Tuesday, August 14, 2018

WALL STREET UP AMERICA'S ASSES - GROWING SUPPORT FOR SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Growing support for socialism in the United States

14 August 2018
A Gallup poll released yesterday found that, for the first time since it began tracking the figure, fewer than half of young people aged 18-29 have a positive view of capitalism, while more than half have a positive view of socialism. The poll also found that, again for the first time, significantly more Democratic-leaning voters have a positive view of socialism than of capitalism.
The percentage of young people viewing capitalism positively is continuing its precipitous fall, from 68 percent in 2010, to 57 percent in 2016, to 45 percent in 2018 (a stunning 23-percentage point drop in just eight years). The percentage of young people viewing socialism favorably has remained relatively flat during this period and stood at 51 percent in 2018—producing a 6-percentage point gap in favor of socialism.
A similar trend is seen among Democrats and “Democratic-leaning independents” of all age groups, with a positive view of capitalism falling from 53 percent in 2010 to 47 percent in 2018, while those with a positive view of socialism increased from 53 percent to 57 percent—a 10-percentage point gap in favor of socialism.
According to Gallup, overall most Americans still have a positive view of capitalism, but this year’s 56 percent positive rating is, by four points, the lowest recorded. Gallup included a list of economic terms, asking respondents to say whether they had a positive or negative image of each. Of these terms, only “socialism” increased its positive image, while “entrepreneurs,” “free enterprise,” “capitalism,” “small business,” “federal government,” and “big business” all fell.
The period covered by Gallup’s figures (2010-2018) is significant. It largely corresponds to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the tenure of the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which came to power promising “hope” and “change,” while presiding over the largest transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich in US history. Obama left office proclaiming that the economy had “never been better,” but workers and young people clearly feel otherwise.
The growth in support for socialism, and the decline in support for capitalism, confirms the evaluation made in a resolution adopted at the Socialist Equality Party Congress last month. “There is a growing sense among substantial sections of the working class and youth,” the resolution states, “that capitalism is inherently unjust and that fundamental changes in the economic system are needed. While this broad-based sentiment has not yet developed into a mass political movement directed toward the ending of the capitalist system, interest in and support for socialism is growing rapidly.”
The growing interest in socialism terrifies the ruling class. It coincides with initial expressions of the resurgence of class struggle, from the teachers strikes that spread throughout the country earlier this year and threaten to emerge again as the schools reopen over the next several weeks, to the mass opposition among UPS workers to the concessions contracts supported by the Teamsters union, to growing anger among auto workers, Amazon workers and other sections of the working class.
In response, the ruling class—in the United States and internationally—is moving to impose ever more directly authoritarian forms of rule, whether through the promotion of far-right nationalist movements (including forces cultivated by the Trump administration) or in the moves by the traditional parties of the ruling class to abrogate basic democratic rights. In the United States, it is the Democratic Party that has taken the lead in demanding, in the guise of combating “fake news” and “Russian meddling,” greater censorship of the Internet, which is ever more explicitly directed at left-wing, socialist and anti-war publications.
The ruling class has another means of combating and diverting mass opposition to capitalism: the promotion of various pseudo-socialist political movements and individuals that use the term “socialism” to confuse and disorient. In the United States, this role was played in the 2016 election by Bernie Sanders, who spoke of a “political revolution” against the “billionaire class,” only to channel the significant (and, for Sanders, unexpected and unwelcome) support he received behind Hillary Clinton, the candidate of Wall Street and the military and intelligence apparatus.
The same role is now being played by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). From its origins, the DSA has been nothing more than a faction of the Democratic Party. Michael Harrington, who founded the DSA in 1982, defined its politics as the “left wing of the possible,” by which was meant the “left wing” of what was acceptable to capitalist, bourgeois politics. The DSA did not then and does not now represent a break with the Democrats, but rather has functioned as an auxiliary organization of the Democratic Party.
Over the past year, DSA membership has grown rapidly, from 7,000 in 2016, to 47,000. The organization will likely have two members in the next congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated incumbent Congressman Joseph Crowley in a Democratic Party New York congressional primary in June, and Rashida Tlaib, who won last week’s Democratic Party primary in Detroit’s 13th Congressional District (home of longtime Democratic Party/DSA member John Conyers, who resigned last year).
The growth of the DSA reflects two contradictory processes. On the one hand, the leftward movement of a layer of young people looking for a socialist opposition, and, on the other hand, the active promotion of the organization by a faction of the Democratic Party and the corporate media. The DSA-affiliated Jacobin magazine has been exempted from Google’s censorship algorithms targeting the left, while the New York Times has opened its pages to its editor, Bhaskar Sunkara.
The DSA is part of a broader group of organizations, including the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Alternative, that speak for privileged sections of the upper-middle class, not the working class. Their proposals for limited social reforms are connected to support for the Democratic Party and the defense of the organizational domination of the corporatist trade unions over the working class.
The Gallup poll is only the latest indication that there is a massive reservoir of support in the working class and youth for socialism. As workers enter into conflict with the policies of the corporate and financial elite, this reservoir will grow. There is, however, only a limited understanding of what socialism really means and how it can be obtained. As such, it is susceptible to being misguided and suppressed, as the capitalist ruling elites advance their plans for war and dictatorship.
Genuine socialism must be advanced clearly and with great determination. The Socialist Equality Party insists that genuine socialism is based on the principle of social equality, that the vast sums of wealth monopolized by the rich through the exploitation and immiseration of the working class must be seized and directed toward the satisfaction of social needs.
Genuine socialism is international, based on the principle that workers in every country have the same social interests and the same class enemies. A socialist movement must take up the defense of immigrant workers on the basis of the fight for open borders—that workers everywhere should be able to live and work where they choose.
Genuine socialism is inseparable from the fight against imperialist war, the product of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist nation-state system, which threaten to engulf the globe in a nuclear catastrophe.
Genuine socialism is based on the interests of the working class, the vast majority of the world’s population. It is opposed to all forms of nationalism, as well as the politics of racial and gender identity, which seeks to divide workers against each other and subordinate them to the capitalist system.
And genuine socialism is revolutionary. It proposes not mild reforms, which the ruling class will not tolerate, but revolution—the overthrow of capitalist property relations through the establishment of democratic control over the giant banks and corporations. It fights for the political mobilization of the working class, in opposition to the Democratic and Republican Parties, to take power and establish a workers’ government to reorganize economic life, in the United States and internationally, on the basis of social need, not private profit.
The fight for genuine socialism means joining and building the SEP, its sister parties in the International Committee of the Fourth International, and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

Joseph Kishore



The blue states are turning red.
47% of Democrats view capitalism positively, down from 56% in 2016
57% of Democrats now view socialism positively, little changed from 2010
Republicans very positive about capitalism; 16% positive on socialism

At least Max Boot gets represented in the poll.
Is this a surprise? The core Dem demographic used to be working people. Today it's college students, government employees and welfare recipients. Why shouldn't they love socialism?
They already live under it.
And don't ask the poll respondents to define either capitalism or socialism except in terms of, "You have to work for a corporation" or "The government takes care of all your needs."
For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism.
For the first time, Democrats are no longer Democrats. They're socialists. Officially.




THE STAGGERING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY UNDER OBAMA'S ADMINISTRATION SERVING THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS.

THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL COST OF "CHEAP" MEXICAN LABOR TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.

AND IT'S WORKING!


SEN. BERNIE SANDERS

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

YOU THOUGHT OBAMA INVITED OBAMANOMICS and started the assault on the American middle-class?
NOPE!

“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”



Clinton Foundation Put On Watch List Of Suspicious ‘Charities’






OBAMA: SERVANT OF THE 1%


Richest one percent controls nearly half of global wealth


The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls 48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.



The report found that the growth of global inequality has accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.
In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”


DICK MORRIS:

On America’s First Family of Crime….. NO! Not the Bushes again!

Clinton global hucksterism – Selling out America like they sold out the Lincoln Bedroom.



HILLARY CLINTON: CRONY CLASS’  “Hope and Change” huckster’s successor!

“I serve Obama’s cronies first, illegals second and together we will loot the American middle-class to double our figures. It’s called BAILOUTS! Evita Peron Clinton



At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.


Sen. Bernie Sanders – America’s answer to Wall Street’s looting, the war on the American middle-class and jobs for legals!



“At this point, Clinton is the choice of most multimillionaires to be the next occupant of the White House. A recent CNBC poll of 750 millionaires found 53 percent support for Clinton in a contest with Republican Jeb Bush, 14 points better than Obama’s showing in the 2012 election with the same group.”

THE CRONY CLASS:

OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY CLINTON!

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.



“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

*

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER


OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.




PATRICK BUCHANAN: OBAMA’S ASSAULT  ON AMERICA BEGINS AT OUR BORDERS


WHO REALLY PAYS FOR THE CRIMES OF OBAMA’S CRONY DONORS???
LAST WEEK BARACK OBAMA CELEBRATED FIVE YEARS OF THE LOOTING BY HIS WALL STREET BANKSTERS… now it’s back to cutting social programs to pay for all that rape by the 1% he represents. The following week it will be back to the AMNESTY HOAX to legalize Mexico’s looting of America and make it legal that Mexicans get our jobs first… they already do!
As in previous budget crises under the Obama administration, the events are being stage-managed by the two corporate-controlled parties to give the illusion of partisan gridlock and confrontation over principles—in this case, whether to go forward with the implementation of the Obama health care program—while behind the scenes all factions within the ruling elite agree that massive cuts must be carried through in basic federal social programs.

OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS

GET THIS BOOK
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin
In her shocking new book,  Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

PATRICK BUCHANAN 
After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?


OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”

THE CRONY CLASS:

OBAMACLINTONOMICS was created by BILLARY CLINTON!

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.


“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

*

“Calling income and wealth inequality the "great moral issue of our time," Sanders laid out a sweeping, almost unimaginably expensive program to transfer wealth from the richest Americans to the poor and middle class. A $1 trillion public works program to create "13 million good-paying jobs." A $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. "Pay equity" for women. Paid sick leave and vacation for everyone. Higher taxes on the wealthy. Free tuition at all public colleges and universities. A Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Expanded Social Security benefits. Universal pre-K.” WASHINGTON EXAMINER

OBAMA’S WALL STREET and the LOOTING of AMERICA – SECOND TERM

The corporate cash hoard has likewise reached a new record, hitting an estimated $1.79 trillion in the fourth quarter of last year, up from $1.77 trillion in the previous quarter. Instead of investing the money, however, companies are using it to buy back their own stock and pay out record dividends.

Megan McArdle Discusses How America's Elites Are Rigging the Rules - Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Megan McArdle joins Scott Rasmussen for a discussion on America's new Mandarin class.





POLL: MOST INCOMPETENT AND DISHONEST PRESIDENT SINCE…. Well, isn’t Obama merely Bush’s THIRD and FOURTH TERMS??




OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM

A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS



PATRICK BUCHANAN

After Obama has completely destroyed the American economy, handed millions of jobs to illegals and billions of dollars in welfare to illegals…. BUT WHAT COMES NEXT?





OBAMANOMICS: IS IT WORKING???

Millionaires projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019

By Gabriel Black
18 June 2015
Households with more than a million (US) dollars in private wealth are projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth in 2019 according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
This large percentage, however, only includes cash, savings, money market funds and listed securities held through managed investments—collectively known as “private wealth.” It leaves out businesses, residences and luxury goods, which comprise a substantial portion of the rich’s net worth.

At the end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million per household.

In total, the world added $17.5 trillion of new private wealth between 2013 and 2014. The report notes that nearly three quarters of all these gains came from previously existing wealth. In other words, the vast majority of money gained has been due to pre-existing assets increasing in value—not the creation of new material things.

This trend is the result of the massive infusions of cheap credit into the financial markets by central banks. The policy of “quantitative easing” has led to a dramatic expansion of the stock market even while global economic growth has slumped.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.

Those families with wealth between $20 and $100 million also rose substantially in 2014—seeing a 34 percent increase in their wealth in twelve short months. They now own $9 trillion. In five years they will surpass $14 trillion according to the report.

Coming in last in the “high net worth” population are those with between $1 million and $20 million in private wealth. These households are expected to see their wealth grow by 7.2 percent each year, going from $49 trillion to $70.1 trillion dollars, several percentage points below the highest bracket’s 12 percent growth rate.

The gains in private wealth of the ultra-rich stand in sharp contrast to the experience of billions of people around the globe. While wealth accumulation has sharply sped up for the ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of people have not even begun to recover from the past recession.

An Oxfam report from January, for example, shows that the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population went from having about 56 percent of the world’s wealth in 2010 to having 52 percent of it in 2014. Meanwhile the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise from 44 to 48 percent of the world’s wealth.

In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the recession, they are more than making that money back. Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.

As the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has noted, in the United States “between 2007 and 2013, net wealth fell on average 2.3 percent, but it fell ten-times more (26 percent) for those at the bottom 20 percent of the distribution.” The 2015 report concludes that “low-income households have not benefited at all from income growth.”

Another report by Knight Frank, looks at those with wealth exceeding $30 million. The report notes that in 2014 these 172,850 ultra-high-net-worth individuals increased their collective wealth by $700 billion. Their total wealth now rests at $20.8 trillion.

The report also draws attention to the disconnection between the rich and the actual economy. It states that the growth of this ultra-wealthy population “came despite weaker-than-anticipated global economic growth. During 2014 the IMF was forced to downgrade its forecast increase for world output from 3.7 percent to 3.3 percent.”


OBAMA-CLINTONomics: the never end war on the American middle-class. But we still get the tax bills for the looting of their Wall Street cronies and their bailouts and billions for Mexico’s welfare state in our borders.

While the wealth of the rich is growing at a breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed towards the very top.

                                                                                                     




In 2014, those with over $100 million in private wealth saw their wealth increase 11 percent in one year alone. Collectively, these households owned $10 trillion in 2014, 6 percent of the world’s private wealth. According to the report, “This top segment is expected to be the fastest growing, in both the number of households and total wealth.” They are expected to see 12 percent compound growth on their wealth in the next five years.


In 2014 the Russell Sage Foundation found that between
2003 and 2013, the median household net worth of those in
the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a drop of 36
percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the
recession, they are more than making that money back.
Between 2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1 percent. This is the most distorted
post-recession income gain on record.




INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES

collapse of household income in the US… STILL BILLIONS IN WELFARE HANDED TO ILLEGALS… they already get our jobs and are voting for more!


INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA… most jobs go to illegals.

AS HIS CRONY BANKSTERS CONTINUE TO LOOT, INCOMES PLUMMET FOR AMERICANS (LEGALS).

GOOD TIME FOR AMNESTY FOR MILLIONS OF LOOTING MEXICANS?

MORE HERE:

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2014/09/and-still-democrat-party-wants-millions.html

“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.”
  
"During the month, some 432,000 people in 

the US gave up looking for a job." 


"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."


HILLARY CLINTON'S BIGGEST DONORS ARE OBAMA'S CRIMINAL CRONY 

BANKSTERS!

"A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

Federal Reserve documents stagnant state of US economy

By Barry Grey
21 July 2015
The US Federal Reserve Board last week released its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress, providing an assessment of the state of the American economy and outlining the central bank’s monetary policy going forward. The report, along with Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s testimony before both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as a speech by Yellen the previous week in Cleveland, present a grim picture of the reality behind the official talk of economic “recovery.”
In her prepared remarks to Congress last Wednesday and Thursday, Yellen said, “Looking forward, prospects are favorable for further improvement in the US labor market and the economy more broadly.”

She reiterated her assurances that while the Fed would likely begin to raise its benchmark federal funds interest rate later this year from the 0.0 to 0.25 percent level it has maintained since shortly after the 2008 financial crash, it would do so only slowly and gradually, keeping short-term rates well below historically normal levels for an indefinite period.

This was an expected, but nevertheless welcome, signal to the American financial elite, which has enjoyed a spectacular rise in corporate profits, stock values and personal wealth since 2009 thanks to the flood of virtually free money provided by the Fed.

"But as Yellen’s remarks and the Fed report indicate, the explosion of asset values and wealth accumulation at the very top of the economic ladder has occurred alongside an intractable and continuing slump in the real economy."

In her prepared testimony to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen noted the following features of the performance of the US economy over the first six months of 2015:

* A sharp decline in the rate of economic growth as compared to 2014, including an actual contraction in the first quarter of the year.

* A substantial slackening (19 percent) in average monthly job-creation, from 260,000 last year to 210,000 thus far in 2015.

* Declines in domestic spending and industrial production.
In her July 10 speech to the City Club of Cleveland, Yellen cited an even longer list of negative indices, including:

* Growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) since the official beginning of the recovery in June, 2009 has averaged a mere 2.25 percent per year, a full one percentage point less than the average rate over the 25 years preceding what Yellen called the “Great Recession.”
* While manufacturing employment nationwide has increased by about 850,000 since the end of 2009, there are still almost 1.5 million fewer manufacturing jobs than just before the recession.

* Real GDP and industrial production both declined in the first quarter of this year. Industrial production continued to fall in April and May.

* Residential construction (despite extremely low mortgage rates by historical standards) has remained “quote soft.”

* Productivity growth has been “weak,” largely because “Business owners and managers… have not substantially increased their capital expenditures,” and “Businesses are holding large amounts of cash on their balance sheets.”

* Reflecting the general stagnation and even slump in the real economy, core inflation rose by only 1.2 percent over the past 12 months.

The Monetary Policy Report issued by the Fed includes facts that are, if anything, even more alarming, including:

* “Labor productivity in the business sector is reported to have declined in both the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015.”
* “Exports fell markedly in the first quarter, held back by lackluster growth abroad.”

* “Overall construction activity remains well below its pre-recession levels.”

* “Since the recession began, the gains in… nominal compensation [workers’ wages and benefits] have fallen well short of their pre-recession averages, and growth of real compensation has fallen short of productivity growth over much of this period.”

* “Overall business investment has turned down as investment in the energy sector has plunged. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 2 percent in first quarter… Business outlays for structures outside of the energy sector also declined in the first quarter…”

The report incorporates the Fed’s projections for US economic growth, published following the June meeting of the central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. They include a downward revision of the projection for 2015 to 1.8 percent-2.0 percent from the March projection of 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent.

That the US economy continues to stagnate and even contract is indicated by two surveys released last week while Yellen was testifying before Congress. The Fed reported that factory production failed to increase in June for the second straight month and output in the auto sector fell 3.7 percent. The Commerce Department reported that retail sales unexpectedly fell in June, declining by 0.3 percent.
These statistics follow the employment report for June, which showed that the share of the US working-age population either employed or actively looking for work, known as the labor force participation rate, fell to 62.6 percent, its lowest level in 38 years.
 During the month, some 432,000 people in the US gave up looking for a job.

The disastrous figures on business investment are perhaps the most telling indicators of the underlying crisis of the capitalist system. The Fed report attributes the sharp decline so far this year primarily to the dramatic fall in oil prices and resulting contraction in investment and construction in the energy sector. But the plunge in oil prices is itself a symptom of a general slowdown in the world economy.
Moreover, a dramatic decline in productive investment is common to all of the major industrialized economies of Europe and North America. In its World Economic Outlook of last April, the International Monetary Fund for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis acknowledged that there was no prospect for an early return to pre-recession levels of economic growth, linking this bleak prognosis to a general and pronounced decline in productive investment.

The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process.
The economic crisis in the US and internationally is not simply a conjunctural downturn. It is a systemic crisis of global capitalism, centered in the US. 
A defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself.

While the economy is starved of productive investment, entirely parasitic and socially destructive activities such as stock buybacks, dividend hikes and mergers and acquisitions return to pre-crash levels and head for new heights. US corporations have spent more on stock buybacks so far this year than on factories and equipment.
The intractable nature of this crisis, within the framework of capitalism, is underscored by the IMF’s updated World Economic Outlook, released earlier this month, which projects that 2015 will be the worst year for economic growth since the height of the recession in 2009.


No comments: