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I'm going to continue to beat this to death........ the Romney-rich will be successful in carrying out their economic terrorism, "concentration of wealth", just as long as their most formidable weapon, the Corp. Mass Media, is able to continue with massive dissemination of misinformation and get away with calling it news.
For christ sakes, my own relatives are so FOXMERIZED, they still think people like Bachmann and Beck are sane! The only way in hell 50% of those polled are willing to vote for Mr..... lower wages and poverty .......Romney, is becaues of the crap they hear from our good friends in the corp. media. Granted a few might just be dumb -ass racists, but I think most...and it's because I talk with quite a few people, are just sadly misinformed.
The war can be won if we figure out how to well inform with truth..... the average disinterested Joe, more than FOX screws with his head by misinforming him....run ads in your local papers pointing out the facts of the Ryan budget plan......and make local voters understand it's the REPUBLICAN agenda!
Considerable piece of work done in this overview and discussion. Competent ideas and very reasonable summaries i see. I admire it and must admit that example papers from allfreepapers.blogspot.com are likely to be rewarded in some time.
Regardless of what the name of legislation was or what president "regan" that really started the decline, my spidey senses tell me that the decline is due to not imagining a middle class for all Americans in the first place. I just watch Mississippi a self-portrait. One of the big problems that they pointed out in the south was that they were at a time when blacks were still living on plantations, just 40 years ago but were being replaced by machines at an increasing pace. They were really dealing with the dilemma of having generations of slaves and their descendants in a socioeconomic stalemate. One on hand the whites felt a need to keep the blacks submissive, obedient this also meant they did not want to educate them for fear of them becoming up-ity. One the other the work for them was disappearing so what do you do with these people? This nation has not answered this question. Instead the grew dread and fear as increasing numbers climbed into what was the middle class. They had no choice but to attack the ladder as well as the people. Now the poor blacks and whites are separated more by class than race and competing over crumbs. If we can imagine equality in and for each other without fear we will see the morality of sustain the middle class.
Agapepeople.com
Unless our ruling elite believes that what has happened in other countries...say Egypt...where they put Mubarak in a cage...even urinating on him, I'm told..and even worse for Ghadafi....can happen here as well....they will never budge an inch. These arrogant bigwigs need to start getting worried...very worried. And Americans need to make that happen before any positive changes will occur.
I guess it all starts with people extremely unhappy and desperately worried about the condition of things..worried about surviving and the fate of their loved ones. When writing letters to Congressmen/women, griping on blogs, voting...doesn't work...we have to escalate this to a higher level. Of course, if no one ever communicated their feelings, as we do in these blogs, nothing will even ignite what needs to be ignited in order for escalated actions to occur.
Americans will look pretty meek and cowardly if they sit by and watch the rest of the world act out their discontent of their ruling elite and not do the same here. Those who actually do go out into the streets and demonstrate are really heroes and braver and committed than any of us who just write blogs. But, write our ideas and concerns, and praising those who do go out into the streets, we must... and hopefully inspire others, and ourselves, to take action.
Of course, no one wants to be a lone martyr but working in mass, as they did during the Vietnam years, making Nixon cringe and cower as he did, thinking that the masses were going to actually invade the White House, the course of history did change. Had they not massively demonstrated, this country would have kept on wasting money and lives over there. Had it not been for the Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers, and a whole lot of organized, and even disorganized, opposition history would have looked a lot bleaker than the years after we pulled out of Nam.
I don't see any other way around it...Americans will eventually be so backed into the corner that they will have to react. And it even says in our constitution that we not only have a right but a duty to overthrow a tyrannical regime. And I'd say the top 1-3% have been very tyrannical. They have, in effect, told us all that if we don't have a certain amount of wealth already that we all have nothing left but just to lay down and die without complaint. They started this war against us and we eventually must fight back...not with a corrupt...doomed to fail...political system...but in the only way left. When animals are cornered they fight back. Should we, as humans, do anything less?
Everything Bryan Fischer says can be classified as "very, very ugly." Whenever I hear him it makes me so sad that many people will form their views of Christianity based on this bigoted windbag. Now I know what John 11:35 was *really* about.
If you have a boss that yells at you, demanding that you do this or that the way he wants you to....do you call that "whining"? Americans are not "whining" they are yelling and demanding that the war that these wealthy people have been waging against us for 30 some years...STOP!
Maybe certain people who appear to be sticking up for the wealthy ruling class should stop their "whining" about how Americans are yelling and demanding a change.
I heard this kind of idiotic sniveling from the right-wingers during the Bush years...they would say to Democrats as they pummeled us mercilessly..."stop your whining...just get over it!" And so to you I say...stop your whining and just get over it! The 90% of Americans who have taken a big hit from the rich guys don't need to just get over it...they need to get really pissed off and yell even louder and longer and if that don't work to change things they need to take it a step further.
The decline of the working class (middle class) began with NAFTA. It is impossible for the American worker to compete with the workers of countries where they make a great deal less in their wage scale. As long as the free trade agreements exist and there are no tariffs, the American standard of living will continue to nose dive as it has in the last thirty years. Every president since the signing of the first free trade agreement has been guilty of selling the American worker out for political gain from multi-national corporations and businesses in the form of financial contributions which I call bribes. President Reagan, Bush1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama have all signed so call free trade agreements. They have all claimed it would help our businesses to sell our goods in new markets, bull shit.....The agreements were designed to increase profits for corporations by importing goods outside of the U.S. and bring them here with no tariff or tax, to be sold to us. That is why these big corporations move their operations from one country to the next, chasing cheap labor. And guess what, it is too late to do anything about it. Obama just signed a new free trade agreement, the TPP with Asian countries, including Vietnam. Anyone who thinks we will be selling our goods to the Vietnamese is delusional, they simply cannot afford it on the low wages they are paid. But, we will see goods imported from Vietnam, in competition with the cheap Chinese goods shipped here. There won't be any new factories being built or reopened here, unless we compete with the wages paid to the third world workers. The American standard of living is in a dead spiral downward and there is not a damn thing anyone can or will do about it. If the politicians told the truth about where the American worker and our standard of living is going, there would (will) be riots in the streets of every major city. Good bye middle class and dreams of reclaiming our way of life, hello poverty for the American worker.......Sad but true...
One of the major contributors to the decline is free trade. In particular, one way free trade with partners who are surrepticiously screwing us. Since about 1975, real wages have trended down and they have tracked with tariffs ever since. (We cut trade barriers, and as a result we lose wealth). This is both a R and a D problem. For some unknown reason both parties think free trade is sacred and that tariffs can never rise and must eventually disappear. The best source of collected data on this is "The Myth of Free Trade" by Ravi Batra (A guest of Thom's several years ago)
Wiki data under demographics is just re-reporting year 2000 census figures Median income. That's what they call it. So it was calculated by the Census Bureau. Wasn't it?
Clearly in Palm Beach, the jet set didn't send in their census reports else the Median would be higher. There isn't a servant's house or boat dock on the island you could lease for a year for what the stated Median family income is.
I agree!
This is a very true statement!
Since the listing is a MEAN value, calculated according to Wiki as GNP divided by the population, it overstates the estimate since incomes are highly skewed. A better measure, not available from thes sources, would be the MEDIAN (5% lower, 50% higher). Often economic literatire will show a median value on incomes to be approximatele $20,000 lower than the Mean (which members of the GOP like to use).
It will as long as Republicans are in office and Citizens United is law.
I believe Reagonomics began in 1978 with the formation of the Shamrock Pool (Disney, Central Soya, et. al.)
In 1978 tomato wages were fixed in Florida until recently when Burger King was forced by bad public relations to offer to pay 1 cent/pound more for tomatoes so that slave conditions could improve for the Coalition of Immokalee Tomato Workers.
My husband says Thom refers to a"30 year Plan" which if begun 1978-2008 brings us to Fannie Mae Bankrupt and Indymac.
"30 year plans" involve both a concealed mortgage and a 30 year insurance charter. IRS knows at least half of this principle.
It is possible to pinpoint with chronologies which funds can be associated with the wage and price fixing which began in 1978.
Here are some Wiki 2000 Census per capita incomes around America:
Leo-Cedarville, Indiana :$22,170 Fort Wayne, Indiana: $18,517 Gary, Indiana: $14,383 Immokalee, Florida: $8,576 Elberton, Georgia: $15,486 Paris, Texas: $17,137 Rancho Santa Fe, California: $113,132 Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina: $20,268
Salt Lake City, Utah: $20,752 Hidalgo, Texas: $5,849 (Zapata Oil Drilling Leases abound here)
Belle Glade, Florida: $11,159 Florida City, Florida: $8,270 Lakeland, Florida: $15,760 (Publix Headquarters)
Caruthersville, MO: $12,034 Amarillo, Texas: $18,621 Detroit, Michigan: $14,118 Orlando, Florida: $21,216.
Stamford, Connecticut has No Census incomes reported in Demographics in Wiki.
Now this I will tell you from numerous trips to Palm Beach Island, and a very thorough course in The History of Palm Beach Architecture, this is a pure LIE
Census reported Palm Beach median family income of $137,867.
Oh BS- that wouldn't pay the property tax and lawn maintenance on Palm Beach Island! What kind of malarkey is this? It wouldn't pay for two palm trees to be installed on the swale of the Kennedy Mansion.
I've got a commercial running in my area. Says that the dividend tax is fixing to go up. Congress must act to kept the massive tax increase from happening.
Your guest's view of objectivism is flawed. Ayn Rand did not understand that Democracy and Capitalism were the reason for America's success. She would have known this had she grown up in the U.S. Capitalism alone is a nutty philosophy. Democracy can shrink or grow the government depending on its needs. For example, if you want people to go to war for you (as many of the rich do and have done for years), you had better give the soldiers and veterans a shot at "happiness". To paraphase Bill Murray in Ghost busters, if you believe all of Ayn Rand, you never studied.
Rand was, however, helpful in comparing the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Capitalism is indeed a better system than communism.
Keep up the good work Thom.
They have also helped create many low income families also. The Waltons and the ever growing number of US companies that have outsourced have found a great chance to exploit a foreign labor market and screw the American worker. They are doing well here,no doubt, with their low prices, because of this exploitation.They have had a Great hand in impoverishing a new class of people and are benefiting greatly from this on the retail end!
What do we expect after 30+ years of trickle down economics? Think about it. Anyone 40 and under has literally grown up with that philosophy and the belief that the uber rich are the "job creators". As Anne Romney said morning on Good Morning America " you people have been given enough information"
In total agreement with you Sacredori!
What? and cut their pay? Their dividends? Their tax loopholes? Don't forget...80% of our politicians are millionaires!! We need to get people who do not have a vested interest and arms length connections to gov't officials.
Mr Ware, Look I am not sticking up for the Walton Group they don't need it. We both live in countries that allow us to be unequal, so to me good for them. Keep in mind Walmart is a public company so anyone can own a part of it and "reap enormous profits". We also live in countries where we choose where we work and shop. Don't shop or work there if you don't like them that is what freedom is all about. I can't get over how jealous Americans are towards the wealthy there. When did PROFIT become a bad thing. It is what seperates us (me being Canadian) from the rest of the world. If you can't make it in America what would you do Africa or South America? Americans need to stop whining and get back to building America up to the envy of the world again.
Walmart is a member of ALEC and as such is priviledge to get laws/regulations written - By themselves - For themselves. When we had the recession of '78, I was unemployed for 2 yrs. I exhausted all the $$ I saved and was supporting a child. Welfare denied me benefits and told me to get a job at Walmart. Thank God, I found a temporary job until the recession ended and could return to full time employment. I hated Walmart for destroying our small town of 8,000 and all the small business' that closed down and our town has never been the same since. We could always buy our goods/services with the local people at competitive prices to Walmart; but, not anymore. Now, you go in there and there aren't any people working in it to help you and their prices? Oh, they went up!! Driving 30 mi to the next big town is ridiculous!! I still HATE Walmart!!
this article shouldnt be about someones name. this is simple about the extreme differences growing due to laws by a society thats eating itself.
this country grew only when the taxes were high enough on the people that had it/ the wealthy,to a much greater tax rate. at the end of the day our system of government will change or our government will go bankrupt/which it is. but the real problem exist is when other governments figure it out.
if congress cared about something else besides getting reelected for two terms so they can collect full pay for life,we might start seeing the middle class stop dying while international business eats them.
I continue to be astounded that American's still buy into the trickle down theory since it's not worked for 30 years. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. The fact is that ever since this ideology was introduced and enacted by the Regan Adminstration, we've seen an erosion of the middle class.
For instance, the GOP voted against a small business tax while accusing the Obama Administration of being against small business and wanting to raise their taxes? This is pure hypocisy. If people are able to, they should watch these people in action on C-Span and see what they say and how they vote. Most newspapers, for those who bother to read them, report on how your elected representatives vote on issues each week. My local paper does this in the Sunday edition, or you can go to your representatives website and look up their positions on issues. Better yet, sign up for their newsletters, although I've signed up for both Senators for my state and have yet to receive one, only from my Congressman on a weekly basis.