It’s always interesting to hear conservatives rail about shared prosperity for the American people; they call it Socialism – I thought that was just their job. In other words – “trickle down” economics doesn’t work. In other words “horse and sparrow” economics doesn’t work. Corporate earnings are at an all time high, taxes on the American people are at an all time low. Where are all the jobs the Bush tax cuts promised?
Krugman writes HERE:
It’s not an “attack on capitalism” to suggest that growing income disparities and the corresponding failure of most Americans to benefit from rising productivity are problems. Still, what can be done? Well, you can ask the rich to pay somewhat higher taxes, and you can strengthen the safety net — which is what Obama actually advocates. But Romney wants to do the reverse.
So Romney wants us to celebrate the success of people like him, even though their success doesn’t seem to have benefited ordinary families, and even though he stands for policies that would aggravate the gap between a fortunate few and everyone else. And then he accuses Obama of dividing America.
There are a lot of great charts to highlight this “decoupling” of the rich from the middle class – here’s an excellent illustration:
And for those who say this is just how American capitalism works … if you work harder and are smarter – you do better. But that’s not how these folks are making more money. They’re rigging the game to advantage themselves. Imagine if we played a game of cards and you and I get 5 cards for poker and the richest man at the table gets 6 cards every hand. That’s how American “free markets” work today. The cards are stacked.
Most people do not understand the “invisible welfare state of the 1%”. Ezra Klein explains that wonderfully HERE; an excerpt:
The costs are significant. Huge, in fact. Tax expenditures now cost the federal government $1 trillion annually — more than Medicare and Medicaid combined. And they’re regressive.
There is also a pattern to these programs: The more a government social program benefits wealthier Americans, the less obtrusive it is. We design policies for the poor in ways that make it hard to escape the knowledge that the government is providing help. But richer Americans rely on programs that are “submerged.”
And it’s precisely this rigged game that has created an America that Pew Research shows as the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. More on that HERE.
