The Clinton Democrats cut the rungs off of the proverbial ladder out of poverty, and liberals (if not progressives) applauded. Lib media immediately responded by raising the Middle Class Only banner. Not everyone can work, due to health or circumstances, and there simply aren't jobs for all who need one right now. The US has shipped out the bulk of our manufacturing and tech jobs while significantly increasing the number of people desperate for jobs.Americans say, "There is NO excuse for being jobless!" This generation decided that those who are not of current use to employers no longer have basic human rights to food and shelter. That's a profound societal change.

While President Obama declared an end to the war on budget deficits and pledged instead to fight the "deficit of opportunity" for the poor and middle class, he is acting far too timid to stir the pot and instigate a real national conversation on inequality. As for the Republican leadership, they have yet to realize that there is even a problem. "A high concentration of wealth at the top is less likely to result in the broad-based consumer spending that drives the economy," the president said.

President Obama and the Democrats see the government's role as providing a security net. As my colleague Michael Greaney states: "The fact is that government was never intended to try and take care of people’s individual wants and needs, but to provide and protect the environment within which people can take care of themselves. In an emergency, of course, it’s perfectly legitimate for the government to step in and redistribute enough wealth to keep people going until they can get back on their feet, but we seem now to live in a permanent state of emergency."

President Obama has failed the American people, especially the poor and propertyless who are increasingly dependent on ever-lower-paying jobs, taxpayer-supported welfare financed through tax extraction and national debt, and charity.

President Obama has yet to declare CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of the non-human productive capital assets of American enterprise as the main culprit to the inability of the 99 percent to expand and strengthen their source of income and increasingly become "customers with money" to purchase the products and services the economy is capable of producing. Never has Obama, during his political career, used the term "ownership" of the means of production to educate the electorate of the necessity to OWN productive capital assets. And without a clear understanding of the problem and a goal projection, there can be no successful PLAN to correct the income and wealth inequality that has resulted ever since American entered the age of the Industrial Revolution, when the nation began its shift from labor intensive production to non-human physical productive capital means of production. Such assets, due to the unjust structure of the financial system, allows the ownership class to continually monopolize ALL future productive capital investment––ownership.President Obama never has advocated that we must respect the traditional understanding of private property as a natural right, inherent in each person, albeit limited in its exercise. He has failed to declare that the reliance on past savings as the only source of financing for economic growth necessarily means that only those people who can afford to cut consumption and save significantly will receive the benefits of economic growth as investor owners instead of wage or welfare recipients.

President Obama has never once pointed out that as job destroying and labor devaluing technology advances and the scale of economic growth becomes too expensive for the resources of average people, only the rich will own the enterprises that generate the bulk of production. This is the greed or "hoggist" capitalism that is practiced in America. Everyone other than the rich who own capital is limited to wages or sub-economic microenterprises, unless the rich decide to be generous and voluntarily surrender some of their wealth so that others can own productive capital, too.

President Obama is part of the problem in that he has stepped into the ranks of those who, within this past savings paradigm, see as the alternative to having a few rich people monopolize ownership to change what “ownership” means. By changing what ownership means, the State (whether the central government or the local community) decides what and how much of the fruits of ownership go to those who hold legal title, and what and how much is distributed in some fashion to others in the local community or the nation at large. This makes title a meaningless concept, abolishes private property, and is socialism, by whatever label.

President Obama needs to acknowledge that if we restrict financing of economic growth to what can be withheld from consumption out of what has been produced in the past, we are necessarily trapped into either capitalism (concentrated private ownership of productive capital) or socialism (concentrated State ownership or control of productive capital).

President Obama needs to see that there is a way out: a source of financing economic growth that does not depend on how much consumption can be reduced.

Instead of using the present value of past reductions in consumption to finance economic growth, it is possible—even preferable—to finance economic growth using the present value of future increases in production. In other words, shift from a “past savings” system, to a “future savings” system.

The way out is to turn the present value of future marketable goods and services into money—which is what commercial and central banks were invented to do, not finance non-productive government spending. People who currently own no capital can become owners of the productive capital that is displacing them from their jobs by buying capital on credit, and paying for it with the profits received from the capital in the future.

Most new capital is financed this way, anyway, but only by people who have collateral. Replacing traditional collateral with capital credit insurance and reinsurance solves that problem. Corporations don’t need to finance growth by accumulating cash. They can pay out all earnings as tax-deductible dividends (fully taxable as ordinary income to the recipient), and issue new equity to finance growth.

As more people become capital owners, entitlements can be phased out, and the savings applied to paying down the national debt.

The focus needs to be on OWNERSHIP CREATION, not JOBS CREATION, which has been Obama's pitch thus far. Thus the challenge is to reform the system to provide equal opportunity for ALL Americans to acquire ownership of FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets with "FUTURE SAVINGS" (earnings) generated by the investments. Thus, over time EVERY American citizen will be able to accumulate a viable, income-generating capital estate portfolio to provide a second income to their wages earned from job employment or provide a sustainable income without the need to be employed in a job or dependent on welfare or charity.For solutions see "Financing Economic Growth With 'FUTURE SAVINGS': Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline" at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624Support the Capital Homestead Act athttp://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm andhttp://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm

This should be the message that President Obama should deliver.

I think it was no coinicidence that while the GOP Congress distracted the people -the Red state Tea Party Republicans were moving in the shadows behind the scenes setting up the Koch Brother 's Agenda . Here In Wisconsin -it was Scott Walker [ Mr. 'conquer and Divide'] In Florida Rick Scott -Michigan ,etc so YES ,I do believe that what they did to the people of Michagan ,was a 'Test run' [like Walker's Union Busting] and I believe we will see more of this if we donot start paying attention to who we are voting in and if we donot get off our butts and stop this -NOW.

To be honest, it is very hard to listen to debates like the obnoxious character, Tony Katz, you had on a 2:15 PST. Apparently this guys whole purpose in life is to argue against any logic. We tend to want to find a counter to every side of each argument, creating the "false center". It would be better to talk to 97 people that represent one side (the side of logic and clarity) and then the 3 that are wingnuts like this guy. To be fair, I am not against people having other opinions, but I do resent those that seem incapable of rational thought!

Thank you, Vegasman56, for those links. I almost clicked on them before, when you posted them, but was taken away before I could. Thanks for posting them again. Listening to Nick Hanauer's banned Ted Talks "Rich people don't create jobs" he said "If it were true, that rich people create jobs...then we should be swimming in jobs right now".

Only the consumer creates jobs. The businesses will only hire people only if they are driven to do so by the demand of the consumer. And if consumers don't have jobs they can't buy the goods which drives the businesses to hire people.

And an even more eye-opening question is why was it banned by Ted Talks? So Ted Talks is not so open minded but rather owned (or cowed) by the wealthy class. I guess what makes it so hard hitting is the fact that Nick Hanauer is one of the wealthy class who is telling it like it really is.

Richard Wilkinson's Ted Talks:
"If Americans want to experience the American Dream they should go to Denmark.."

Yes, the "system is rigged". But: "It's time for our elected leaders to get to to work at restoring the American Dream." will never fix the problem if you keep voting for them and chiding them to do their jobs. They just won't listen. We need to do something well beyond the failed "rigged" democratic system...because real democracy is dead in America.

It would have taken more "guts" to have given that speech at an ALEC meeting. Politicians frequently tailor their speeches to the group they are addressing telling them what they want to hear. It would have taken more "guts" to have really fought for the things that came out of his mouth in the first years of his Presidency. He's proven to be nothing but a low-life scoundrel politician who says pretty things to those who want to hear them and then sell them out. He only says what he says now because he knows that it won't amount to anything and the ruling class knows it so will let it pass. Except it gives FOX snooze more gripe points to whine about. It may make some people "feel" better emotionally, temporarily, but they are all empty words that won't amount to anything. If Obama wanted to really make a difference, he would be telling the people to rise up and overthrow the tyrannical ruling class. He would fess up and tell the world that he knows that he is merely a puppet of the ruling class and if he didn't play ball with them...they'd redo the JFK thing on him.

2950-10k: They've thrown people into Gitmo Gulags and tortured or killed them on a lot less speculation. And, I'm not a lawyer either but who cares about lawyers when the real criminals are running the show. Those Corporate Fascist Pigs let us exist at their pleasure. They are the real terrorists. Who cares about laws? They sure don't.

Conservatives see nothing wrong when a worker with a full time job still qualifies for food stamps. They call them 'takers'. May I propose that the class which walked off with ninety-three percent of the newly produced wealth in the U.S. last year are the real 'takers'.

The rise of modern day real estate feudalism: How a majority of Americans are missing out on the gains of the new rentier class.

http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/modern-day-feudalism-real-estate-land...

Feudalism was a set of customs in medieval Europe that setup a society in which relationships were based on holding land in exchange for service and labor. There is a modern day movement that is silently pushing out the middle class from truly owning real estate. In my view, there is no coincidence with the contracting US middle class and the massive expansion of “all cash” buyers. For most working Americans buying a home with all cash is so far removed from economic reality that it is not even an option.

Palin, there is a lot of truth to your argument. But I hope you'll forgive me for saying, I still think it's a cop-out shopping at Walmart.

Ever heard of Robert Greenwald, creator of Brave New Films, who has produced all these great documentaries? One of them is aptly titled: "Walmart; The High Cost Of Low Prices". I don't reckon there's much in it you don't know already, Palin. But this guy is no whiney Republican; he's one of us. His documentary reveals that Walmart is actually a cult. The amount of indoctrination their new recruits (i.e. "associates") are subjected to is simply mind blowing. No matter what my circumstances and no matter how desperate, I would not last five minutes in that environment. Employees are forced to work overtime without compensation. Utter the word "union" and you're fired on the spot.

Let's not forget the hundreds of Indian garment makers who died in two sweatshop fires, because those pigs the Waltons refused to uphold the most basic safety standards. Before the fires, in at least one of the sweatshops, employees noticed the building was on the verge of collapse. Those who expressed concern about their safety were threatened with their jobs, told to stay put and keep working or else. If I recall correctly, when the fires broke out, women were trapped inside and unable to escape. All the doors had been locked. Tantamount to murder, in my book.

Like I say, we vote with our money. There are alternatives. You and I can go 'round and 'round 'til we're blue in the face, Palin... but after all has been said, we'll each continue doing what we choose to do. So respectfully, my friend, I see no point in debating this any further. - Aliceinwonderland

Palidromedary: I'm not a lawyer, but it would seem that the act of tracking a persons web usage for whatever reason is a baseless pursuit if the D.O.D. employee, "attacker," needs definitive ID, which they would, of the targeted user. Say I want info on how to cultivate weed or maybe I'm curious about the history of Karl Marx, without an image of me going to and using those websites, it's still just speculation that it was in fact me.