Land Of Inequality
I've been going over to Watching America for years now, primarily because I want to see how the rest of the world views us, but also because I want to see news and analysis that is simply not being provided by our own press. Yesterday, I found this article from Germany's Die Tageszeitung which gives an excellent take on some of the reasons why the Occupy Wall Street movement has been gaining steam in this country.
Those up there on Wall Street continue to make themselves richer, while the majority of the population is battered by the crisis. This feeling that drives many of the protesters in New York and other U.S. cities does not deceive. The U.S. is a land of inequality — and the inequality is growing by leaps and bounds.
Only at first look does the development appear quite good. Before the outbreak of the financial crisis, from 2006 to 2007, incomes rose a steady 3.7 percent. Yet, that is just the average. In reality the increases for the most part went to those who were at the very top of the income ladder.
To CEOs, for example, whose salaries are 185 times that of an average worker’s wages. The top 1 percent of households saw a rise of almost 7 percent and so received 24 percent of the total earned income of Americans. [Emphasis added]
Bingo! That gets it nicely, all the way around. It reminds me of a tee shirt my father once wore when working out in the yard: "The faster I work, the behinder I get." That's the way the other 99% of us feel each month when the bills come due, even if we are fortunate enough to have a job (or two or three part-time jobs). In the mean time, CEOs who get fired for doing a lousy job for their companies walk away with an addition $15 million to make their forced exits a little less painful.
And this is why those standing vigil in New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and all the other cities coming on line are not just disaffected twenty-something hippies. There are elders in their fifties and sixties, and those without jobs in their thirties and forties with no hope of finding one at this point, and returning veterans from two abominable wars who can't find jobs either. There are teachers and cops and firefighters and school nurses who have seen their pensions and collective bargaining rights wiped out by local governments which don't have the money to continue paying them because the economy sank under the weight of the frauds perpetrated by the banksters.
And the most politicians in the pay of those banksters can come up with is "Corporations are people, too."
Well, our owners are beginning to get nervous, and they should be. If this movement by the rest of us gets much bigger, they are in trouble.
Those up there on Wall Street continue to make themselves richer, while the majority of the population is battered by the crisis. This feeling that drives many of the protesters in New York and other U.S. cities does not deceive. The U.S. is a land of inequality — and the inequality is growing by leaps and bounds.
Only at first look does the development appear quite good. Before the outbreak of the financial crisis, from 2006 to 2007, incomes rose a steady 3.7 percent. Yet, that is just the average. In reality the increases for the most part went to those who were at the very top of the income ladder.
To CEOs, for example, whose salaries are 185 times that of an average worker’s wages. The top 1 percent of households saw a rise of almost 7 percent and so received 24 percent of the total earned income of Americans. [Emphasis added]
Bingo! That gets it nicely, all the way around. It reminds me of a tee shirt my father once wore when working out in the yard: "The faster I work, the behinder I get." That's the way the other 99% of us feel each month when the bills come due, even if we are fortunate enough to have a job (or two or three part-time jobs). In the mean time, CEOs who get fired for doing a lousy job for their companies walk away with an addition $15 million to make their forced exits a little less painful.
And this is why those standing vigil in New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Portland, and all the other cities coming on line are not just disaffected twenty-something hippies. There are elders in their fifties and sixties, and those without jobs in their thirties and forties with no hope of finding one at this point, and returning veterans from two abominable wars who can't find jobs either. There are teachers and cops and firefighters and school nurses who have seen their pensions and collective bargaining rights wiped out by local governments which don't have the money to continue paying them because the economy sank under the weight of the frauds perpetrated by the banksters.
And the most politicians in the pay of those banksters can come up with is "Corporations are people, too."
Well, our owners are beginning to get nervous, and they should be. If this movement by the rest of us gets much bigger, they are in trouble.
Labels: Economic Justice, Our Owners
posted by Diane at 11:00 AM
1 Comments:
And the most politicians in the pay of those banksters can come up with is "Corporations are people, too."
But you have to give discredit to our corporate media...right after proclaiming that a people waving racist signs (and who voted for Bush both times) are a 'genuine grass-roots movement of real Americans", they've all suddenly decided that O.W.S. is a smelly bunch of hippies.
Apparently, even a gram of creativity disqualifies one from employment in the corporate press.
~
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