Timely, Thanksgiving Day Reminder of Trickle Down Economics

 If "trickle-down economics" is or were so great.

Meanwhile, this is a line for food recently in our own Dallas, Texas.

A growing number of Americans are going hungry

26 million now say they don’t have enough to

eat, as the pandemic worsens and holidays near

54 million Americans are going hungry

40 million Americans are at risk of eviction

Thanks, Senator McConnell.

Thanks, Republicans.

Quote of the Day -- On Capitalism

We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill, and lie to make money. They throw poor people out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars for profit, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power.

Chris Hedges

America is an Oligarchy

From Professor Robert Reich's Facebook page today.

And a plutocracy. And a kakistocracy. And more.

Oh, Yeah. Tax the Already-Wealthy

I am, in fact, in favor of what some people claim to be a new thought of eliminating the possibility of being a billionaire, I have to say. Strongly in favor.

For anyone who knows me, this will come as no surprise.

If you're worth 999 million dollars---isn't that enough?

What could you possibly want that isn't attainable for you at that level of wealth?

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, et. al, is worth an estimated $130.7 billion dollars.

Not only that, but he had to be recently publicly shamed into giving his employees a raise up to a whopping $15 per hour. And even then, he took some away from their benefits plan. That is some chutzpah.

Seriously.

That is insane.

And immoral. Just obscene.

There are people, not just in your own nation but across the planet that are hungry, indeed, starving, literally, homeless and a lot more--but you need, somehow, a billion dollars? And/or more?

Really?

Besides the poor of the nation and world, we should all keep in mind, as has been said elsewhere, many times, that when the US was collecting 90% and 70% taxes of the uber-wealthy, we were a far stronger nation, we built a national highway system and went to the moon, among all else.

So yeah, let's do this.

Links:

Yes, Tax the Rich. But Do It Right

Fact Sheet: Taxing Wealthy Americans 

Tax the rich: Millionaires' tax popular among public

Poll: Majority approve of Warren wealth tax

Rich Class fighting 99%, winning big-time 

Quote of the Day -- On This Day, 1938

True then, a lesson for us, still.

"The first truth is that the liberty of a Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

--US President Franklin D. Roosevelt: April 29, 1938

Link:   Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies

We All Know What the Big Problem In Government Is

If you think about it, we all know what's wrong with our government.

It's the money.

It's the money buying our elections, buying our representatives, buying their---our---legislation and so, buying our laws and finally, our government.

It all radiates out from there.

I thought of it again today, when I saw this: 

The POLITICO 100: Billionaires dominate 2016

Economist/professor/author Robert Reich put it this way today:

So far in the 2016 election, the 100 biggest donors have contributed $195 million ― more than the $155 million contributed by the two million smallest donors combined (according to an analysis of campaign data by “Politico.”) The five Republican members of the Supreme Court who in “Citizens United” contended they were protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans were obviously doing no such thing. They were drowning the First Amendment rights of the vast majority.

The top twenty are below. (The “Politico” article lists all 100.) They have not donated out of the goodness of their hearts, or their concern for a better America. These are investments -- no different from their other investments. If their candidates win, they will get substantial returns.

1. Wilks Family $15,000,000

2. Robert Mercer $12,500,000

3. Hank Greenberg $10,010,000

4. Toby Neugebauer $10,001,000

5. George Soros $8,025,000

6. Richard & Elizabeth Uihlein $6,550,000

7. Norman Braman $6,100,000

8. Kelcy Warren $6,000,000

9. Paul Singer $5,608,213

10. Tom Steyer $5,042,744

11. Haim and Cheryl Saban $5,000,002

12. Diane Hendricks $5,000,000

13. Robert McNair $4,500,000

14. Steve & Alexandra Cohen $4,000,000

15. Jerrold Perenchio $3,972,127

16. Mike Fernandez $3,370,520

17. Ken Griffin $3,150,000 

18. Ronald Cameron $3,055,000

19. Larry Ellison $3,000,000

20. Donald Sussman $3,000,000

And that's just the top 20.  Can you imagine giving or being able to give 3 million or 5 million or 12 or 15 million dollars away, just so you could get the governement representation and legislation you like and want? Heck, most of us would like to imagine what it's like to even HAVE 1 million dollars, let alone the luxury of being able to give it away.

And Left, Right, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, Democrat, we all know what the problem is in government in our nation. Everyone but the already-wealthy and corporations know what the problem is, know how to fix it and want the solution, too.

And so, to do this, to truly Get the Big, Ugly Money Out of Our Election System and Government, we have got to do at least two things.  We have to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling first and then end campaign contributions.  Entirely.  All of them. Enough of that talk of ending "dark money" that we don't know who is giving. End it all. Shut it down.  It's totally doable.

But it has to come from us. We have to demand it. We have to end it And we have to end it soon as possible.

Links:   Meet the super-rich driving the 2016 election

Big money breaks out

Oh, It's "Wealth Distribution", All Right

Right Wingers and Republicans always claim that taxing and taxes and government regulations and other things from Democrats or Progressives are "wealth redistribution" and that they and we want nothing whatever of it.

But they're all for this kind of weath distribution, for sure.

How Wealth Distribution Works

Or how it could work.  And how it should work.

Where We Are, Where We Could Be

What we're actually capable of, now.

If only we'd work together.

Imagine.

On the Latest Republican Budget Plan

They are nothing if not consistent.

Heartless, greedy and selfish but consistent.

“You should be very, very angry”: Paul Krugman torches GOP’s newbudgets

Paul Krugman: GOP budget: Trillion-dollar fraudsters

14 Reasons Why House and Senate Republicans Have Declared Economic War On Average Americans

Quote of the day -- on Capitalism

Imagine if he were alive today, to see how we and our nations function.

y Cat

Quote of the day -- On Wealth Inequality

On Why We Need To End Campaign Contributions

Reads like Marx, not Einstein.

Quote of the day -- on fairness

Lots of bad news lately for America

It seems, of late, there is a great deal of reporting on the wealthy, even the very wealthy, ini our country.

And it's about time.

With their ability and proclivity to buy our representatives and their legislation and so, our laws and government, I think it important to know things like what they're doing, how our system got this way and, perhaps most importantly, how we can and do get out of this god-awful, so-corrupt way of not really running the country for the people and as we should.

Here's the first:

Matt Taibbi's New Book Is a Striking Study of How the Rich Are Never Punished for Their Crimes

'The Divide' is a riveting account of how the 1% get away with pretty much whatever they want

Matt Taibbi has been doing a fantastic job of reporting on Wall Street and the brokers and hedge fund managers and the like, who brought the nation's and world's economies to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. He continues that work, fortunately for us, here.

A second article, this from Bill Moyers:

What the 1% Don't Want You to Know

A brief description:

The median pay for the top 100 highest-paid CEOs at America’s publicly traded companies was a handsome $13.9 million in 2013. That’s a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new Equilar pay studyfor The New York Times.

These types of jumps in executive compensation may have more of an effect on our widening income inequality than previously thought. A new book that’s the talk of academia and the media, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, a 42-year-old who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, shows that two-thirds of America’s increase in income inequality over the past four decades is the result of steep raises given to the country’s highest earners.

This week, Bill talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, about Piketty’s “magnificent” new book.

“What Piketty’s really done now is he said, ‘Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on.’ He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth.”

Krugman adds: “We’re seeing inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagined we’re nothing like.

As always, good and important reporting from Mr. Moyers.

Third, this article, which tells us of the results of all this power grab, corruption, bribes and "campaign contributions" in America:

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest

Some sad, likely surprising, if not frightening information:

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction.

While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.

The numbers, based on surveys conducted over the past 35 years, offer some of the most detailed publicly available comparisons for different income groups in different countries over time. They suggest that most American families are paying a steep price for high and rising income inequality.

Although economic growth in the United States continues to be as strong as in many other countries, or stronger, a small percentage of American households is fully benefiting from it. Median income in Canada pulled into a tie with median United States income in 2010 and has most likely surpassed it since then. Median incomes in Western European countries still trail those in the United States, but the gap in several — including Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden — is much smaller than it was a decade ago.

It goes on:

The findings are striking because the most commonly cited economic statistics — such as per capita gross domestic product — continue to show that the United States has maintained its lead as the world’s richest large country. But those numbers are averages, which do not capture the distribution of income. With a big share of recent income gains in this country flowing to a relatively small slice of high-earning households, most Americans are not keeping pace with their counterparts around the world.

“The idea that the median American has so much more income than the middle class in all other parts of the world is not true these days,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist who is not associated with LIS. “In 1960, we were massively richer than anyone else. In 1980, we were richer. In the 1990s, we were still richer.”

Finally, this last article, at least today, is this one, further describing America's current status:

Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy

A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.

Asking "[w]ho really rules?" researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.

I think it's important we know who we are, what we are, how we spend our money, collectively, as a nation, as in our Defense Department, what form of government we have, who rules us and where the wealth of the nation is going.

It's going, largely, to the top "1%."  

To the already-wealthy.

It's one or the other, folks

Which will it be?

It just makes sense.

It's also the decent thing to do.

And human.

And humane.

And "Christian."

Quote of the day --here's your "wealth distribution" for you

A "Christian nation"?

"While attention is focused on Syria, food stamps for the nation’s poor are about to be cut. So are funds for low-income housing.

And although jobs are slowly returning, the median wage continues to drop, adjusted for inflation. At the same time, both income and wealth continue to become more concentrated at the very top.

A single income of one of the ten richest Americans could buy housing for every homeless person in the United States for an entire year. (Based on a typical day last winter, when over 633,000 people were homeless, and the typical monthly rental cost of a unit with single room occupancy of $558 per month.)

The 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million put together. But we are not talking about any of this.

We are not debating about what’s happening to our nation. We are not raising the minimum wage or reforming our tax code or fixing our schools or getting big money out of politics. We are paralyzed at home, and now turning our attention to a potential quagmire abroad.

This is the great tragedy of our time."

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.
______________________________________

What part of that sounds vaguely Christian?


Links:  Robert Reich | Facebook

Robert Reich - Wikipedia

Quote of the day--on a higher minimum age

And to Wal-mart and every other fast food restaurant and retail store out there that's paying this sub-standard wage:

Message, song and dance for Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

Based on this news from a Kansas City Star article:

Kansas tax collections in August continue downward slide

Most of us have only one thing to say to you, Governor, one response:



Now, would you put it back the way it was?  Put the tax structure in Kansas back the way it was before you and your Right Wing, oh-so-wrong Republican pals screwed up Kansas' finances so thoroughly.

Please?