Winning

Well, the news this weekend, if you haven't already heard, is all about Joseph Stiglitz writing and going all over TV proclaiming America is all "of the 1% , by the 1% and for the 1%."  He's busy selling his book, but it's always a good thing when a Nobel laureate starts talking about the same thing I've been thinking about for the last year or so.  Of course his prize was given for work in Economics, and that's pretty much the only field where you can be wrong three hundred times in a row and then be anointed "Hero of all Time" if you get it right just once.

All my life I've prayed for a gig like that - I'm usually wrong exactly that many times for every one time I'm right.  I must have been in the wrong profession because mostly I've never been anointed Hero of anything, and in fact, most often I've been booed.  Should've grown a beard instead of a moustache.  Would've looked more inscrutable or something.  A beard and a mumbling scowl works wonders for the income.  A bow tie often helps, but it would not have helped me.  I'd have strangled with one of those darn things around my neck, and that's not a recipe for success.

His whole point is there is more inequality in the good ol' US of A, in terms of rich Vs. poor, than in almost anywhere else in the world.  Democracy is just a dodge, used to throw the lower 80% of the masses of workers off guard, while their entire lives are stolen from them.  Now I have never gone that far, but I didn't get as much education as he did either.  I'm sure any judge would look at the two of us and declare him "winner."  Except for rugged good looks.  I rule there, and if I were't so dag-blamed fat, I'd be downright handsome. 

An easy way to find the truth of his arguments is to look around you.  I'm personal friends with a bunch of folks who read this blog - goodness only knows why they read it - certainly not to learn anything from me.  On a scale where 1 equals "Learns from most everybody he knows" to 10 equals "Teaches most everybody he knows," my rating is 2.  I can still teach Muffy a thing or two.

Because I have known them so long, I know most of my friends can pay their bills and send their kids to school, but still make car payments and wonder about retirement and medical expenses.  And ya know something?  Most of them live in households that have six figure incomes, which puts them firmly in the top 15%  of earners in this country!  $150,000 per year?  That's the top 6%.  $200.000 per year?  Top 3% .    Ask any one of these friends of mine and they'll tell you they're not rich.  And, they're not.  They have bills to pay. 

Just try to imagine life at the other end of this spectrum.  I'm not sure my friends could get by on the $36,000-57,650 per year the middle twenty percent of folks in this country earn and certainly not with the less than $20,000 the bottom 20% live on. 

I'll tell you who is rich.  The 1% that Joe S. is talking about who, as of 2007, own 43% of the nations wealth.  Here's an easy way to think of it.  Imagine 1000 one dollar bills and 100 people. Give 430 of those dollar bills to one person.  Give each of the next nine people 44 of  them.  The next group, all ten of them, numbers 11 through 20 in line, include most of my friends and they each get 10 dollars.  Give everybody else two quarters and two dimes.  Boys and girls, that's the way it was split in America four years ago and it's worse now.  We're all fighting for the last seventy cents.  And that is why I worry about revolution.

For some reason that I fail to understand, the wealthy want even more, and right now are plotting tax and budget "reform" that will take more taxes from you and lessen theirs.  They will get their way because all of us will be convinced the only way to eliminate the deficit is for the lower income people to pay more taxes and the poor in this great nation must do with even less. That means Americans will starve, and a father will pick up a gun and take the food his children need to live.  That one act by one father with a starving family will repeat again and again until there is no law.  End of story.


I looked around a bit for some neat charts and graphs and such, with easy to understand explanations to illustrate what ol' Joe was talking about.  About the best I found is here. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html 
Take a look at these charts and spend a little time reading what it's all about.  I have no answers, but maybe one of you can figure out what needs to be done.

Authors Note.  If you're at all interested in this topic, please take time to follow the link I've included.  I really did spend quite some time to make it easy for you to gain a little perspective about what the power structure in this country is all about.  The discussion on this link is the clearest I've seen, and well worth the hour or so it will take to digest the mountain of information you will find there.