They Are Telling Us Who They Are

 

Biden Reminded Us What We Have Lost

"In his final address to the nation last night, President Joe Biden issued a warning that 'an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.'

"It is not exactly news that there is dramatic economic inequality in the United States. Economists call the period from 1933 to 1981 the 'Great Compression,' for it marked a time when business regulation, progressive taxation, strong unions, and a basic social safety net compressed both wealth and income levels in the United States. Every income group in the U.S. improved its economic standing.

"That period ended in 1981, when the U.S. entered a period economists have dubbed the 'Great Divergence.' Between 1981 and 2021, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the offshoring of manufacturing, and the weakening of unions moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

"Biden tried to address this growing inequality by bringing back manufacturing, fostering competition, increasing oversight of business, and shoring up the safety net by getting Congress to pass a law—the Inflation Reduction Act—that enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors with the pharmaceutical industry, capping insulin at $35 for seniors, for example. His policies worked, primarily by creating full employment which enabled those at the bottom of the economy to move to higher-paying jobs. During Biden’s term, the gap between the 90th income percentile and the 10th income percentile fell by 25%.

"But Donald Trump convinced voters hurt by the inflation that stalked the country after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown that he would bring prices down and protect ordinary Americans from the Democratic 'elite' that he said didn’t care about them. Then, as soon as he was elected, he turned for advice and support to one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, who had invested more than $250 million in Trump’s campaign."

Click on the link below for :

A Summary of the History and Danger Ahead Regarding the USA

The Democratic Party And Economic Inequality

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, is one of the most prolific communicators of the truth about the source of economic inequality in the USA. Click on the links below for a 2-part in-depth expose of such, and how the Democratic Party has not been aggressive enough in challenging the lies of Republicans regarding who is responsible for it:

America's Four Stories (Part 1)

America's Four Stories (Part 2)

A summary:

"The Democrats’ weakest story has been the Rot at the Top. Democrats have been reluctant to condemn economic elites who have grown richer than ever and who have used their affluence to corrupt the political system.

"This should not be surprising. Since the 1980s, Democrats have been drinking at the same funding troughs as Republicans — big corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals. And as the Supreme Court opened the spigots of big money into politics, those troughs have become far larger, for both parties."

- - -

"Bernie Sanders told this story about the real Rot at the Top, but other leading Democrats have been reluctant to tell it.

"The Democrats’ failure to tell this story has enabled Republican cultural populism to fill the void, offering Americans who were growing distrustful of the system an explanation for what had gone wrong and a set of villains to blame — immigrants, '“coastal elites,' 'woke'ism, the 'deep state,' transgendered people, 'communists,' 'socialists,' the 'Left,' Critical Race Theory, 'cat ladies,' and other bogeymen.

"But none of these is the real explanation. The real explanation, the real Rot at the Top, has been a new record concentration of wealth and power at the top — enough to corrupt our system of self-government."

Trump Only Helped The Elite In His First Term

 Click on the links below for a clear understanding of what you will get under another Trump administration. If you are not in the 1% and vote for MAGA, you are gaslighted and gullible:

100 Ways, in 100 Days, that Trump Has Hurt Americans

The 2017 Trump Tax Law Was Skewed to the Rich, Expensive, and Failed to Deliver on Its Promises

The middle class needs a tax cut: Trump didn’t give it to them 

Trump’s Economy: 7 Broken Promises to Working Americans

A look at Trump's economic legacy

How Trump and Congress further rigged the economy in favor of the wealthy

How Trump Took the Middle Class to the Cleaners

An Example of "Bidenomics"

"The Biden administration has been scrupulous about making sure that money from the funds appropriated to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and manufacturing base has gone to Republican-dominated districts; indeed, Republican-dominated states have gotten the bulk of those investments. 'President Biden promised to be the president of all Americans—whether you voted for him or not. And that’s what this agenda is delivering,' White House deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian told Matt Egan of CNN in February.

"But there is, perhaps, a deeper national strategy behind that investment. Political philosophers studying the rise of authoritarianism note that strongmen rise by appealing to a population that has been dispossessed economically or otherwise. By bringing jobs back to those regions that have lost them over the past several decades and promising 'the great comeback story all across…the entire country,' as he did today, Biden is striking at that sense of alienation."

Click on the link below for more details about how empathetic Biden is regarding the working class AND WHAT HE IS DOING TO ATTACK THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITY FOSTERED BY THE OTHER POLITICAL PARTY HISTORICALLY AND PRESENTLY:

The Working Class Has Suffered Under Republicans

Economic Inequality: The Root Of All Evil?

"The past, present, and future of tackling the uselessness of extreme wealth by exposing and closing tax avoidance loopholes and pushing for a culture change to embrace the need for a more equal society."

Click on the link below for an exploration of all the possible negative effects of economic inequality in the USA:

Society of Extreme Wealth and its Discontents: Tax avoidance, wealth inequality and the detrimental effects felt by us all

The History Of Corporate Personhood Interference With US Democracy

"Have we reached the point where corporatism is triumphing over Democracy?"

Click on the link below for a summary of the issue:

Did Corporations Kill Democracy

A Fresh Look At The Luddite Movement

"'Luddite' should never have become the epithet that it is as the Luddites were never afraid of or opposed to technological advancement, they only opposed the exploitation of workers and the degradation to society that came with the unfair distribution of the benefits of the targeted technology."

Click on the link below for an enlightening podcast:

New Tech and the Luddite Movement

A Look At US Tax Policy History

"Tax policy shows what a society values.

"Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Moore v. United States. The case illustrates today’s Supreme Court’s tendency to hear cases based on fictional stories to shape society to a right-wing ideology."

Click on the link for details. Ironically, the Republican Party today is against policies that many of them initially supported.

The lies of the Republicans to support economic inequality

Monopolies Are A Major Problem For The USA

"Besides their lawsuits against Google and Amazon, the FTC and the Justice Department have proposed new merger guidelines to keep monopolies in check. Not surprisingly, giant corporations are doing whatever they can to stop these new protections from taking effect.

"The optimist in me thinks that as the public becomes more aware of the close connections among corporate power, predation, inflation, wage suppression, and political corruption, the new antitrust movement will eventually succeed." 

~ Robert Reich (/former Sec of Labor under Pres Clinton)

Click on the link below for the details of why and how the USA has allowed this cancer on our economy and democracy:

Who's most responsible for the monopolization of America?

Litigation Funding: An Answer To Corporate Power?

"Litigation funding involves the agreement of a third party (with no prior connection to the litigation) to finance all or part of the legal costs of certain litigation, in return for a percentage of any damages recovered should the funded litigant be successful."

Click on the link below for a "60 minutes" segment presenting the pros and cons of this recent attempt to help the "small guy" in corporate legal disputes:

More investors fund lawsuits, as rules and transparency lag behind

Sorry To Be The One To Spoil Super Bowl Sunday

"With tomorrow’s Super Bowl demanding our attention, I thought it an appropriate time to point out another way billionaires have been siphoning off our tax dollars into their bank accounts: sports stadiums. And if we don’t play ball, they’ll take our favorite teams away.

"Ever notice how there never seems to be enough money to build public infrastructure like mass transit lines and better schools? And yet, when a multi-billion-dollar sports team demands a new stadium, our local governments are happy to oblige."

Click on the link below for one reason I have lost much of my enthusiasm for Big Time sports:

The Sports Stadium Scam

Another Negative Regarding Cryptocurrency

"Many people of color believe that cryptocurrency is going free them from financial slavery. But I'm not sure it's the next underground railroad."

Anyone who follows my posts knows of my general skepticism of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency. In addition to what I have previously said, there is a particularly negative impact on the low-income and racial minority communities. Click on the link below for details:

Cryptocurrency is not the financial promised land

Do Democrats Walk The Talk?

"It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. 

"But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? 

"In many states — including California, New York, and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. 

"In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. 

"Instead of asking, 'What’s the matter with Kansas?' Democrats need to spend more time pondering, 'What’s the matter with California?'”

Click on the link below for some humbling truth for Democrats:

Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion

Economic Inequality And The Future Of The USA

"The wealthy now own more of the economy than at any time since the 1920s. Meanwhile, millions in this country are barely scraping by.

"Closing our staggering wealth gap isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s essential to save our economy from collapse."

Take 5 minutes to watch this video if you want to really understand the crisis:

The Real Reason The Economy May Collapse

Race, Wealth, And Taxes

"Racial hierarchy in America is deeply embedded in big structural institutions. From housing to criminal justice to education, there are decades of scholarly work and research dissecting the lasting legacies of policies that disproportionately disenfranchise people of color. Now, tax law scholar Dorothy A. Brown has a mind-blowing new book about race and tax, uncovering the ways the tax code is constructed to build white wealth while impoverishing black Americans. In a conversation that is engaging, enlightening, and even laugh out loud funny (seriously), Brown lays out the culmination of her life’s work and explains why now could be the time to fix the system."

Click on the link before for a podcast on the subject:

The Whiteness of Wealth

Inequality: Politics Over Science

Trump and the rest of the Republican party are tone-deaf regarding what is needed to improve the enormous gap between the rich and poor in the USA. The two articles below present the issue from a scientific/evidence perspective:

Click on the links below:

Tax Cuts for the Rich Will Exacerbate Inequality

The marginal propensity of consumption

10 Myths About The Racial Wealth Gap

"— evidenced by decades of reporting from the Federal Reserve System, U.S. Department of Labor, Department of Commerce and various academic and professional studies — is that the wealth gap is the product of centuries of inequality and racism that has grown too large to be impacted significantly by individual actions, achievements or choices."

Click on the link below:

Evidence over ideology regarding the racial wealth gap

Cutting Through Trump's Economic BS

"Those factors have contributed to the United States having a higher level of income inequality and a larger share of low-income residents than almost any other advanced nation. Only Spain and Greece, whose economies have been ravaged by the euro-zone crisis, have more households earning less than half the nation’s median income — an indicator that unusually large numbers of people either are poor or close to being poor."

Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world.

How the retired are really doing under Republican economics.

An answer to the failed "Trickle Down" economics 

(Anders Janmyr)

Addressing The Problems In Larger Cities

My adopted home town of Charlotte, NC has a good reputation in some areas but in other areas, not so much. Thus, I would say it is a typical growing community in the USA.  The following article is enlightening regarding how one larger community is dealing with its challenges.

The 'tragic gap' is where it's at