Sunday, October 12, 2014

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Wealth Gap (HBO) - Income Inequality in the USA

This issue of income stratification is very important and needs to be addressed/discussed more often in the USA. Actions as in fair incremental taxes (capital gains) are necessary to redistribute the ridiculous wealth that a small fraction of the top .0001% have recently accumulated. They made this crazy wealth (billions) off of world wide casino stock market speculations and unrealistic over evaluations, and off the blood, sweat and tears of workers around the world as in cheap exploited labor working for poverty wages. Wages have stagnated for the middle class over the last 30 years - post Reagen revolution of empowering the corporations to the detriment of ordinary citizens - the 99%. Since the opening of world markets - paper shufflers and now digital market nano second traders rape the system for everything it is worth while 3rd world children work 12 hour days and live in squalor. There is a direct connection if you do your research.

The Market system is an illogical and corrupt economic model. The market defies basic physics and engineering principals. You cannot continually take from any system based on work/energy (movement of resources), while at the same time not putting enough liquid assets$/fuel/energy and not expect it to break down on a regular basis - which it always has and does. And the taxpayers/citizens - 'we the people' always pay the price as in trillions in tax payer bailouts in one form or another over the last 200 years. The current, stupid, supposedly free market system has a built in crash factor - that even Jamie Diamond - CEO of corporate monster bank JP Morgan Chase referred to in a matter-of-fact way to the congress during the all-for-show congressional hearings post the crash of 2008. The crashes happen based on evil casino-like over speculation and illogical financial investments such as derivatives and the predatory lending mortgage schemes/worthless assets that moved around like musical chairs until the inevitable crash of 2008. Did any of the culprits  involved in making the crash happen get prosecuted - NO. Eric Holder, our Top Attorney General failed miserably - therefore Obama failed because Holder works for the President, who did not make it a top priority as he should have. Watch this great recent Bill Moyers interview with an expert bank regulator William Black. He mentions how many were prosecuted during the Savings and Loans scandals in the 1980s and that was during a Republican administration! Yet none were after this most recent financial crisis that nearly brought down the entire system!

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-big-jail/

I am personally fed up with the stagnation in my own wages as a teacher in the NYC DOE. Have they gone up over the years - yes. Have they kept pace with inflation - NO. I made as much as I do now - (after taxes and union dues) in 1983, working as a bus boy at a fancy restaurant in Connecticut! That is pathetic and just plain wrong. We the People need to organize and demand that the super filthy rich pay their fair share as in a  Warren 'Buffet' tax. Capital gains (stock market taxes) have been an irresponsible 15% during the last 12 years of wars put onto our multi-trillion dollar US debt bill. 15% is about half what they were during the latter Reagen administration - Republican mythical hero!

If something does not happen soon - you can see the cracks in the edifice already with protests by blacks based on police killing unarmed black men - but the issue is a much deeper one based on have-not poor folks of color and barely surviving whites that manifests as racial tensions and murder. These tensions are surfacing based on people not getting living wages in America - the richest country in the world. The white hegemony 1% loves it when we the people are at each others throats - this is how it has always worked, all the way back to the divide and conquer tactics of the Roman Empire, later written down by Machiavelli his evil little book The Prince.

One only has to look to history to see where this ends up now that average citizens are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Does the French Revolution of the peasants and working poor or the Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions ring a bell? Look what happened to Marie Antoinette and The Romanov's. In a country of 300 million guns and ever increasing numbers of the angry working poor, many of whom posses fire arms - things could get very ugly unless the our government takes action and passes legislation to close tax loop holes, not allow corporations to move overseas as in inversion crap and make the mega-rich pay their fair share of taxes! This needs to happen sooner than later - so contact your reps in congress and the president himself and demand they do their jobs and redistribute the wealth that the super rich are sitting on like sick greedy geese on golden eggs - time to share the profits with the workers and the free country they made their fortunes in - The USA!

Check out these links about Nobel Prize winner Thomas Piketty who has done a scientific break down of all that is wrong with modern capitalism in his book Capital in the 21st Century, and basically says we need to raise taxes to even the playing field. And a Mother Jones article released a couple years back with colorful charts exposing the growing Inequality in America. And Billionaire Nick Hanauer's banned Ted Talk about how the rich do not create jobs. And Berkeley college Professor and former Clinton staff member Robert Reich's excellent documentary Inequality for All is a must see - although it leaves out some important factors such as stagnant wages via illegal immigration and the major negative implications of President Clinton ending the Glass-Steagall Act, which led to the crash of 2008. Then watch the funny but informative John Oliver clip from his HBO show. Another more recent link/chart sums up the post President Ronald Reagan/Donald Regan era multi-national corporate take over of America post 1980s. Republican puppets reducing taxes for the rich 1% and evil greed (stockpiling wealth in banks and sending work overseas for cheap labor) leading to stagnant wages for average US citizen. The rich 1% better redistribute their fortunes soon or else or hell is going to break loose in historically violent America!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/02/349863761/40-years-of-income-inequality-in-america-in-graphs

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/02/11/384988128/the-fall-and-rise-of-u-s-inequality-in-2-graphs

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestseller

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/sep/21/-sp-thomas-piketty-bestseller-why


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

http://inequalityforall.com/




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