who is best equipped to change this?
 

or are we comfortable with this?

(found this over at AK straddling the political fence so I though I'd bring it here where it will be safe ;))


83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

I disagree with the last point; The top 10 percent of Americans now get around 50 percent of our national income.

point taken

If you think the bloodletting over the health care bill, TARP or the financial bill was nasty, any action by the Democratic Party to change this would likely be just the thing to tip the balance toward the armed insurrection feared in another recent thread. The moneyed/powered interests would pull out all the stops to defeat it.

That said, any effort by Washington to "fix" this "problem" would be an abysmal display of sausage making on a grand scale. It would likely be "eyewash" to appease those who think some sort of reform is necessary without making meaningful change. Hell, every person on Capitol Hill is the beneficiary of the current system and accordingly belongs in the lofty percentiles that you note. They have no real interest in fixing a system that treats them so well. Plus at least half of them are believers in Voodoo Economics (i.e., trickle down) anyway.

Oh you mean it would be like the healthcare bill and the bank regulation bill.
Why do you think that? ;)

Washington fix the problem? Washington helped create the problem.

As I read once, the Federal Reserve was created to stabilize the currency and control the boom/bust cycle. Since it's inception, the value of the currency has dropped over 95% and the boom/bust cycles are happening more often and with longer duration. Either the directors of the Fed Reserve are complete idiots or they are doing this by design.

Now you can blame our current situation on the Fed Reserve, free trade, globalization, what have you...they are all controlled by the same people.

Voodoo economics or Keynesian economics...doesn't matter, the same people put the magnets in the roulette wheel.

Republicans v Democrats for the good guys? Corporations v Bankers for the bad guys? Robert Reich has some input on this.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/fe...07/10/25/taxes

Would new sausage makers help? Only if they quit playing the old sausage game...which is removing the sausage and replacing it with sawdust.

I'll even advance the notion that our masters are doing a good job. We may be eating greasy sawdust, but we might be eating nothing if not for their control of laissez faire economics. Kinda hard to buy when we're eating sawdust and they're eating the good stuff, along with biscuits, gravy, and over easy's.

I did get a kick out of Obama on the teevee, lecturing the bankers on how he was the only thing between them and the pitchfork. Either that was grand political theater for the Punch and Judy crowd, or the man truly is an idiot.

That's what his job is.

So eat your greasy sawdust and remember...it can get worse.

And as a side note. Even if we do have blood in the streets, and get rid of Obama, or Palin, or whatever fool is sitting in the big chair at the time, along with all of the sausage makers, BIS will still be there...to sell us new ones.

Chas

Quote of the year!!!

Pete

so we should just live with it seems to be the consensus

can we at least condemn this situation? or do we really believe the wealthy "earn it"

Sure, it stinks.

What can we do about it?

Hope the big boys get tired of us and decide to bend China over the bar for awhile.

Everybody gets their turn.

Chas

Structure laws that compelled the ruling class to be more socially responsible maybe?