Posts tagged wealth
Cognitive Dissonance
"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!" -- Allen Ginsberg
One percent of aristocats control over 80% of the cheeseburgers. True facts, y’all.
Billionaire Romney Backer: The Ultrawealthy Have An ‘Insufficient Influence’ Over Politics
Are you fucking kidding me? Because I’m sure that’s exactly the problem.
Just for Ken Griffin and Mitt Romney, it’s “Save the Rich” by Garfunkel and Oates:
Lyrics here.
(Source: cognitivedissonance)
You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.
I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.
Mitt Romney, on Wednesday’s Today Show, discussing criticism of Wall Street and the rich. In other words, “Hey, poor people. Y’all are just jealous.”
Funny that. A Pew Poll released yesterday shows nearly two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009. Also, participants identified the conflict between rich and poor as the largest, strong source of conflict in society:
If Romney is to be believed, at least two-thirds of Americans are just jealous.
On the 1% advocating for the 99%
The red and blue is not be taken as representative of political party. However, it IS an interesting breakdown of where the interests of the US Congress fall. Alan Grayson has also pointed to lobbying influence as well. At a 2010 conference, Grayson said, “We’re now in a situation where a lobbyist can walk into my office…and say, ‘I’ve got five million dollars to spend, and I can spend it for you or against you. Which do you prefer?’”
Much has also been made of Occupy Wall Street promoters like Michael Moore being in the 1%, so why don’t they just give away all of their money and make everyone equal, etc… I’m tired of this strawman counter. That’s like telling a group of physicians concerned about the situation in Appalachia regarding medical care to stop advocating for change, and to instead donate all their time, money, and supplies to fixing it, or else they are an illegitimate organization and have no right to bitch.
Moore has given generously to charity, including 60% of the profits from Fahrenheit 9/11, he donates half of his royalties from books sold at local bookstores to local libraries (plus the bookstores running the events have all agreed to donate $1 from their sales price) at each stop on his recent book tour, he works with several progressive organizations and with unions, and began the non-profit, mostly volunteer-run Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan - among other efforts. Here, he further explains his thoughts on charity to Sean Hannity.
So let’s pretend for a moment that the rich redistribute to the jobless of their own free will. Then what? Do jobs magically appear out of thin air? The need never re-occurs?
Moore explains his viewpoint well on being a member of the 1% and fighting for the 99% in a post entitled “Life Among The 1%” [emphasis mine]:
“How can you claim to be for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!” It’s like asking: “You’ve never had sex with another man - how can you be for gay marriage?!” I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: “Hey! You’re not black! You’re not being lynched! Why are you with the blacks?!”). It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot process. “Kanye West makes millions! What’s he doing at Occupy Wall Street?!” Exactly - he’s down there demanding that his taxes be raised. That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands of those who are well off.
Anyhow, money is not electing Michael Moore. However, money is electing those who set the policies leading to such wealth disparity in this country. We must pay attention to those who’ve sold us out and continued the same policies since before many in my generation were even born. Campaign finance reform is crucial, and perhaps we should begin rethinking this whole neoliberal, late capitalism thing.
If your biggest bone to pick with Occupy Wall Street is that Michael Moore is advocating for it, we’re well on our way to winning.
(Source: cognitivedissonance)
Wall Street denizens mock Occupy Wall Street protesters by sipping champagne. Really. Gawker first discussed this with a posting about the Facebook event trying to organize the upper crust:
As the first week of the #occupywallstreet protest against corporate stuff draws to a close, some classy capitalists have decided to dust off their favorite Nixon-era jargon and hold a champagne-soaked counter-protest of their own. Free laxative-enriched muffins for all “hippies,” LOL.
A “pro-business Democrat” tipster sent us some screenshots of the Facebook event page for today’s corporate counter-protest, titled “Anti Hippy Protester Champagne Toast on Wall Street.”
Well, here’s the video. Police brutality, counter-protesting with champagne toasts… Who says there’s a class war? Nothing to see here, folks. </sarcasm>
The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it’s been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.
Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US’ 14.3 trillion dollar debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above 9%, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programs that are the backbone of the US’s social safety net, and whether to raise taxes — or to cut them further.
The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the United States has never seemed so divided — both politically and economically.
How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top 1% impacting the other 99% of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest.
This episode of Fault Lines first aired on Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2011 at 0930 GMT.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AJFaultLines
Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/AJFaultLines
Follow us on Tumblr: http://ajfaultlines.tumblr.com
Watch this. Now. Share it far and wide.
Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics
The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.
These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.
The Pew Research analysis finds that, in percentage terms, the bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.
As a result of these declines, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009; the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth; and the typical white household had $113,149.
With liberty and justice for some… equal opportunity my ass. I know, that as a white woman, no matter what happens, I still have an advantage called white privilege. That disgusts me. We must work for equality for all people if we ever want to be an equal opportunity society. It’s not identity politics - it’s human rights.
