Uligheden i USA

Uligheden opretholdes/forstærkes ved hjælp af kriser ofte skabt ved bankspekulation i byggebobler. Men det rækker åbenbart ikke nu i 2011 - så nu går en flok republikanske guvernører til angreb på fagbevægelsen. De fjerner typisk de offentligt ansattes strejkeret ! (Ohio, Wisconsin ...)

090411, Daily Mail, JPMorgan CEO sees compensation package jump 1,500 per cent to $20.8m. [article-1375023]. De rige stjæler med arme og ben. Efter at Morgan har hentet socialhjælp fra den amerikanske stat, henter chefen 20.8 millioner USD, som ville have været en urimelig løn, selvom han havde passet sit job, så virksomheden ikke havde tabt så meget, at den søgte socialhjælp. De andre store bankers chefer var en anelse mindre grådige: Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit's ... salary rose to $1.75 million in 2010, while Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein, ... saw compensation jump to $14.1 million in 2010 from $1million the year before. ... Wells Fargo & Co's John Stumpf saw compensation fall to $19 million from $21.3 million however. Bank of America's Brian Moynihan saw compensation fall 70 per cent to about $1.9 million, although in early 2011 he got a $9.1 million bonus.

hentet 090411, In These Times, Michelle Chen, States' Shameful Trade-Off: Putting Prisons over Public Schools. Across the country, conservatives are fixated on a curious formula for deficit reduction: wholesale disinvestment in schools (coupled with erosion of union rights and working conditions for teachers), plus a race to pump tax breaks for the rich and stifle health care for the poor. And in many areas, one sacred cow continues to fatten while students starve: our bloated prison system. ... The so-called "school to prison pipeline" - which pushes youth, particularly low-income youth of color, into the criminal justice system — begins in heavily police-patrolled schools, sucks "delinquents" into a racially skewed juvenile justice system, and ends up cycling young adults through courts and prisons, further uprooting them from their communities. ... Understanding the school-to-prison trajectory isn't rocket science. When kids grow up in impoverished neighborhoods, attend schools that can barely afford books much less high-quality teachers, even risk getting assaulted as they walk to school, society in many ways assumes and preordains their criminality before they ever break a law. The self-fulfilling prophecy is borne out by data showing the overlap of high incarceration and poor education. .... During the last two decades, as the criminal justice system came to assume a larger proportion of state discretionary dollars, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education.

040111 (?), Chrystia Freeland, "The Atlantic", - The Rise of the New Global Elite. ... There, on the set of Meet the Press, the host, David Gregory, was interviewing a guest who made a forceful case that the U.S. economy had become "very distorted." In the wake of the recession, this guest explained, high-income individuals, large banks, and major corporations had experienced a "significant recovery"; the rest of the economy, by contrast - including small businesses and "a very significant amount of the labor force" - was stuck and still struggling. ... [gæsten var] ... the former five-term Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: iconic libertarian, preeminent defender of the free market, and (at least until recently) the nation's foremost devotee of Ayn Rand. ... we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble. ... Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. ... The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in information technology and the liberalizafion of global trade. ... The hedge-fund manager John Paulson, for instance, single-handedly profited almost as much from the crisis of200S as Goldman Sachs did. ... According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population. ... Saez, ... has found that in 1916, the richest 1 percent of Americans received only one-fifth of their income from paid work; in 2004, that figure had risen threefold, to 60 percent. ... The real community life of the 21st-century plutocracy occurs on the international conference circuit. The best-known of these events is the Worid Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzeriand, invitation to which marks an aspiring plutocrat's arrival on the international scene. The Bilderberg Group, which meets annually at locations in Europe and North America, is more exclusive still - and more secretive - though it is more focused on geopolitics and less on global business and philanthropy. The Boao Forum for Asia, convened on China's Hainan Island each spring, offers evidence of that nation's growing economic importance and its understanding of the plutocratic culture. Bill Clinton is pushing hard to win his Clinton Global Initiative a regular place on the circuit. The TED conferences (the acronym stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design") are an important stop for the digerati; Paul Allen's Sun Valley gathering, for the media moguls; and the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival co-sponsored by this magazine), for the more policy-minded. ... The Ukrainian entrepreneur Victor Pinchuk, .... hosts a regular lunch on the fringes of Davos and has launched his own annual "ideas forum," a gathering devoted to geopolitics that is held, with suitable modesty, in the same Crimean villa where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill attended the Yalta Conference. Last September's meeting, where I served as a moderator, included Bill Clinton, International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin. ... Speaking at the same conference, Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, also lamented this global reality: "I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business... American businesses will adapt." ... For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard - especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers - can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others. ... When I asked one of Wall Street's most successful investment-bank CEOs if he felt guilty for his firm's role in creating the financial crisis, he told me with evident sincerity that he did not. ... Critiques of the super-elite are becoming more common even at gatherings of the super-elite. At a Wall Street Journal conference in December 2009, Paul Volcker, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve, argued that Wall Street's claims of wealth creation were without any real basis. I wish someone," he said, "would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth - one shred of evidence.' ... But if the plutocrats' opposition to increases in their taxes and tighter regulation of their economic activities is understandable, it is also a mistake. The real threat facing the super-elite, at home and abroad, isn't modestly higher taxes. but rather the possibility that inchoate public rage could cohere into a more concrete populist agenda - that, for instance, middle-class Americans could conclude that the world economy isn't working for them and decide that protectionism or truly punitive taxation is preferable to incremental measures such as the eventual repeal of the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts.

An Overview of Social Inequality; Explorations in social inequality 

SocioSite har information og ressourcer for sociologer og lign., akademisk, global synsvinkel. Baseret i Holland.

Howard Zinn: Just and Unjust War "Fortunes were made during the war, and wealth was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. By 1941 three-fourths of the value of military contracts were handled by fifty-six large corporations."

Dem der især har haft gavn af Bush's skattenedsættelser i 2001, 2002 og 2003 er dem med indtægter over 337000 USD/år. Mens dem med indtægter mellem 28000 og 337000 USD/år kommer til at betale en større andel af skatterne - selvom de også får en skattenedsættelse (Washington Post, 040603).

Skatten er fjernet på dividender, kapitalgevinster og arv (Washington Post, 040603).

Beth Hawkins interview med David Cay Johnston: "Everything you know about taxes is wrong", CityPages, 260105.

http://www.lcurve.org giver en grafisk beskrivelse af indkomstfordelingen.

En anden kilde til ulighedsstatistik er Inequality.org

Some Statistics on Poverty in America

Yoshi Tsurumi, lærer for Bush på Harvard Business School: "Hail to the robber baron ?", 070405: i 1980 fik virksomhedsledere i Fortune 500 virksomheder 70 gange mere end deres gennemsnitlige ansatte, under Bush er det nået op på 600 - 1000 gange !

De rigeste 20 % havde i 1973 44 % af den amerikanske indkomst i 2002 var det steget til 50 %. De fattigste 20 % havde 4.2 %, som faldt til 3.5 %, Houston Chronicle, 160804.

Et stigende antal personer arresteres på grund af gæld. Hospitalerne er blandt USAs hårdeste når det gælder inddrivelse af ubetalte regninger.

Bill Moyers : The fight of our lives, AlterNet, 180604, gennemgår mange sider af uligheden i USA

En anmeldelse af: James Lardner and David A. Smith, Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences (New Press) 320 pages, $25.95 , anmeldelsen af Cecil Johnson, 010406. Mellem 1973 og 2003 havde 90 % af den amerikanske befolkning et indkomsttab på 7 %. Indkomsten for de 1 % der tjente mest, steg med 148 %. I 1983 havde 1 % af amerikanerne 1500 gange den formue som de 40 % med ringest formue. I 2001 var det 4400 gange.

Tallene i tabel 1 stammer fra US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tabel 2 og 3 er US Census Data her citeret fra Erik P Sorensen: "Analysis: Bush economy continues to harm African - Americans disproportinately"

Howard Zinn skriver i The Progressive, januar 2004 et forslag til nomineringstale for den demokratiske præsidentkandidat i 2004. Den handler også om ulighedsproblemerne.

Frederick Sweet: "Wounded US soldiers maltreated", Intervention Magazine, 180204, giver et andet billede af uligheden. Her handler det ikke kun om race.

Om de vilkår man byder hjemvendte veteraner fra Iraq-krigen skriver Dan Barry på Duckdaotsu, 240404.

23 af de hjemløse i USA er veteraner, som ellers kun udgør 9 % af den amerikanske befolkning. Af de hjemløse mænd udgør veteranerne 33 %, Houston Chronicle, 020704.

Rupert Cornwell: A black and white case of US injustice, The Independent, 270404.

Nu koster det 26000 USD/år på New York eliteskoler - og det helt fra børnehaveklassen, Bill Moyers tale til Inequality Matters Forum, 030604.

"...intet synes at genere den politiske klasse i Washington idag. Ikke den kendsgerning, at flere børn vokser op i fattigdom i Amerika end i noget andet industrialiseret land; ikke den kendsgerning at millioner af arbejdere reelt tjener mindre i realdollars idag end de gjorde for 20 år siden; ikke den kendsgerning at folk arbejder flere og flere timer og alligevel ikke kan klare sig; ikke den kendsgerning, at mens vi har den mest avancerede sygehusservice i verden, så er 44 millioner amerikanere - 8 ud af 10 i arbejdende familier - ikke forsikrede og kan ikke få den basale medicinske service de har behov for.", Bill Moyers tale til Inequality Matters Forum, 030604.

Bill Moyers var på TVkanalen PBS og producerede en række dokumentarfilm om "at overleve de gode tider". han siger: "Vi besluttede tidligt at fortælle historien om 2 familier i Milwaukee - en sort og en hvid - hvor forsørgeren blev fyret i den første fyringsrunde i 1991. Vi berttede om, hvordan de forsøgte at klare de pinagtige forandringer i deres liv, og vi blev hos dem i de næste 10 år, mens de prøvede at finde en plads i den nye globale økonomi. De er den slags amerikanere, som min mor ville kalde: jordens salt. De elsker deres børn, de er interesserede i samfundet, går i kirke hver søndag og arbejder hårdt alle ugens dage, begge mødre har været nødt til at tage fuldtidsjob.

I den tid vi var med dem, blev begge fædrene alvorligt syge. Den ene måtte ligge på hospitalet i 2 måneder, hvad der satte familien i en gæld på 30000 USD, fordi de ikke var tilstrækkeligt forsikrede. Vi var der med kameraet da banken overtog det beskedne hus tilhørende den ene familie fordi de ikke kunne betale renter og afdrag efter at faderen havde tabt sit velbetalte industrijob. Som millioner af amerikanere, holdt familierne Stanley og Neumann sig til reglerne men blev alligevel snydt. Ved artiets slutning løb de hurtigere med sakkede agterud og afstanden mellem dem og det rige Amerika forøgedes" Mens familierne i 1992 interesserede sig for politik så var situationen i 2001 "At de ikke mener at deres problemer nogensinde vil blive taget i betragtning af de politiske, økonomiske eller medie eliter, som udgør vore dominerende klasser... de ved at systemet er imod dem." Bill Moyers tale til Inequality Matters Forum, 030604.

I 1960 var forskellen mellem rigdommen hos den nederste femtedel og den øverste femtedel 30 gange, nu er den 75 gange, Bill Moyers tale til Inequality Matters Forum, 030604.

Mens TV apparater o.l. er blevet billigere er stigningen i priserne på uddannelse, sundhed, offentlig transport, medicin, bolig og biler steget mere end de typiske familieindkomster, Bill Moyers tale til Inequality Matters Forum, 030604. Og det hele skyldes politiske beslutninger båret frem af intellektuel propaganda fra konservative tænketanke, Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute.

010605, World Socialist Website. I henhold til OECDs opgørelse har USA næsten 22 % fattige børn (Danmark & Finland, ligger bedst med under 3 %).

050605. Rutland Herald. de 145000 skatteydere, der tjener mest (0.1 %) tjente i gennemsnit 3 millioner USD/år i 2002, det er 2½ gange så meget (justeret for inflation) som de tjente i 1980. Deres andel af den samlede indkomst er godt 7 %. De nederste 90 % af skatteyderne har haft faldende indkomst siden 1980. Af Bush' skattelettelser går 15 % til de 145000 rigeste skatteydere.

Fra 1950 til 1970 var det sådan at hvergang de laveste indkomster tjente 1 ekstra dollars, så fik de højeste 0.01 % 162 dollars ekstra. Men fra 1990 til 2002 er det gået sådan, at for hver ekstra dollars til de 90 % i bunden fik skatteyderne i toppen 18000 dollars ekstra.

En del af forklaringen er, at kapitalindkomster er fri for "the alternative minimum tax".

220905, The Black Commentator, Issue 151, Bruce Dixon, Rescue Came from the Grass Roots: The People, Not FEMA, Saved Themselves. "The first folks to send a couple of vans of food and supplies was TOPS, The Ordinary Peoples Society, a prison ministry in Dothan AL founded and staffed by ex-offenders...That's why we tell everybody now that it was felons who were the first to feed, the first to respond to need, the first to get up and do something. They didn't wait for permission or for a contract. That's real leadership."

241005, AlterNet. Indkomstuligheden er den højeste nogensinde. i 2004 går 50 % af indkomsten til de 20 % i toppen. En gennemsnits virksomhedsdirektør tjener 431 gange så meget som hans gennemsnitsarbejder. Uligheden voksede lige så hurtigt under Clinton, som under Bush, partierne har samme holdning i det spørgsmål.

261005, ICH. David Martin: "What Reagan started, Bush is finishing". I de 25 år siden Reagan begyndte far den lavestlønnede femtedel af USAs befolkning haft en indkomststigning på 5 %. Den midterste femtedel 15 %. Den højeste femtedel 48 %. Den øverste 1 % har haft en indkomstfremgang på 111 % !!!

100406, New York Times, Steven Clemons & Michael Lind. Hvis man øger immigrationen af veluddannede og reducerer den for uuddannede vil det øge lønnen for ejendomsfunktionærer o.l. mens læger og arkitekter vile tjene lidt mindre. Det ville skabe en større middelklasse.

120705, UNDP, Human Development Report. Rapporten viser, at dele af USA er ligeså fattige som den tredje verden. Og på nogen områder ligger USA langt fra toppen. Fra rapporten, Figure 2.1, Source: Regional data, Dihkanov 2005; country data, indicator table 15. 

Vi ser at USA er på niveau med de tidligere kommunistiske lande.

Yderligere et citat:

...

291005, The Advocate, Baton Rouge: FNs menneskerettighedsekspert Arjun K Sengupta, som var i New Orleans fredag kalder USAs indsats efter Katrinastormen "chokerende". "Noget  gik galt og det ligner en grov krænkelse af de menneskelige rettigheder", siger han. Hvis ikke USA var verdens rigeste land ville jeg anmode om international hjælp. New Orleans er stadig urørt 2 måneder efter, nødhjælpsarbejdet er ikke, hvad man kunne forvente af verdens rigeste land. Hvorfor tager det så lang tid ?

291005, Science Daily. Det amerikanske landbrugsministerium har opgjort antallet af mennesker, der sulter i USA i 2004 til 38.2 millioner. Sidste opgørelse var i 1999, der var tallet 31 millioner. Lederen af Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, Dr. J. Larry Brown, siger: "This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control."

061105, St Petersburg Times. Kongressen har forstået, at den skal gøre noget mod underskuddet på statsbudgettet. Så man skærer 36 milliarder USD på udgifter til "the working poor", det drejer sig om food stamps, tilskud til børnepasning, og medicintilskud. Samtidig giver man skattelettelser på 70 milliarder USD til de rige.

190206, The Observer. 37 millioner fattige skjult i overflodslandet. Det er næsten 23 % af den amerikanske befolkning. Selv familier med 2 arbejdende forældre rammes. Mininumslønnen 5.15 USD/h er i realværdi den laveste siden 1956. Artiklen har beskrivelser. Der er kommet godt 5 millioner nye fattige under Bush.

270206, New York Times. Paul Krugman analyserer uligheden. Det er en meget lille minoritet, der er virkelig rige og som bliver rigere, fra 1972 til 2001 fik den øverste 10.000-del (med indkomster nu på 6 millioner USD/år) femdoblet sin indkomst.

180406, The Nation. Katrina Vanden Heuvel En amerikansk arbejder på minimumsløn tjener 10500 USD/år. For første gang slår det ikke til til en etværelses overalt i USA. Direktører tjener: Wal-Mart 3500 USD/h; Halliburton 8300 USD/h; ExxonMobil 13700 USD/h.

Det er politiske afgørelser, der bestemmer denne fordeling. Fra 1999 til 2004 faldt medianen for husstandsindkomst 3.8 % (1700 USD), mens produktiviteten steg 3 % ! Udgifterne til bolig, sundhed, uddannelse og børnepasning steg 46 % (dog regnet 1991 til 2002).

260606, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Wall Street Journal, Ellen E. Schultz, As workers' pensions wither, those for executives grow. "To help explain its deep slump, General Motors Corp. often cites "legacy costs," including pensions for its giant U.S. work force...But there's a twist to the auto maker's pension situation: The pension plans for its rank-and-file U.S. workers are overstuffed with cash, containing about $9 billion more than is needed to meet their obligations for years to come. Another of GM's pension programs, however, saddles the company with a liability of $ 1.4 billion. These pensions are for its executives... Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies. Besides GM, they include General Electric Co. (a $3.5 billion liability); AT&T Inc. ($1.8 billion); Exxon Mobil Corp. and International Business Machines Corp- (about $1.3 billion each); and Bank of America Corp. and Pfizer Inc. (about $1.1 billion apiece). ...These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial filings...Some employers have added pensions for executives at about the same time as they limited those for others...[E]xecutive pensions often are protected from management interference by employment or other contracts...Yet the pension plans for regular Lucent employees and retirees, who number about 230,000, are overfunded. In fact, they're so full of cash that the investment return on their assets not only erases the pension plan's expense - it adds to earnings. In the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, these pension-plan assets pumped $973 million into Lucent's bottom line, accounting for about 82 perceit of the company's profit." Her er kun udvalgt få eksempler blandt artiklens mange tal.

130706, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson mayor to set curfew on homeless. Nu må de hjemløse ikke færdes i Jackson efter kl 22 !!!

140706, New York times, PAUL KRUGMAN "Left Behind Economics". I 2004 - det seneste år analysen kan laves for - steg USAs økonomi med 4.2 %. Men en typisk families købekraft faldt og fattigdommen steg. Økonomerne Thomas Piketty og Emmanuel Saez har studeret forholdet. Holder man aktiegevinster udenfor, steg realindkomsten for den rigeste 1 % med 12.5 %, for resten var stigningen 1.5 %.

310806, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005 [PDF] http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf 

221206, Rolling Stone, Paul Krugman, The Great Wealth Transfer. Selvom den amerikanske økonomi som helhed kører godt, så mærker amerikanerne det ikke. De fleste amerikanere har måske lidt bedre end sidste år, men værre end i 2000. Gabet mellem chefer og arbejdere er nu 10-gange større end for en generation siden. Gabet mellem rig og fattig begyndte at vokse før Reagan og har vokset lige siden, og helt galt er det gået under Bush 2. Mellem 1933 og 1945 skete der en indkomstudjævning i USA. Den er nu annulleret.

Der er ikke tale om en lille gruppe fattige, som ikke følger med - men om en lille gruppe udatteligt rige, der stadig beriger sig. Og det handler ikke om uddannelse. Udviklingen er understøttet af et ideologisk skift, det er nu ok at være gridsk ! [Sml. de sjovere ministre i Reinfeldts regering]. En delforklaring ligger også i den bevidste bekæmpelse af fagforeningerne, mere eller mindre hårdhændet. En anden delårsag er, at minimumslønnen ikke er blevet prisreguleret - den er nu på realprisniveau med 1950erne. Og så benytter cheferne lejligheden, mens offentligheden er optaget af krigen, til at forhøje deres egne lønninger. Og så er der Bush' skattelettelser, som gavner de allerrigeste.

Krugman understreger, at ulige samfund også tenderer til at være mere korrupte. Her peger han på, at cheferne deler rovet med Kongressen.

121206, World Socialist Web Site, US income figures show staggering rise in social inequality. Fra 2000 til 2004 faldt medianindkomsten (den indkomst, der deler befolkningen i en halvdel, der tjener mindre og en halvdel der tjener mere) med 3 %. De fattigste 60 millioner amerikanere har mindre en 7 USD/dag.

110107, Information Clearing House, nyhedsbrev: "Study: 744,000 homeless people in U.S A majority of the homeless were single adults, but about 41 percent were in families, the report said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16564208/ "

240107, ABC News: Senate Republicans block minimum wage hike. Det er lidt spøjst, at der åbenbart skal et kvalificeret flertal på 60 til det - mens Bush alene kan afgøre at smide atombomber over Iran. Demokrati er mange ting !!

240407, ICH, Joel S. Hirschhorn, Economic Armigeddon Is Coming. " Unjustified and mounting economic inequality is planting the seeds for global economic conflict....Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society....But truly obscene economic rewards angers people....Companies big enough to rate S&P 500 status hiked their median CEO pay by 23.78 percent in 2006 to $14.8 million. In comparison, U.S. worker weekly wages rose just 3.5 percent in 2006."

Le Monde diplomatique - septembre 2007, Serge Halimi, "Diversité" contre égalité ? Det amerikanske justitsministerium oplyser, at 49 % af de 16500 mordofre i 2005 var sorte !! (Sorte udgør 13 % af befolkningen). 32 % af de fattige er sorte. I 2003 ansatte Ivy League universiteterne 433 professorer, heraf var 14 sorte !

24 % de amerikanske familier, der har en indkomst under 25000 USD/år har ingen sygeforsikring !!!

90 % af Harvard-studenterne kommer fra familier med en indkomst over medianen.

Til gengæld virker propagandaapparatet perfekt.  I 1996 erklærede 64 % af amerikanerne, at de troede, at de engang ville blive rige (tjene over 100.000 USD/år). 10 år senere er medianindkomsten under halvdelen af dette beløb og kun 7 % tjener over 100.000. Halimi citerer Michaels for at troen på at man bliver rig er "en dybtsiddende illusion". Han mener, at den "positive diskrimination", som man møder ved univesiteterne bidrager til at opretholde denne illusion.

  Klassekampen

Uligheden er ikke opstået tilfældigt. Den er et resultat af bevidst politik.

Cenk Uygur: Skriver 150910 på ICH: How the Rich Conduct Class Warfare: It's being conducted by the rich on the middle class in this country.  ... Some of the wealthiest people in this country have been systematically trying to reduce their own taxes and make sure their companies are not regulated by the government. This makes sense. They vant to make more money. But in the process, they have bought our politicians, corrupted our system and ultimately given us enormous income inequality. This income inequality doesn't seem just, but that isn't my main issue. The real problem is the results of that inequality. ... It kills our economy and ultimately it kills the American Dream. ... Do you know that between 1979 to 2007 income for the bottom fifth of the country went up by just 16%, but for the top 1% income it went up a staggering 281%? ...Meanwhile, you know what happened to the poverty rate - it went skyrocketing up. Now, one in seven Americans lives in poverty. That's 45 million people. Last year, we had the highest increase in poverty since the government started keeping these numbers in 1959.

Upton Sinclair's principle: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

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