a fair wage. It's a shame that you can't really expect that in today's economy.
Unfortunately, we can’t expect it. I have been thinking about this the past couple of days… This whole economic malaise started with the collapse of the housing market. In the late 1990’s the average price of a home was in the $185K range. At the height of the real estate boom, seven years later that average rose to $313K. The average household income was $60K. How did a family afford to buy a $300K home on $60K? At this point banks sold them on interest only loans which then were bundled up along with the subprime mortgages and sold. Some big wigs went as far as playing the market and made billions when the collapse occurred. They actually got richer when most of the country went downhill. While people struggle, fat cat millionaires and billionaires and make money on the suffering of others. This is not the America I want to leave for the next generation.
In Oakland, officials urged protesters to consider the impact on workers. Port workers and truck drivers say the protests will hurt them.
"This is joke. What are they protesting?" said Christian Vega, 32, who sat in his truck carrying a load of recycled paper from Pittsburgh on Monday morning. He said the delay was costing him $600.
"It only hurts me and the other drivers. We have jobs and families to support and feed. Most of them don't," Vega said.
Long Beach police arrested two people during the demonstration there, police Chief Jim McDonnell said. Port operations were not significantly impacted beyond some traffic delays, he said.
A spokesman for the port in Portland, Oregon, said the protests had partially shut down the port there. In Oakland, the port said in a statement that operations were continuing "with sporadic disruptions for truckers trying to enter and exit marine terminal gates."
About 80 protesters demonstrated outside the gate of San Diego's port, but caused no disruption because, port spokesman Ron Powell said.
"They were there at a time when we really didn't have a lot of truck traffic coming in and out," he said.
Four people who sat down in the road were arrested he said. San Diego police did not immediately return a telephone call seeking information on the arrests.
Protesters were planning a second occupation of the Oakland port Monday afternoon
I'm sorry, but you have no way of knowing how hard other people work if you've never met them. I'm nowhere near being in the top 1% anytime soon but I know how hard the people above me work. I work for a bank and I've seen first-hand the long days the executives above me put in. My boss was working 13-hour days on good days before my job was created and he's still putting in about 10 hours each day in the office plus anything that comes up after hours since he's on call 24/7. His bosses put in the same hours, often longer because they're responsible for him, people in his job in other states, and other positions in several states. They may not be lifting heavy objects or getting dirty the way people do in other lower-paying jobs but that doesn't mean they don't work hard. That's just what people tell themselves to feel justified in thinking that the 35% tax rate isn't high enough.
I give 10% of my income to social and environmental issues- that may not be very much in the big picture but if you join me in that, we'll change the world.
p.s That's on top of taxes and I my wife and I are self employed so we pay more than most in our income bracket. Yes, the 1% should pay more because I guarantee they don't work harder than we do. Guarantee it.
And look, I'm not trying to make points for myself here. Really, if you and I pitch in, help others maybe the 1% will begin to envy how good we feel and they'll want to top that. That would be one-upping us, that would be winning. Good!- let them win that one!
I assume by "we" you mean American citizens in general. Well, we did get something out of the bailouts. For starters, the obvious one is that many people in the 99% who work for those companies were able to keep their jobs--there may have been layoffs but that's not as bad as 100% of the workers losing their jobs because the company no longer exists. Second, the government actually made a profit on the bailouts and started seeing a profitable return on those bailouts as far back as 2009. I wonder how many protesters realize that the bailouts have been paid back and that the government made money from it. I'd guess the number is pretty low since I see and hear so many people mention the bailouts when explaining why this movement is focusing on Wall Street instead of the government.
Shortly after the article in the 2nd link was published, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo paid back their bailout money, too. The government turned a $12 billion profit off the Citi bailout alone.
I totally agree with you. My poltical leanings use to be conservative until a few years ago. Until I opened my eyes and mind. My country, the one I served in the military and felt we as individuals could acheive anything we wanted, was being taken over by corporations. The event that ultimatley affected me was when my wife lost her job and a year later I took a 30 percent pay cut. My wife spent alomst three years without work and I have only being able to reciver 5 percent of the pay cut I received. All this while the company I work for has posted huge profits. I have two Masters and a certification in a highly technical field.
I have tried to look for other positions but I have not found anything. I worry about my childrens future. While I understand that corporations must exist, how much is enough? While CEO's make millions, the worker who helps produce the products get penny's. That to me is morally wrong. While I understand that not everyone is going to be rich, it is about providing fair compensation. Wall Street got bailed out and We pay for it, while we get nothing in return. This is NOT the America I grew up in and the world admired at one time. America use to be the place that if you worked hard, eventually you get to have a nice life. Nowdays it seems that it doesn't matter how hard you work because eventually your gonna get shafted. Sorry for rambling on.
Comments
Except the 1% are not creators of wealth. They are destroyers of wealth. But you choose to ignore this inconvenient fact.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... destroyers
The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen
Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.
The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."
So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?
In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.
The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.
In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.
This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.
The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.
What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.
In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.
In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.
Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.
This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.
It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.
African women? Come on...
They shell peanuts by hand until some engineer/entrepreneur shows them how to do it more efficiently. That entrepreneur/engineer should get rewarded right? Or should everyone eat beans and rice everyday? You know what happens when there is no incentive to achieve greatness? Or to be "lucky"
Nothing happens. I am not working for you. I am not risking for you.
I do it for myself, my family and my friends.
Then, I will kick down to others as I see fit. Not have the government take my hard earned monies and give them to people hand in hand.
Winners win. It's a definition.
Usamaman, you and your viewpoint are in the minority on this issue and not just on this board or in this forum. The facts point this out to you but you choose not to believe the facts. But then again the republicans haven't had much use for facts of late either. So continue to support failed economic policies if you so choose. But don't blame the dems or the liberals or the OWS when the US is at or near the bottom in every ranking amongst industrialized countries except for concentration of wealth amongst the top .01%. A sad vision for our country indeed, winning the race to the bottom. And I support what gimmie said about speaking up. I'm sick of it too. I'm working my ass off and I'm not getting ahead, despite playing by the rules and being responsible.
Byrnzie, nice posts. I intend to read up more with the sources you provided. Thanks! :thumbup:
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
How true. But I've also heard it said that winning isn't everything. And helping others and playing fairly is winning too.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Does this even have any logic? Just think about it for like 10 minutes. So we reduce taxes on the wealthy because they "took the risk" (even though we found out after the banking crisis that they actually didn't take any risk) and they get more money. Then, through their own benevolence, they will surely share that money with their workers, spend it to keep our economy rolling, and the working and middle classes will prosper. Are you fucking kidding me? No seriously are you fucking kidding me? Are you really that arrogant to suggest that you "worked harder" than everyone else to get where you got? You got NO help whatsoever? What a joke.
Here are the facts: What we have seen under neoliberalism is a stagnation of wages for everyone except the top 1%. The middle and working class have been hidden from this reality because, among other things, the rich are able to sell things for cheaper and cheaper because they are using labor that has been outsourced for pennies on the dollar. So those jobs you so desperately suggest people get (blue collar jobs for those who couldn't afford, shouldn't have attempted, and didn't have the ability to go through college) are largely gone. The jobs that are open and some on this board keep suggesting people should apply for pale in pay for what a student loan costs to pay back - and what if life happens (sickness, child, marriage, etc)? The bankowners who still have homes and children and lives because they got bailed out for their "mistakes" (could also be evil doing but let's just stick with mistakes) while those they (being nice) convinced it was a good idea to purchase a house have nothing. Add to that the fact that New Orleans couldn't afford levies to save thousands, Minnesota has a bridge fall and kill dozens, and we keep building sports stadiums (At this point nearly 100 with taxpayer dollars even Tom fucking Benson got $344 million from FEMA to fix his stadium and kick the poor out of the Superdome) and giving tax abatements and free land to businesses to provide a pretty facade for the crumbling realities that our cities face (think Philly/Baltimore/Detroit/Minnesota/Miami/Pittsburgh). And now the conservatives have the audacity to suggest that wanting a piece of the pie back is class warfare? They are walking right into a nest of some really pissed off snakes, and this isn't gonna be pretty.
Good luck snakes.
Hope the snakes have contingencies.
I do.
I agree with you though, I am in the minority. Especially on this forum.
BUT, this isn't about me. Please stay on topic and don't discuss the person (me)
Thanks.
The snake imagery is picked up in Genesis 3:15 when the snake is told: “he [the woman’s seed] will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” The snake was cursed to crawl on the ground and therefore susceptible to man’s heel crushing its head (this vulnerability is a direct result of Satan’s sin). This is a foreshadowing of what will really happen to Satan someday. The seed (Jesus Christ) of the woman will crush the head of Satan and His heel will be struck (the crucifixion) in the process.
In addition, the curse upon the physical snake was reflective of the actual curse upon Satan himself: crawling low on the belly was a mark of deep degradation (Lev 11:42) and eating dust was also a sign of despair (Micah 7:17). All these factors combine to form very vivid symbolism of what awaits Satan in the end.
Woot!
As an aside (note: this is an aside so not on the topic of this board but I'm admitting this right now). If this is a discussion board that the moderators suggest is based in 'reasoned argument' could you please provide any examples where you offer this? Mostly, it seems, that you throw out sound bite one liners from Fox News and take them as gospel. Then when others on this board, many better than me, offer a different way to look at your argument you tell us to stay on topic. Almost every single time you say this the people on the thread have used your starting point to get somewhere with an argument, but because you don't like it you complain or threaten to warn the moderators. Actually I have a sneaking suspicion that you are deviously playing the part of a far-right wing nut while actually being pretty liberal outside of the board just so other conservatives see how illogical and ridiculous they are. Either way next time you warn us to "stay on topic" please check and ask yourself "what have I actually contributed to the 'reasoned debate' that we are supposed to be having"? As I noted elsewhere there are several conservative/libertarians on this board that actually do this, and while I don't agree with them it's far more productive and less frustrating. What do you hope to accomplish by pissing people off? That's not a train moving forward for sure...whatevs though I just put up a paragraph that will get a one line response and a warning threat so I'm pretty sure I just made your day.
“You are so angry, aren’t ya?” Christie badgered. “It’s so terrible... Oh work it out. Work it all out for yourselves. Work it all out for yourselves.”
It took Romney staffers roughly three minutes to remove all the protesters -- who were shouting and howling over Christie -- from the building.
“You know what, we’re used to dealing with jokers like this in New Jersey all the time,” Christie said, as the protesters filed out. “So you guys go all out and chant and do what it is that you want to do.”
Once the room quieted and the protesters were locked outside, Christie resumed speaking and offered his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“Here’s the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused,” he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. “He’s a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage.”
Christie called them disillusioned and said he “feels bad” for them.
“Now they are angry but they’re not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves,” he said.
Calling that an "idiotic notion" is funny.
From my earlier post.....
As Dr. Kenneth McFarland said, “There is no arrogance more vicious than the arrogance of ignorance.” Some observers say that it appears that all that happened in professor Mankiw’s class was a temper tantrum by intemperate, ignorant, and immature young people who have been educated beyond their intellect.
You bring up Scandanvia again? :roll:
One more thing, REAGAN was the fucking man! Best President in my lifetime for sure. Maybe ever!
Woot!
My response here is also obviously off topic is also off topic so maybe I'll see you in the forum jail ( :( ) but your point is a good one. I made a similar postulation a while back but it was pretty much avoided. My theory about posters pretending to be far-right to make a point was the same not just regarding posts here on AMT but elsewhere on other forums. If true, it's an interesting tactic but I'm not sure how effective it is. It would make a good subject for a Sociology masters thesis. It bears considering in any case, although if it's true I doubt any of the far-right imposters would come forward.
So on topic- no offense intended to the author of this post but I just don't get the idea that OWS represents anger toward Obama at least not alone. He may or may not be continuing the stranglehold that the 1% have on everyone else but he certainly didn't create it. Only May Day has responded to me on this point (thank you, May Day.)
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Name calling is not ok. I am not a nut nor am an imposter of a nut. If I piss you off that is probably because you can't see through anyone elses lense but your own. That is a personal problem and this is not the place to address it so I won't.
"see how illogical and ridiculous other conservatives are". Did you really say that in the same paragraph as where you were questioning my ability to add to a topic and debate reasonably?
In related news, I read something about occupy wall street types doing a hunger strike. Now that is a GREAT idea that I can support!
So lets deal in facts. Okay? Can you address the facts? Just the facts, m'aam, just the facts (in my best Dragnet voice over ever).
Reasoned debate is what democracy is all about and I don't fathom for a moment that"ll I'll change your mind. But hey, let me ask you a question, do you know what Reagan had that Obama doesn't, if he is your "fucking man!?" Let me know when you want to debate "facts."
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
What a dick.
He gets his heavies to lock the protestors outside and then tells the crowd what he thinks these protestors are angry about.
Reagan was a criminal with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. He should have been sent to the Hague and charged with crimes against humanity.
Still, when have you ever let the facts get in the way of your gibberish?
http://www.highstrangeness.tv/articles/reagan.php
Ronald Reagan Guilty of Treason & War Crimes
As the mass media engaged in an orgy of adulation for Ronald Reagan in June of 2004, many thinking persons were remembering and mourning the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Ronald Reagan's policies and pondering the lasting damage that the man did not only to the United States but to the world.
During Reagan's reign the United States experienced the beginning of the end of what could have been a great nation. Under Reagan, elements within the government engaged in massive criminal activity that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the entrenchment of a vicious and evil criminal organization that is now firmly in power of not only the United States but much of the world.
Reagan's crimes are many and started well before he was President when he and Bush committed treason and paid the Iranian's to not release the hostages in order to prevent the re-election of Jimmy Carter in 1980, not mention his reign of stupidity as Governor of California. The hostages were released as promised as Reagan was sworn into office. Reagan then secretly sold chemical & biological weapons to Iraq and told CIA buddy Saddam Hussein to step up bombing of Iran while still selling weapons to Iran in a war that claimed an estimated one million victims. The criminal activities in the Mid East stretched around the world to Central America in the spectacle that came to be known as Iran-Contra.
In Afghanistan, Reagan was busy funding Ossama bin Laden and a terrorist army to displace the Russians. Once the mighty 'Muhjadeen' had completed their task they were partially abandoned and became the Taliban and Al Queda. With no real replacement intended for the Russian backed government, the radical muslims quickly took power. Only later did the army without a war become the enemy so desperately needed by the US defense industry.
In Central America, Reagan-Bush ran a massive criminal operation that imported hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US and shipped arms illegally to the terrorist Contras that Reagan affectionately called "Freedom Fighters". Coca paste was brought in from South America by plane to an airstrip near Puntarenas, Costa Rica owned by Reagan/Bush supporter Julio Calleja and processed on the ranch of CIA operative John Hull. From there the high-grade coke was shipped by plane to the Mina, Arkansas Airport under the protection of Bill Clinton and to various Air Force bases..
Under direct US control, Reagan's 'Freedom Fighters' raped, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Nicaragua in an effort to bring down Nicaragua's first democratically elected government. The US had previously ruled Nicaragua through the brutal Somoza family dicatorship, once the dictatorship was overthrown by a popular revolution the US was quick to start an criminal campaign of terror against the government and civilians. The campaign of terror claimed 50,000 lives and crippled the entire nation.
Nicaragua took its case to the World Court. The court found that the U.S. actions constituted "an unlawful use of force .... [that] cannot be justified either by collective self-defence ... nor by any right of the United States to take counter-measures involving the use of force." The court ordered the United States to pay reparations, estimated at between $12 billion and $17 billion, to Nicaragua. Two weeks after the verdict was issued, the U.S. Congress voted to give the Contras $100 million to continue their war of terror against the people of Nicaragua. The US has never recognized the World Court's ruling nor paid any of the compensation owed to Nicaragua.
"The ripple effects of that criminal murderous intervention in my country will go on for 50 years or more." Fr. D'Escoto, Priest and former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister
Reagan's blood-fest wasn't limited to Nicaragua, his puppet military dictators abducted, tortured, murdered and mutilated over 200,000 civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the name of 'democracy' and fighting communism. Nor was the slaughter done only through the US controlled dictators. In operations that are still highly classified, US AC-130 gunships, crewed by US personnel, flew at night over mountainous areas with potential rebels and killed anything that gave off body-heat. The AC-130 is a highly sophisticated computerized killing machine that "incorporate side-firing weapons integrated with sophisticated sensor, navigation and fire control systems to provide surgical firepower or area saturation during extended loiter periods, at night and in adverse weather. The sensor suite consists of a television sensor, infrared sensor and radar." - US Air Force
In 1999 the United Nations determined that the wholesale slaughter of Guatemalans, constituted "genocide." It was a genocide ordered and managed by the White House under Reagan.
For their part in Iran-Contra fourteen high level government officials were charged, yet few of them were convicted and received any real penalty. Bush pardoned six of the criminal conspirators. Some of those involved in the Iran-Contra crimes are now back in power under the current Bush administration.
Despite some environmental concessions to voters while Governor of California, Reagan's real views on the environment became clear during his Presidential campaign when he claimed that trees caused more air pollution than cars. During his criminal reign of terror he systematically dismantled environmental protection laws and rolled back decades of hard-won progress to protect the Earth and the health of its inhabitants.
To help ensure the rape of the land he appointed lunatic James Watt as Secretary of the Interior who claimed "We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming [of Christ] is at hand." It wasn't until Watt was trying to defend his decision to give away more than 1 billion tons of coal from federal lands in Wyoming that he was finally acknowledged for what he was. His defense for the coal giveway was that he was immune to criticism because members of his coal-advisory panel included "a black ... a woman, two Jews, and a cripple." This comment got finally him fired in 1983.
His appointee for the EPA was the environment molester Anne Gorsuch who tried her best to gut the hard-won Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Gorsuch's Superfund Director, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for lying to Congress under oath about the corruption in her division. Gorsuch was fired in 1983 when documents exposed by Congress revealed the corruption and crimes committed by the EPA under her direction.
...America's worst financial disaster since the Great Depression occured under Reagan with the collapse of the Savings & Loan system. Nearly $500 billion was looted from thousands of Savings & Loans by a criminal ring that included the Mafia, CIA and the Bush family. Neil Bush was involved in the collapse of Silverado Savings & Loan but never served any jail time. By the time the Federal government and elite is done milking the scam further, US taxpayers will have paid well over a trillion dollars.
The full extent of Reagan's crimes may never be known because George W. Bush issued an executive order which countermands the 1978 Presidential Records Act and prevents the release of 68,000 pages of Reagan era documents. Given that Reagan lacked the intelligence to carry out most of the more elaborate crimes, the records are likely to shed light on the true role of the Bush crime family.
Let us remember Reagan as he really was...
o Liar
o Thief
o Mass murderer
o War criminal
o Traitor
o Destroyer of freedom
o Destroyer of the environment
While Reagan may have not been entirely aware of what he was doing and how his decisions would impact the world, he was also much more sinister than the media has portrayed him. We can only hope that he gets to meet some of his many victims after joining the other thugs in hell.
That is why I support the GOP. Beacons of light and freedom across the globe. Freedom in Iraq! Freedom for all! Freedom to fail, to win.
Freedom to be lazy and starve.
Back on topic, occupy wall street is mad at the wrong people. They should probably not be throwing blame at successful people. Maybe many of them need anti depression meds? What do you think about that? I bet anti depressant meds might help many of them...
Does Obamacare give people free meds (because I bet many of them have no health insurance right?). If so, why would the evil pharma companies invest in R&D without profit motive?
Hmmm
No investment, no breakthroughs. No new meds. People die. That would suck huh?
Oh, wait...the evil 1% should right? That will be Barack Hussein Obamas platform for everything in his reelection bid since he can't run on accomplishments. Just try to convince the have nots to vote for him again thinking that he will be robin hood or something. This is why OWS is here (soon to be a memory when it gets to cold outside). They believed his jive turkey. Now they are left holding the bag and he vacations in Hawaii.
I give 10% of my income to social and environmental issues- that may not be very much in the big picture but if you join me in that, we'll change the world.
p.s That's on top of taxes and I my wife and I are self employed so we pay more than most in our income bracket. Yes, the 1% should pay more because I guarantee they don't work harder than we do. Guarantee it.
And look, I'm not trying to make points for myself here. Really, if you and I pitch in, help others maybe the 1% will begin to envy how good we feel and they'll want to top that. That would be one-upping us, that would be winning. Good!- let them win that one!
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
The government can pay for it with your tax dollars. The same tax dollars that they currently feed into two wars of occupation and into Israel's coffers every year.
Why is OWS mad at the wrong people? Why? What facts do you have to support your argument? Why? What? Pain meds? Throwing blame at "successful" people? Excuse me. Please explain as I don't understand your rationale. Please. Facts. Interesting how you insist that whatever Obama does, formulates, espouses, articulates, advocates for is somehow suspect for lack of a profit motive. No profit motive, no worth? Big pharma? Well, geeze finding cures for common illnesses used to be, used to be, for the common good. Polio anyone? Bubonic plague? How about CANCER? But now, they're all a PROFIT center. So, how's that hard on doing for you? VIAGRA anyone? So, when do you except to cure the bird flu? Or maybe lead poisoning? Maybe you'll survive the fracking but I doubt it. Good luck to you and the little angle you comfort. But, a little advice, light a match before you turn the tap to fill the bottle for your own sweet baby Jesus.
PS: Little surprised you haven't posted the pic of Perry with the Tommy. Given up so soon?
Still waiting for "facts" from the "corporations" or ha, hem, "people."
Peace.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Can't run on accomplishments? Excuse me? And I'm not a "have not" nor did I drink the "Cool Aide"1. Saved the auto industry but didn't have to stop campaigning to do it. 2. Eliminated don't ask, don't tell. 3. Passed health care reform (warts and all). 4. Withdrawing from Iraq (despite the naysayers, hell democracy is ugly, right? We have other things to do). 5. Looking out for the middle class, yea, you know who they are, you're not stupid, by advocating a tax break just for them. 6. Being squeeky clean, and I mean squeeky clean, like hey, he's still married, he's still Christian, and he's still with his daughters and wife raising a cohesive, functional, "normal", you know, typical American family who was born in the USA (ask Bruce). 7. Hasn't entered into any "dumb" wars, hello Libya, 8. is staying on track with Afghanistan as far as being honest to what we all know is a fucking suck pit of resources and truly, if you have an argument, lets hear it, but it's time to go, 9. Oh MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, OSAMA BIN LADIN IS DEAD, Oh so VERY DEAD, and 23 of 30 known terrorists are also dead, not that I'm proud of that but Obama did it in 3 years and did it as opposed to 8 years of talking about it (be afraid, very afraid) and convincing you of just going shopping. 10. Would have closed GITMO but for the republicans who are afraid of our Constitution by transferring defendants to an Idaho prison and trying them in court, similar to what Clinton did with great success and relying on our greatest process but also realizing that the previous Admin, was too DUMB struck to do things "under the law" and listened to "I have a pulse but no heart Cheney but I'll shoot you anyway." So yea, I'll vote for Obama and not that he's perfect but he's clearly more in my corner. 11. Advocating for a Palestinian homeland, despite the Israeli lobby and the Rupert Murdock swing fest, "I like the way they swing" (thats a Digital Underground reference yo), and the republifucks, I'm sorry I couldn't help myself but this issue really blasts me, because its right (remember South Africa and aphartied? Didn't think so, but I don't hold it against you) and the candidates for the republican nomination, of which, having read your posts, I assume you support, at least one if not more, have all come out further right in their positions than the populace of Israel (Sarah Palin and her Star of David anyone?, anyone?).
So, you got facts? Or ignorance?
Peace.
PS: Did I spell "squeeky wrong? From just wondering.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Successful people? You mean the criminals who have bled America dry and shipped the U.S manufacturing base overseas where labour is cheap and health and safety standards can be bypassed?
Yeah, these successful people you love so much really have the interests of the American people at heart.
Meanwhile:
Land of the free, home of the hungry
Nowhere is the chasm between America's political class and its working poor more vast than in the demand to cut food stamps
Gary Younge
guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 December 2011
On Monday afternoon this week, Rachelle Grimmer went into a Department of Health and Human Services in Texas with her two children, Timothy, aged 10, and Ramie, aged 12, and asked for a new case worker who could assist her application for food stamps. She had first applied in July but had been told she hadn't provided enough information and, by most accounts, had been struggling to get by and get help since she moved from Ohio.
She was taken to a small room, where she pulled a gun, sparking a seven-hour standoff with police. Shortly before midnight, three shots were heard. Rachelle had shot both herself and her kids. Police rushed in to find the mother dead and Ramie and Timothy in critical condition. Earlier that morning, Ramie had posted a Facebook message, saying: "may die 2day". She actually hung on until Wednesday. Timothy's condition remains critical.
The tragic unravelling of this particular episode is hardly typical. But the desperation that underpins it is. For, in this period between Thanksgiving and Christmas (when many Americans are worrying about what overindulging will do to their waistline), a significant number is wracked with an entirely different concern: not having enough to eat.
This is no marginal group, no handful of unfortunates and ne'er-do-wells in a time of crisis. Indeed, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months – the highest level since the month Barack Obama was elected. Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare.
An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now. In Rockdale County, east of Atlanta, 63% of students now have subsidised food – up from 46% four years ago.
Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme. Catholic Charities recently revealed that requests for the working poor were up 80% over the second quarter, and up 59% for the middle class.
Similarly, Operation Homefront, a national organisation that feeds the families of military personnel, has seen demand for help double over the last two years. The Washington Post reported that in Fort Hood, Texas, military families stayed up after midnight to register for a free turkey online for Thanksgiving. The 450 birds were gone within an hour. Even as soldiers fight for empire abroad, their families struggle for food at home.
You would think this would be a national disgrace. The land of the free – and the home of the hungry. The sheer scale and intensity of the problem refutes any suggestions of the undeserving poor.
But want has become a term of political abuse, with Newt Gingrich launching his campaign earlier this year by branding Obama "the food stamp president" and continues to berate him as such. Indeed, behind the partisan posturing over deficit reduction, it is rarely noted that rather than impose taxes on millionaires, Republicans are eager to balance the budget on the stomachs of the hungry.
As editor of the Left Business Observer, Doug Henwood, points out in a recent blog posting, these benefits are not particularly generous. "The average [food stamp] recipient gets $134 a month in assistance, which works out to $4.40 a day. That's 10% less than the US Department of Agriculture's "thrifty" meal budget, and about half its "moderate" budget. For your average well-fed American, living on a daily ration of less than $5 for food prepared at home would be hard to imagine. But without SNAP benefits, 46 million people would be in a state of anguish rather than just scraping by."
Yet, this is one area the Republicans are keen to target for cuts. They want to reduce spending on food stamps by around 20%, and in June, voted to slash a different health and nutrition scheme (WIC) for poor pregnant women and children by 10%, which would have denied assistance to around a quarter of a million people.
This will be the primary terrain on which the forthcoming elections will be fought: the needs and aspirations of the working poor. Not so much the destitute – America is always forgetting about them – but the working poor and those who fear descending among them. But for the Democrats to capitalise on these anxieties, they will have to shift the country's sense of what it takes to be poor and convince them that government has a role in alleviating that condition before desperation kicks in.
You'd think that would be straightforward. But illusions of meritocracy, equal opportunity, class fluidity and social mobility die hard. This a country where, according to a Pew survey in 2008, 91% believe they are either middle-class, upper middle-class or lower middle-class, and a Gallup poll in 2005 showed that while only 2% of Americans described themselves as "rich", 31% thought it very likely or somewhat likely they would "ever be rich". Sooner or later, though, reality tends to intrude.
As thousands of people gathered at New Orleans convention centre following Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown, the hapless head of the disaster relief agency, Fema, was asked why he was not tending to them with shelter and water.
"We're seeing people that we didn't know exist," he said. This has been the official policy of America's political class for some time. "This is a special interest group that not many people talk about because they don't have the wealth to lift a candidate to be president of the United States," explained D Jermaine Husser, the former executive director of South Carolina's Low Country Food Bank.
But there is only so long you can pretend that such a large group of people doesn't exist, and as the poverty rates grow, more and more people who are likely to vote become ensnared in it. Gallup's Basic Access Index, which tracks access to basic needs like food, shelter and healthcare or medicines, is at the lowest it's been since its inception in January 2008. A new measurement of poverty by the Census Bureau, which takes regional cost of living, medical payments and other expenses that do not intrude on the official poverty count, found a third of Americans are either in poverty or desperately close to it.
"These numbers are higher than we anticipated," Trudi Renwick, the bureau's head poverty statistician, told the New York Times recently. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."
Poverty may be relative but hunger is absolute. The third world is alive and struggling in the heart of the first. No one can deny it exists. And those who claim they can't see it, either refuse to see it for what it is or simply do not want to look.
I totally agree with you. My poltical leanings use to be conservative until a few years ago. Until I opened my eyes and mind. My country, the one I served in the military and felt we as individuals could acheive anything we wanted, was being taken over by corporations. The event that ultimatley affected me was when my wife lost her job and a year later I took a 30 percent pay cut. My wife spent alomst three years without work and I have only being able to reciver 5 percent of the pay cut I received. All this while the company I work for has posted huge profits. I have two Masters and a certification in a highly technical field.
I have tried to look for other positions but I have not found anything. I worry about my childrens future. While I understand that corporations must exist, how much is enough? While CEO's make millions, the worker who helps produce the products get penny's. That to me is morally wrong. While I understand that not everyone is going to be rich, it is about providing fair compensation. Wall Street got bailed out and We pay for it, while we get nothing in return. This is NOT the America I grew up in and the world admired at one time. America use to be the place that if you worked hard, eventually you get to have a nice life. Nowdays it seems that it doesn't matter how hard you work because eventually your gonna get shafted. Sorry for rambling on.
But, have some of you forgotten about the absolute SHITSHOW that was the GWB/Republican Regime in America for all those years?
Neither party is for the people.
Word.
"With our thoughts we make the world"
Situations like yours are all too common in today's America. Personally, I find that many of the so-called advocates for big business are simply defending their stake in capital they didn't earn. Fair compensation for the middle class is becoming a rarity while an executive class steal a bigger stake than ever before. The amazing thing is that American values have become so corrupted that the uber rich have actually been able to cry foul while pointing a finger at the unemployed, the homeless and the elderly.
I can only hope that your situation improves. It makes me sick when others accuse somebody such as yourself as being lazy or looking for a handout. In my experience, most people are just looking to work for a fair wage. It's a shame that you can't really expect that in today's economy.
Unfortunately, we can’t expect it. I have been thinking about this the past couple of days… This whole economic malaise started with the collapse of the housing market. In the late 1990’s the average price of a home was in the $185K range. At the height of the real estate boom, seven years later that average rose to $313K. The average household income was $60K. How did a family afford to buy a $300K home on $60K? At this point banks sold them on interest only loans which then were bundled up along with the subprime mortgages and sold. Some big wigs went as far as playing the market and made billions when the collapse occurred. They actually got richer when most of the country went downhill. While people struggle, fat cat millionaires and billionaires and make money on the suffering of others. This is not the America I want to leave for the next generation.
"This is joke. What are they protesting?" said Christian Vega, 32, who sat in his truck carrying a load of recycled paper from Pittsburgh on Monday morning. He said the delay was costing him $600.
"It only hurts me and the other drivers. We have jobs and families to support and feed. Most of them don't," Vega said.
"Wall Street on the waterfront" :?
A spokesman for the port in Portland, Oregon, said the protests had partially shut down the port there. In Oakland, the port said in a statement that operations were continuing "with sporadic disruptions for truckers trying to enter and exit marine terminal gates."
About 80 protesters demonstrated outside the gate of San Diego's port, but caused no disruption because, port spokesman Ron Powell said.
"They were there at a time when we really didn't have a lot of truck traffic coming in and out," he said.
Four people who sat down in the road were arrested he said. San Diego police did not immediately return a telephone call seeking information on the arrests.
Protesters were planning a second occupation of the Oakland port Monday afternoon
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/ ... 0220110330
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/busin ... payer.html
Shortly after the article in the 2nd link was published, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo paid back their bailout money, too. The government turned a $12 billion profit off the Citi bailout alone.
http://www2.journalnow.com/business/201 ... ar-163559/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/1 ... 91962.html
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industrie ... lout_N.htm