Monday, March 26, 2012

$288 Billion and All I Got Was this Lousy C-note!

Actually I'm exaggerating. The bottom 99 percent of wage earners received a slightly more modest $80 each in increased income last year, of the $288 billion in total additional income, according to a new study from French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez: New York Times. But don't worry, while you're out busking for change, the rich will be eating caviar by the bucket loads on their private jets and it is possible some might come flying out of the sky and down to a Hooverville near you. It's only fair really. The top 1% really did create 93% of the additional income, didn't they?

The statistics are as startling as they are telling of the world we live in today. While the top 1% (those making $1.02 million or more a year) saw an increase of 11.4 percent, it was the top .01 percent (the 15,000 households with average income of $23.8 million) that really benefited: with a rise of 21.5 percent (and 37% of the total increase).  Some might say this is nothing new, but think again. In the halcyon 90s expansion, a "mere" 45 percent went to the top 1 percent and even as that figure rose to 65 percent in the second Bush administration (also known as the first corporate sponsored Presidency to me) that still palled in comparison to 93 percent. This is occurring as people continue to lose their houses, those at or near sustenance levels reaches toward 50 percent and the homeless population skyrockets. Remember the golden age (1948-1972) when the system was inverted and the poorest Americans saw the largest increase in income (but where everyone saw positive change)? Well it is long gone and we are now heading toward the second Gilded Age, which for those mired in the ahistorical hyperreality of American media, predated the Great Depression.

I'm sure conservatives are already sharpening their quills and whetting their sibilant lips with quips like "this is class warfare," "it's just the lazy who don't think this is fair," and "stop whining." But how long will it be before people connect the dots that have been aligning in OWS camps, Wisconsin, Ohio and a series of Hollywood films (Margin Call, In Time and The Hunger Games to name three) and demand change to this absurd system? The GOP candidates have been trying to shout each other out telling us we need more tax cuts for the rich, more corporate welfare and less government intervention. While the tone deaf and greedy might continue to listen, and corporations continue to cheer them on, it is possible the ruling class might just have gone too far. Capitalism has never promised equitable distribution, but can many beside The Dude and the other Jeffrey Lebowski really abide this?

P.S. I meant to post this a while ago, but here is a good article from the Guardian on the situation in Greece (that I was going to entitle: "Let them (the Greeks) Eat ... um ... each other?"): The Guardian

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