Call it vote-buying if you want, but when a government effectively buys the votes of 80 or 90 percent of the population, I call that government of the people, by the people, for the people.
How can things be so much worse now when the economy is essentially in the same place it was five or six years ago? The answer in two words is: Rising inequality.
Friends of America’s financially favored have argued loud and long that higher taxes on the nation’s rich punish small business and generate no new revenue. What does the research tell us? Academic analysts have just brought a cart of “facts on the ground” to Capitol Hill.
Median household income fell more than 6% in the last decade, yet national income per household grew 6%. Where did all that money go?
Would it be such a terrible thing if fast food workers got a twenty percent raise this year while executives took a pay cut? It’s not our economy that needs rethinking; it’s our ethics.
The US economy has been growing since July 2009. So why aren’t things improving in the US realonomy?
Retail sales are up this holiday season in the top 1 percent plutonomy, but down in the realonomy where the other 99 percent live. And it’s not just the poor who are struggling. Even high-income, college-educated professionals have seen no income growth in over a dozen years.
Warren Buffett last week made an insightful case for higher taxes on America’s rich. The reaction to that case, from our wealthy’s most ardent defenders, offers insights, too — on our plutocracy.
House budget-cutters are taking their inspiration from the greatest giveaway — to the rich — artist the nation’s capital has ever known.
If the wealth of the wealthy really bothered Americans, flacks for grand fortune enjoy declaring, our political system would be shaking something fierce. They don’t see a whole lot of shaking. Should we?