On February 1, 2015, Remuse writes on Politico:
For well over thirty years since Republican man-god Ronald Reagan declared that government is the evil destroying the great middle class, Republicans have maintained their demigod’s position that the solution to help the middle class is giving the richest Americans all of the nation’s assets and wealth. Since then, the rich have gotten richer and what was once a vibrant middle class is now less than vapor and on the verge of vanishing altogether. Instead of changing course and helping the majority of the population, Republicans still propose heaping wealth on the rich and increasing taxes on the bottom 90% of the population to complete the utter destruction of middle income earners. According to yet another report they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.
In recent data from Pew Charitable Trust research, over 70% of American households are facing regular monthly “financial strains,” and that over half of the population (55%) cannot generate enough income to cover even one month’s living expenses from savings or other liquid assets (things to sell). What that means is that the preponderance of Americans are barely making it from paycheck to paycheck and that just one bout of illness, even a temporary layoff, or other calamity means complete and utter financial ruin and poverty. This is the condition Republicans began creating 30 years ago and persist in exacerbating by their obstructionism in service to the one-percent.
According to the director of Pew’s financial security and mobility project, Erin Currier, “Our analysis finds that many American families, even those with relatively high incomes, are walking a financial tightrope. Most have little if any cushion to absorb an unexpected financial setback. It’s a precarious state that threatens not just financial security, but upward mobility.” The sad fact is that despite regular household spending falling to levels unseen since the 1990s, “half of all American families report being ‘income-constrained‘” which means their household spending is greater than or equal to their monthly income. It is the epitome of barely making it from paycheck to paycheck and it includes most families in the rapidly vanishing middle class.
Republicans continue lying that they want to help the middle class, but their adherence to trickle down robbery is increasing the income gap. Coupled with their blatant obstruction and opposition to any of President Obama’s pleas for congressional assistance such as raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, or passing legitimate jobs bills, their drive to wipe out well-paying union jobs, robbing retirees’ pensions, or help Veterans is exacerbating the rapid decline of the middle class. In particular, Republicans have fiercely fought to obstruct equal pay for women who make up nearly half of the workforce further driving the population into financial despair while the rich continue increasing their fortunes.
A report from Pew last October reported that in order for American workers to have the same buying power they had before Reagan Republicans imposed their trickle down scam, they would have to earn at least $22.41 per hour to have the same purchasing power as when the average hourly wage was $4.03 in 1979. The abomination is that as of last month, worker productivity has steadily increased by over 80% since the late seventies but wages grew by only 11 percent.
According to a report from the New York Times that put the situation in real numbers; “To maintain their buying power, middle income workers who earned $20,000 in 1970 would have had to make $42,474 in 1980, $67,371 in 1990, $88,763 in 2000, $112,400 in 2010 and $122,388 today.” America’s median income has been steadily declining since the Republican recession and is about $48,500; what an upper-middle class American family would have earned in 1980 before the trickle down scam was fully in place. No “average American worker” is earning anywhere near $122, 388 today and if they were they would barely be keeping pace with late 1970’s buying power.
Republicans claim this horrid financial situation is due to the President’s economic policies and that corporate America is suffering higher taxes and “job-killing regulations” forcing corporations to pay wages comparable to those of 30 or 40 years ago. Republicans like Paul Ryan claim that the other reason corporations pay Americans insufferable wages is because of ‘entitlements,’ socialism, and Obama’s liberal tax and spending policies. Of course all of the Republican claims are lies according to a report from last year revealing that “corporate profits are at their highest levels in at least 85 years while employee compensation is at the lowest in 65 years.” It is upward redistribution of income that Republicans work tirelessly to perpetuate until the bottom 99% have nothing left to give.
Also, during the first five years of the Obama Administration, corporate profits averaged nearly 9.3 percent of GDP; two full points higher than either Clinton or George W. Bush and are the highest corporate profit rates of all time. That is not all. The stock market under President Obama recorded all-time highs with annual gains of 17.7 percent that is “the highest of ANY previous President.” The horrid financial situation for the great majority of Americans is NOT because the economy has failed to recover under the Obama Administration; it is because of Republican policies supporting corporate greed at the expense of the great majority of the American people who continue sliding into poverty.
According to a CBS News report six months ago, since the onset of the recession there are “2.3 million more lower-wage workers” and “1.2 million fewer mid and higher-wage jobs than before the Bush-Republican Great Recession.” The report also noted that in all occupations real wages have declined since 2009 and there is little chance they will increase anytime soon despite President Obama’s calls for Republicans to help the American people.
Now that the Koch brothers control Congress, there is no chance Republicans will do anything other than continue helping the rich “keep their boots on the throats of the American people.” Because with only 70% of the population in financial distress, there is still 28% of the population to send into poverty and at least a two-year window for the Koch Congress to complete their long-cherished goal of a nation of peasants serving the wealthy elite.
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/02/01/gop-trickle-70-americans-facing-financial-calamity.html
Gary Reber Comments:
This should be an eye-opening article and WAKE UP call to the plubs (that’s most of the American population), who are continually subject to wage slavery and welfare slavery perpetrated by an unjust system that is rigged to concentrate wealth-creation, and thus income-generation among the 1 percent of the population).
Why, because our monetary and finance system is based on past savings. This limits how much prosperity can be achieved that benefits EVERY citizen, and who can achieve it.
The present reality is that logically, nothing can be done to broaden prosperity. Why? Because if the pool of past savings is the ONLY source of financing, how much can be financed depends on how much has been withheld from consumption. The economic dilemma is that producers ONLY invest in new physical capital asset formation in response to increases in consumption, but if the ONLY source of financing for new capital formation is DECREASES in consumption, there is either no financing, or no need for financing.
Another way of saying this is if everyone withheld from consumption and saved, there would not be enough “customers with money” to create demand for financing new capital formation. Thus, the economy becomes stagnant with at best anemic growth.
Who can control the outcome within the current system structure? Either the rich, the wealthy capital asset ownership class, who have the capacity to save where the rest of us do not, or the State, which can coercively take what others have in the way of savings, either directly through the tax extraction system, or indirectly by inflating the currency. Either way, those who OWN no capital assets end up the losers with no control except for the ballet box, which sadly is seldom effective due to lack of leadership to reform the system.
In order to make the losers winners requires that the system be reformed so that the financing of new capital assets is based on the present value of that which can be produced in the future, rather than ONLY on which has been withheld from consumption in the past. Which makes more sense––a system of past savings based on reductions of consumption in the past or a system of future savings based on increases in production in the future?
We need to understand that the rich are rich because they OWN wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets, which they continue to accumulate using their asset wealth as security and the income earnings from their investments in new capital asset formation to acquire more and more OWNERSHIP holdings, which then makes their even more wealthly.
Why has OWNING the non-human factor of production, embodied in capital assets such as land, structures, tool, machines, robotics, super-automation, computerization, etc., become the reason the rich are rich? It has ALWAYS been so, but exponentially tectonic shifts in the technologies of production have and will continue to result in less and less human labor required to produce the products and services needed and wanted by society. Such shifts in production results in devaluing the worth of labor as more and more people vie for less and less jobs, resulting in a “laissez-faire” opportunity to produce globally at the lowest possible labor rates. Thus, both efficient physical capital utilization and reduced labor costs effectively enable companies to keep labor input and other costs at a minimum in order to maximize profits for the owners. The rich are always the OWNERS, while those employed are the wage slaves. Those unemployed or underemployed in society are the welfare slaves, dependent on the State and its coercive powers to provide the minimum level of subsistence.
We cannot allow the central bank, the Federal Reserve, and the political government to continue rob the vast majority of the American citizenry from a future of inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
There is a solution and a path to reforming the system to empower EVERY citizen to acquire personal ownership shares in future wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy, while assuring the economy will grow to support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man. The proposed Capital Homestead Act is the pillar for this needed change. It provides financial mechanisms that provide equal opportunity for EVERY citizen to steadily acquire a diversified portfolio of income-producing, full-voting and full dividend payout stocks issued specifically for new capital asset formation using insured, interest-free pure capital credit loans, repayable out of the earnings of the investments in the corporations growing our economy. The result would be annual cycles of growth that are self-perpetuating and which would better balance production with consumption, rather than allow the non-human means of production to be OWNED by what is now a tiny minority for which the system allows them to concentrate wealth ownership.
The justice-based argument for this approach to an inclusive society is the agenda of the Just Third Way. There is also a political platform that is offered to any political party or politician upon which to advocate for this new paradigm.
Support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/. See http://cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ and http://cesj.org/…/uploads/Free/capitalhomesteading-s.pdf.
Support the Unite America Party Platform, published by The Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-reber/platform-of-the-unite-ame_b_5474077.html as well as Nation Of Change at http://www.nationofchange.org/platform-unite-america-party-1402409962 and OpEd News at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Platform-of-the-Unite-Amer-by-Gary-Reber-Party-Leadership_Party-Platforms-DNC_Party-Platforms-GOP-RNC_Party-Politics-Democratic-140630-60.html.
