Thursday, February 6, 2014

If Only the Top One Percent had...

...cared about ordinary people (the little people).

If the job creators had not hoarded (and hid in offshore tax havens) all their profits, and had instead, not offshored our jobs and paid us better wages, we would have a thriving middle-class and a lot less poverty today.

How Eroding the Middle Hits Economic Growth: "Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist who was a top economic adviser in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, estimates that had the shift in income gains to the wealthiest earners since 1979 been more uniformly distributed, annual consumption would be $400 billion to $500 billion higher today, equal to about 3.5 percent of gross domestic product."

Paul Krugman: The sinking middle class no longer has enough purchasing power to keep the economy growing and creating sufficient jobs...The shrinking middle isn’t generating enough tax revenue for adequate education, training, safety nets, and family services...Meanwhile, America’s rich are accumulating not just more of the country’s total income and wealth, but also the political power that accompanies money. And they’re using that power to reduce their own taxes, and get corporate welfare (subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts) for their businesses.

Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing: The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses....One of the first laws enacted by Congress was a 1792 subsidy to revive a cod fishing industry ravaged by the British Navy, and directed most of the money, not to the wealthy ship owners, but to a class of fisherman known as "sharesmen." They earned a portion of the profits, under contracts negotiated in advance, somewhat like modern unions bargaining with management.

But we already know what the problems are; we just can't get Congress to do anything about it. And it always comes back to money in politics. If only our Congress wasn't so corrupt (and cared about the little people) we'd have a thriving middle-class and a lot less poverty.

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