In the United States today, the wealthiest 1% of Americans
have a greater net worth than the bottom 90% combined.
The bottom 50% of income earners
own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.
Over 50% of stocks and bonds are owned by the 1%.
56% of all income gains went to the top 1%.
In the last 8 years the 1% gained $6.75 million each,
the poorest 50% of American adults lost an average of $3,000 each.
The wages of America’s poorest 50%
have remained stagnant for 40 years.
Corporations have benefited from 75 years of public funding
for technologies that are now replacing working people with robots.
Amazon paid absolutely zero taxes in 2017.
Apple, Google and Microsoft have tens of billions in overseas tax havens.
Hunter Harrison, former CEO of railroad giant CSX,
received a $230 million pay package for cutting 17,000 jobs.
In 1950, the ratio of a CEO’s wages was 30% more than a worker.
Since 2000, the ratio is between 300 to 500% to one.
The 1% ers view these figures as real progress.
The GOP and the 1% that owns it aren’t interested
in growing the economy only in taking a bigger piece of it.
If they were interested in growing the economy for all
they would invest in education, infrastructure and share
part of that growth with the workers who built it.
Instead they are only interested in raising their income
and in being able to cut their own tax rates.
Out of 11,000 lobbyist active in D.C.
6,242 work at cutting taxes with the goal
of reducing corporate tax rates,
The right characterizes increasing taxes on the wealthy as stealing?
They are the ones who are stealing, with their disregard for the social costs
of eliminating the environmental and financial regulations that protect us
and cutting education which ends up harming our children’s future.
They also send our sons and daughters off to die
in illegal, unnecessary wars that aren’t paid for.
Billionaire Warren Buffet said, “There’s class warfare, all right,
but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
In a debate about the inequity of CEO’s making 100’s of times the money
of workers Newt Gingrich said, that the salary of New York City janitors is obscene.
The 1% owns the media and it serves to do their bidding.
They use it to give you bumper sticker size mantras
to keep them on top like, “Healthcare for all is Socialism”
and that “Big government is bad.”
When you shrink government who wins, who loses?
The rich continue to win, the poor continue to lose.
The 1% has succeeded in dividing us based on non-economic issues
such as race, religion, abortion, gay marriage, guns etc.
Republicans regulating women’s bodies, and attacking
gays and immigrants is a NO-CLASS War.
If we stuck to voting based on sound and fair economics
(and not emotional hot-button issues),
we could diminish the power of the 1% substantially.
These figures should give us righteous anger and rage.
In dealings with people on a daily basis, I see little of either.
Many people agree we are getting screwed but they
are not angry enough to even vote in many cases.
The 6 heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have more wealth
than the bottom 93 million Americans while,
Wal-Mart doesn’t pay their workers a livable wage.
Billionaire hedge-fund managers,
who only pay 15% in taxes,
helped crash the economy and squirrel away
their money in offshore tax havens.
Who makes government tax policy?
Half the members of Congress are millionaires,
and they all rely on millionaires and large corporations
for campaign contributions to get them elected.
If we point out these facts we are labeled,
class warriors and Communists.
Meanwhile, the wealthy trash and go after
postmen, city workers, firefighters and cops.
They claim paying them a pension and benefits
is an entitlement they haven’t earned.
The wealthy hate unions fighting for a fair wage for teachers.
They claim these unions have destroyed the US education system,
not the relentless defunding by the congressional right wing.
When the wealthy do these things they claim it isn’t class warfare.
A conservative Supreme Court elected a president
and also ruled that corporations are people.
This ruling was called, “Citizens United.”
It gave the 1% free rein to buy our politicians.
They hire lobbyist to write
legislation favoring the 1%.
Unlike real people corporations
can’t be drafted, called to jury duty,
or in the case of two-thirds of them,
don’t have to pay taxes.
When the GOP continues to claim
they don’t negotiate with terrorists
they don’t include the corporations
that owns them lock stock and barrel.
That is why our planet our environment,
our very health and children’s future
is all for sale on the auction block.
The public doesn’t have enough money
to even qualify for a bidder’s card.
Somehow Bible thumpers always miss
sections about how we are our brothers’ keeper
and how a camel has a better chance of
getting thru the eye of a needle
than a rich man has of getting into heaven.
I believe the wealthy have scientists working on
shrinking camels and building giant needles.
If they actually read the Bible they’d learn that
being stewards of the planet usually doesn’t include
polluting, destroying and exploiting it for profit.
The whole weight of the world
is on the backs of the working-class
and yet we carry no weight
and are considered dead weight.
That’s because Wall Street, the military,
corporate farms and Big Pharma
have rigged the Capitalist game.
They are the salesman and they only have need
for you as long as you buy their goods.
They will always bite the hands that feed them
as they are snakes and the customers are sheep.
Congress protected bankers who went bankrupt
and foreclosed on the public and had us bail them out.
They protect CEO’s who offshore jobs,
and have no loyalty to our nation.
Congressional committees made up of men
attack women’s reproductive rights.
Paul Ryan and others want to gut
Social Security and Medicare
benefits for retirees and disabled people.
The environment was attacked with the passage
of the Keystone XL Pipeline Bill
it will benefit Canada and send oil to China
and U.S. taxpayers will pay for any spills.
The GOP has gone to war against
science and scientific integrity.
They passed a bill forbidding scientist
from advising the EPA on their own research.
It now instead takes advice from so called, experts
paid by corporations who want to block regulations.
The Tea Party was funded by the 1%.
Together they and President Trump
have helped turn race against race,
the middle class against the poor
and private sector workers against public sector workers.
As the middle class has become poorer their only way
to hang on to some of their money is to vote against levies
that would benefit their local communities.
This is local voting against our own self interest
and is destroying communities across America.
Trump wins an election by promising jobs.
This while he and his daughter have products
with their names on them made in Chinese sweatshops.
High time to realize that our representatives
do not represent us or our children’s future.
Understanding our situation
and replacing complacency
with action is the catalyst
for any real change.
Any small act of kindness you can do
without expecting a reward is something
the wealthy will never understand.
To do so is an act of revolution
against their system of greed.
That and learning about the political agenda
of the places you spend your money
is the weapon of mass destruction
that the powers that be fear most.
They want you to fear losing all that you have.
They don’t want you to realize what you could have
by replacing fear with hope and action.
It’s a bottom up revolution,
not to take the power
but to share power with each other.
We can be a force of good when we walk together
in solidarity powered by peace and love.
As the late historian Howard Zinn said,
”They have the guns we have the poets.
Therefore, we will win.
John Butler Trio: “Revolution”
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” ~ Henry Ford
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