Goodbye Middle Class Life

A milestone was passed this month: America’s middle class is now a minority of the population.

The story on NPR.

How much income have American workers lost? The details from MarketWatch.

Reaganomics has divided the population into haves and have-nots, and has done so with a vengeance. Initeconomics has that story here.

Joseph Stiglitz on the politics of inequality.

The revolving door between our lawmaking branch and the corporate lobbying industry is part of a vast engine of inequality.

Robert Reich discusses the problem of income and wealth inequality.

From that bastion of communist orthodoxy, MONEY magazine: an examination of the cockeyed economics of the Republican candidates.

Power once lost is hard to regain. Workers’ rights and the prosperity that came after were won after a century of sacrifice and outright battle with corporations’ strong-arm tactics. This is the kind of history they don’t like our kids to learn in school. If we turn the dial back they won’t have to worry; we are on the way back toward child labor instead of universal free education. Get a quick review of labor history here.

Young workers are going to experience their work lives as one long slump. This is exactly how the 1% want it and Republicans have made it happen. This important story in the Atlantic.

Of course not all rich people are against working Americans. (Some Republicans actually like Bernie Sanders.) Working Americans are the consumers who make the economy hum. Can it still hum?

One of the things forcing incomes down is what’s called The Gig Economy. In place of full employment (with benefits) workers learn to come when an employer whistles. The Gig Economy explained by MarketWatch.

And those safeguards and benefits? A relic of past times. ProPublica describes how Tyson Foods has carved up its employees' workers' compensation. And their workers suffer a lot of injuries.

The safety net? The 1% succeeded in persuading the other 99% that Welfare protections made people lazy. Actually it doesn’t. The story about the welfare laziness myth from VOX.

How does the 1% get the rest of us all worked up? They own the media for one thing. And a worried, fearful public is easier for them to hustle. Panic is good for the 1%. Krugman explains why the rich love generalized panic.


Workers used to have certain rights. An expectation they weren’t being spied on being one of them. No longer. Who's behind this? Walmart, of course.

Income inequality tends to show up in key areas: how inequality is perpetuated by housing.

And while the 1% is scooping up money that used to trickle down to working people, they are sharing one thing. They are letting working people have all the tax obligations. Another in a very thick file of similar stories, from the Guardian.

Serious Threat of Government Takeover in Texas (and related stories)

From NPR we have this report In Texas this week, Republican Governor Greg Abbott ordered a mobilization of the National Guard to defend his state against a takeover by the federal government. Texans have become very alarmed recently about the joint U.S. special forces and military exercises scheduled to begin in Texas and adjacent states. Concerned Texans have been emailing back and forth about imminent roundups of conservatives who will be sent to FEMA camps for indoctrination. These rumors contain a lot of vague information about secret underground tunnels at Walmart stores where this mass arrest will supposedly take place.

There’s more:

This public access program features a wonderful example of pure-hearted level-headed and completely sincere American womanhood who honestly believes the first black president is the leader of an alien invasion bent on destroying America, perhaps by sapping our precious bodily fluids. It is impossible not to believe every word she says. She has documents.

Watch and Learn.

It is in this alien conspiracy theory video that we learn, for the first time, key details of the use of tunnels underneath Walmart stores for the enslavement of patriotic Americans. Watch and inform yourself before you go out and buy large weaponry and canned goods. (But not at Walmart.)

The swift action by Texas Governor Greg Abbott precipitated some letter writing between a few apparently sane and deeply embarrassed Texas Republicans and their governor. (We may assume the letter writer is one of the Texans who has already been kidnapped by the aliens and indoctrinated in the tunnels under one of those Walmarts in Texas. They’re also warning us about Lowes stores.)

Two top talk radio hosts believe Obama is arming black urban gangs to take over the government in a coming race war. Right Wing Watch reports. It’s the typical nonsense. What’s scary is how closely this resembles the official Republican line.

Meanwhile, Back East, VOX is reporting that Senator Lindsey Graham (another patriotic Republican) has identified the greatest existential threat to Americans and our way of life. That threat, says Senator Graham (R, SC), is comprised of ANYTHING originating in the Middle East that starts with the word “Al”.

Al Qaeda begins with “Al”, which is why this makes so much sense.

Al is the Arabic word for “The.”

Again. Firearms. Canned goods. Not from Walmart.

And, for God’s sake, not from the Middle East where these items will come with the word “AL” somewhere on the label.

The tragic thing is while we’ve been worrying about the mass imprisonment and police shootings of African Americans in this country, the actual kidnapping and enslavement of real Americans in tunnels underneath Walmart stores has been planned and possibly has already begun and nobody seems to be paying any attention to the imminent danger except Governor Abbott, Senator Graham and this woman on YouTube.

Ironic.

The Rich Are the Real Parasites

ThinkByNumbers does the numbers on Romney's complaint that half of Americans are freeloaders. Doing the math, they discovered that the richest Americans are the biggest freeloaders.

"The government gives tons of favors to the largest corporations, increasing the significant advantage they already have over smaller competing businesses. If, in the court of public opinion, Wal-Mart has been tried and convicted for the murder of main street, mom-and-pop America, then the government could easily be found guilty as a willing accomplice. Wal-Mart receives hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidization by local governments throughout the country. These subsidies take the form of bribes by local politicians trying to convince Wal-Mart to come to their town with the dream of significant job creation. Of course, from that follows a larger tax base. For example, a distribution center in Macclenny, Florida received $9 million in government subsidies in the form of free land, government-funded recruitment and training of employees, targeted tax breaks, and housing subsidies for employees allowing them to be paid significantly lower wages. A study by Good Jobs First found that 244 Wal-Marts around the country had received over $1 billion in government favors."

So when Republicans talk about "helping small business" they don't really mean it, unless you're including the "small family business" of the Walton family. That would be WalMart.

The Walton family members who own WalMart hold more wealth than the bottom 40% of all Americans. That's six families. Politifact backs up this assertion.The tax code and commercial laws written by a generation of Reagan Republicans in Congress helps protect and subsidize their wealth.

And what is their wealth earned from? Lowballed products imported from Chinese factories that run American manufacturers and Main Street stores out of business.

6 WalMart heirs worth as much as 30% of all Americans

From Salon comes this news: six wealthy WalMart heirs aren't just "rich" they are worth as much as the bottom 30% of the American population combined.

I will pause to let your head get around that obscene statistic. Six people who don't need to work for a living are worth more than 90 million working class people combined.

Why are rich people a protected species?

What's worse is that poorest 30% of Americans are forced by circumstances to shop at WalMart. Sadly the poor don't see ironies and the rich find them amusing.

A friend just sent me this piece from The Nation, detailing how uncharitable old Mr. Walton was, and how his heirs, while philanthropic, tend to be generous towards PACs and front groups who do what the Walton family wants, to help make the Walton family even richer. Even self-serving "generosity" is tax deductible, so in a sense we are all doing the Waltons' bidding. Concentrated wealth is a positive evil.