This post was a response to a friend at Stumpburners
- The Political Voice of the South whose political acumen I have a lot of respect for. But occasionally he gets an email...
First, most of the time when an email ends with "If you agree...Pass it on!" you can bet that it's part of the Right's disinformation campaign and while in and of itself it's a valid point, unfortunately this one is just a misdirection to keep attention away from the real problem.
Here's what I posted back to him, and keep in mind that Beast is one of those rare Okies whose principles trumps his political affiliations.
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Certainly for the crap job that these people have been doing they are
way overpaid. But they are not the real problem. However, they have
passed the laws that have created the problem. And they were well paid
by the people who are the problem.
OWS has it right, the one
percent is the problem, they have a little over a third of this
country's wealth and they pay our weak willed lawmakers to pass laws to
give them even more. Talk about "Welfare Queens".
Combine that
with the rest of the top ten percent and they have over 70% of this
country's wealth. Which leaves 30% left over for 90% percent.
Now
it gets even better for for the well to do. The next richest 40% have
26% of this country's wealth. The kicker is that the lower 50% in this
country have to make do with what's left over, a whopping 2.5%.
That's not a typo, the bottom half of this country, that means all the
working class, the people who generate the economy have to do it with
only 2.5 percent of the financial assets of the richest country on the
planet.
And the super rich are putting out big bucks to try to
get even more of that tiny fraction of wealth for themselves.
Your
chart, useful information, is just a smokescreen to hide what the real
problem is. Another big part of the problem is what I like to call the
dumba$$itude of a large part of the population of this country. Tea
Party, other people who believe the rich need a tax cut, people who
believe the rich create jobs, people who believe Fox News, Rush Limbaugh
and the rest of the Right Wing Propaganda Machine, people who will
happily run get the rope to hang themselves with, people who vote
against their and their family's own best self interest, people who
refuse to think for themselves and let their pastors, bosses or whoever
tell them how to vote, "conservative" Democrats, hell, just the general
dumbing down of the people in this country.
Here's a chart to show the income
distribution inequality in this country. Believe me, in countries that
care about all their citizens the bottom half gets a hell of a lot more
than 2.5% and they laugh at us and think we're crazy. And they're
right.
We have the highest income inequality of
any developed nation.
Beast, if you'll read the link above and
these, you'll be better informed than probably 98% of the people in this
country. BTW, I'm working on a post about the real Ronald Reagan, I'll
try to get it out tomorrow, I think you'll like it. You know most of
this problem, not to mention most of the other problems we have today,
started with that pathetic, simpleminded old man.
The Distribution of Wealth in America
It's the Inequality, Stupid
Wealth, Income, and Power
Study: Most Americans want wealth
distribution similar to Sweden
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I know that real Democrats would rather know how things really are, as opposed to, say, burying your head in the sand that is Fox News. Of course, everything on here is open for discussion or debate. There's a comment section below, or an even better venue for it;
Later.
Disgust
4 months ago