America's Class Problem

[one...two...tree 2,762]

A "working class hero," John Lennon told us in his song of that title, "is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you're so clever and classless and free/ But you're still fvcking peasants as far as I can see."

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: "Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

That is the harsh reality obscured by the media's focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty—which smartphone to purchase—for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much homeownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused.

Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

It is a reality further obscured by the academic elite, led by economists who receive enormous payoffs from Wall Street in speaking and consulting fees, and their less privileged university colleagues who are so often dependent upon wealthy sponsors for their research funding. Then there are the media, which are indistinguishable parts of the corporate-owned culture and which with rare exception pretend that we are all in the same lifeboat while they fawn in their coverage of those who bilk us and also dispense fat fees to top pundits. Complementing all that is the dark distraction of the faux populists, led by tea party demagogues, who blame unions and immigrants for the crimes of Wall Street hustlers.

My book on the banking meltdown, "The Great American Stickup," begins with the following words. "They did it. Yes, there is a 'they': the captains of finance, their lobbyists, and allies among leading politicians of both parties, who together destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning splendidly. …" They got to rewrite the laws to enable their massive greed over everything from the tax codes to the sale of toxic derivatives over the past quarter century, smashing the American middle class and with it the nation's experiment in democracy.

The lobbyists are deliberately bipartisan in their bribery, and the authors of our demise are equally marked as Democrats and Republicans. Ronald Reagan first effectively sang the siren song of ending government's role in corporate crime prevention, but it was Democrat Bill Clinton who accomplished much of that goal. It is the enduring conceit of the top Democratic leaders that they are valiantly holding back the forces of evil when they actually have continuously been complicit.

The veterans of the Clinton years, so prominent in the Obama administration, still deny their role in the disaster of the last 25 years. Yet the sad tale of income inequality that Stiglitz laments is as much a result of their policies as those of their Republican rivals. In one of the best studies of this growing gap in income, economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty found that during Clinton's tenure in the White House the income of the top 1 percent increased by 10.1 percent per year, while that of the other 99 percent of Americans increased by only 2.4 percent a year. Thanks to President Clinton's deregulation and the save-the-rich policies of George W. Bush, the situation deteriorated further from 2002 to 2006, a period in which the top 1 percent increased its income 11 percent annually while the rest of Americans had a truly paltry gain of 1 percent per year.

And that was before the meltdown that wiped out the jobs and home values of so many tens of millions of American families. "The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles," Stiglitz concludes, "but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

http://www.thenation...s-class-problem

[Ironman140 45]

Don't worry the government will put us all in the same class... The entitlement class from cradle to grave

[Captain Oates 911]

Americans are turkeys voting for thanksgiving

A tiny percentage are ripping off all the money and shutting down regulation of food and hygiene and pollution.

.. and the lower classes vote Republican !!!

They think that if they are nice to rich people then they will be looked after...it's the sort of cringing supplication that poor mill workers used to have so its not new

The truth is that the moneyed classes will take everything they can with no mercy and no gratitude for the vote of the victims at the bottom of society

I first met this weird phenomenon when my mother told me she voted right wing - the factory owners who she worked for as a slave tea lady treated her with derision yet she voted for them. It's weird but has always been the case.

I lived in a socialist country (England) for decades and it was great and I made a heap of money too as I was GIVEN health and education

Now I live in the US and I feel guilty when I look at how the lower classes are misused and denied the 'right' to health care. These lower classes are so under-educated and brainwashed that they don't even realise it and vote for their tormentors - their enemies

Makes me feel sad for the rest

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Americans have no class. That is what makes us great. You can belch and fart and nobody that matters cares.

[Danno 1,228]

Americans are turkeys voting for thanksgiving

A tiny percentage are ripping off all the money and shutting down regulation of food and hygiene and pollution.

.. and the lower classes vote Republican !!!

They think that if they are nice to rich people then they will be looked after...it's the sort of cringing supplication that poor mill workers used to have so its not new

The truth is that the moneyed classes will take everything they can with no mercy and no gratitude for the vote of the victims at the bottom of society

I first met this weird phenomenon when my mother told me she voted right wing - the factory owners who she worked for as a slave tea lady treated her with derision yet she voted for them. It's weird but has always been the case.

I lived in a socialist country (England) for decades and it was great and I made a heap of money too as I was GIVEN health and education

Now I live in the US and I feel guilty when I look at how the lower classes are misused and denied the 'right' to health care. These lower classes are so under-educated and brainwashed that they don't even realise it and vote for their tormentors - their enemies

Makes me feel sad for the rest

- When does this "taking" begin? SInce my people landed on these shores we have done better with each generation, is this some trick to disarm us?

-How are the Lower classes denied the right to healthcare when theirs is provided for them? And with all that guilt you feel about it, what have you done to lift another mans burden? (other than vote of course).

[Pooky 3,787]

I lived in a socialist country (England) for decades and it was great and I made a heap of money too as I was GIVEN health and education

I'm sure those pesky taxes and National Insurance contributions went on some of that. Or maybe your memory is going a little?

Thing is, nothing was "free", but with deductions at source, you didn't notice the NI going, but appreciated what it paid for.

[^_^ 5,021]

SInce my people landed on these shores we have done better with each generation, is this some trick to disarm us?

[Danno 1,228]

AJ has your experience been different?