OBAMA’S WALL STREET-FUNDED WAR on the AMERICAN PEOPLE:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/02/barack-obama-and-wall-streets-war-on.html
The Democrats’
proposal for a trivial increase in the minimum wage comes as social inequality
is hitting unprecedented levels. The net worth of America’s billionaires
reached $1.2 trillion last year, more than double what it was in 2009.
Meanwhile, median household income in the US plummeted by 8.3 percent between
2007 and 2012.
WALL STREET LOOTS!
THE STAGGERING COST OF OBAMA’S CORPORATE WELFARE PROGRAM:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-staggering-cost-of-obamas-crony.html
LIKE HIS CRONY BANKSTERS, Tech CEOs literally got access to the Oval Office while the bill was being shaped, the New York Times reported in those heady early days of Hope and Change, while the CEOs’ lobbyists met down the hall with top economics aide Jason Furman.
OBAMA’S
CORRUPT DEMOCRAT PARTY PARTNERS WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TO WAR ON THE
AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, AND THEN SEND US THE TAX BILLS FOR WALL STREET and
MEXICO’S LOOTING!
The social chasm in America’s cities
22
February 2014
On
Thursday, the Brookings Institution published a report documenting the sharp
growth of social inequality in major metropolitan areas throughout the United
States.
The
report’s findings are of vast significance in three respects. First, the report
documents the immense scale of social inequality and the rapidity with which it
is growing, even in cities that are supposedly economic success stories.
Secondly,
it shows the crushing growth of poverty and economic distress in these cities.
Thirdly,
it implies that these conditions are not the result of a passing economic
slowdown, but are rather embedded in the economic system and have become
permanent facts of life.
According
to the study, across the US, a household in the 95th percentile of income
earners—that is, at the bottom of the top five percent—in 2012 had an income
nine times greater than the a household in the 20th percentile—that is, at the
top of the bottom fifth of income earners. But major cities had a much higher
level of income inequality. The ratio was 18.8 for Atlanta, 16.6 for San
Francisco, 15.7 for Miami, 15.3 for Boston and 13.3 for Washington DC.
The
report documents the massive decline in working class incomes that took place
between 2007 and 2012. For example, in Indianapolis—hit by a wave of industrial
plant closures—the income of a typical household in the 20th percentile fell by
$5,800, or more than a quarter, to $16,883. In Jacksonville, Florida the income
of a household in this bracket fell by $7,800, or 30 percent, to $17,411.
“A city
where the rich are very rich, and the poor very poor, is likely to face many
difficulties,” the report states. “It may struggle to maintain mixed-income
school environments that produce better outcomes for low-income kids. It may
have too narrow a tax base from which to sustainably raise the revenues
necessary for essential city services. And it may fail to produce housing and
neighborhoods accessible to middle-class workers and families...”
This
describes the great majority of American cities and amounts to an admission
that the present social order holds no prospect for decent housing, health care
or education for the great majority of city dwellers.
The
report shows that cities that had the highest rates of economic
growth—including San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—also
had the biggest increases in income inequality. This explodes the pro-corporate
propaganda from the media and Democrats and Republicans alike that the answer
to inequality and poverty is to stimulate economic growth by creating a more
“business-friendly” economic and political environment.
“There’s
something of a relationship between economic success and inequality,” Alan
Berube, the study’s author, told the Associated Press.
San
Francisco, which has had an influx of high-income earners as a result of the
technology boom in the Bay Area, is a case in point. According to a separate
survey by the Brookings Institution, San Francisco is one of the
best-performing city economies in the US, having recently added more jobs and
increased its economic output faster than the national average.
Yet in
San Francisco, the income of a typical household in the 20th percentile fell by
$4,309, or 17 percent, between 2007 and 2012, dropping to $21,313, while the
income of a typical household in the 95th percentile increased by $27,815 to
$353,576. These figures refute the official narrative, parroted by the entire
political establishment, that inequality can be solved by expanding business
activity through various incentives. "Job creation" has been the
nominal purpose of massive tax breaks and handouts to corporations, which in
many cases pay either no taxes or negative taxes.
In the
name of “growth” and “job creation,” vast resources are being taken from social
programs and services that benefit working and poor people as well as the wages
and pensions of public workers to provide tax abatements and other windfalls
for corporations. There is really no mystery as to why such economic “growth”
goes hand in hand with increasing economic inequality.
In the
state of New York, whose major metropolis is the sixth most unequal city in the
country, Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is running a national advertising
campaign offering tax-exempt status for ten years to any business that starts
up in the state.
Increasingly,
the enrichment of the ruling class takes the form of outright theft, as
revealed by the Detroit Workers Inquiry,
held February 15, which exposed the criminal conspiracy to drive Detroit into
bankruptcy in order to gut workers’ pensions and seize the city’s assets,
including the artwork at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The
Brookings Institution survey tells only part of the story, as its figures do
not include the impact of the massive run-up on the stock market last year,
during which the technology-heavy NASDAQ registered an increase of 38.3
percent. As a result of this stock boom, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook saw his
net worth more than double, to $23 billion, while his fellow billionaire Larry
Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, saw his wealth increase by $7 billion, to $43
billion. Last year, Ellison’s compensation totaled $78.4 million.
Both
Zuckerberg and Ellison live in the San Francisco Bay area, less than an hour’s
drive from Oakland, California, where a typical household in the bottom 20th
percentile makes $17,646 per year. Some cities registered enormous levels of
income inequality largely because their poor are so destitute. In Miami, for
example, a typical member of the 20th income percentile earned only $10,438 per
year, down from $12,278 in 2007.
These
figures describe a society in which immense wealth is concentrated in the hands
of a tiny elite, while poverty, deprivation and degradation are growing for the
vast majority of the people, with no prospect of a change in course.
Every
domestic policy undertaken by the Obama administration, from the bank bailout
to the promotion of low wages in the 2009 auto restructuring, to tax cuts for
American manufacturers and support for the bankruptcy of Detroit to destroy
municipal workers’ pensions and health benefits, has been justified in the name
of economic growth and creating jobs.
There is
no constituency in the US political establishment for any redistribution of
wealth from the top to the bottom; rather, both parties are committed to the
further redistribution of wealth from the great majority of the population to
the super-rich.
All talk
of reforming this political and economic system is the product of either
misinformed naiveté or deliberate deception. The fact is that capitalism is
incompatible with the satisfaction of the most basic social needs of modern
society.
Nothing
can be done to address the staggering growth of poverty, inequality and social
misery within the framework of the profit system. What is required is a mass
movement of the working class armed with a socialist program to reorganize
society to meet social needs, not fuel corporate profits.
Andre
Damon
more at this link – post on your Facebook and email broadcast
The goal of the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments, is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.
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