Does the 99% have a Right to Life?

The Bottom 99% Today

Our "ism", just like all other "isms", has failed us. Capitalism in the United States is broken.

We have 30 million Americans that are under-employed, struggling with part-time and low-paying jobs to earn a living wage to support themselves and their families.

We have another 21 million who can't find any work at all. That's twice as many as there were during the height of the Great Depression.

And just for the sake of Fox News, not all 21 million unemployed Americans owned homes, then borrowed against the equity of their home when home prices went up, just before the housing bubble burst. In fact, most people didn't even own homes, and of those who did, most didn't take out home-equity loans unless it's was also for home improvement. But the GOP wants everybody to think the jobless had lived above their means, took on frivolous excessive debt, weren't responsible for their actions, didn't plan ahead, and made bad decisions...and so therefore, don't deserve unemployment benefits.

Last year in 2010, about 48 million people ages 18 to 64 did not work even one week out of the year, up from 45 million in 2009.

We also have 46 million Americans who need food stamps just to eat and Medicaid for healthcare, but the Republicans want to cut these programs in the middle of a job crisis. 50 million Americans are still living without any healthcare insurance at all.

We have 46 million Americans living below the ridiculously low "official" poverty line. This is the highest number in the 52 years. The government defines poverty as a single person earning below $10,890 a year (that's $907 a month for rent, heat, clothing, medical, and food) or a family of 4 trying to survive on $22,350 a year.

Imagine how the elderly struggle on fixed Social Security incomes with no cost-of-living increases - - - because the government doesn't include housing, energy, and food in the cost-of-living inflation index. The very three basic necessities that people actually need to "live". The Republicans would love to cut Social Security and Medicare too.

The Top 1% Today

The income gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country has grown along with dramatic increases in CEO pay. Inequality in the U.S. has grown steadily since the 1970s, following a flat period after World War II. In 2008, the wealthiest 10 percent earned almost the same amount of income as the rest of the country combined. The top 0.1 percent of the population (those making about $1.7 million or more) saw the sharpest increase in income share.

With corporate executive pay, the rich have pulled far away from the rest of America. For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Washington Post: "Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker."

Cozy relationships and ‘peer benchmarking’ send CEOs’ pay soaring - "If every company tries to keep up with or exceed the median pay for executives, executive compensation will spiral upward, regardless of performance."

Capital gains tax rates that benefit the wealthy feed growing gap between rich and poor - "For the very richest Americans, low tax rates on capital gains are better than any Christmas gift." (Herman Cain wants to lower them from 15% to 9%, when it was 20% before Bush. Newt Gingrich want them at 0%)

Government contracts fuel wealth for some. Millions of dollars worth of federal contracts transformed Anita Talwar from a government accounting clerk into a wealthy woman — one who can afford a $2.8 million home in the Washington suburbs with its own elevator, wine cellar and Swarovski crystal chandeliers.

Forbes 20 Richest Americans - The net worth of these 20 Americans ranges from $12.4 billion to $54 billion in 2010.

Conclusion

Clearly, one "ism" (capitalism) works for 1% of this country, but it has failed the other 99%.

What's your poison? Anarchism, authoritarianism, barbarianism, Bolshevism, cannibalism, capitalism, colonialism, communism, corporatism, despotism, fascism, federalism, feudalism, imperialism, libertarianism, Leninism, Marxism, monarchism, Nazism, totalitarianism, tribalism, tsarism or socialism?

Why don't we try humanitarianism?

Does the 1% have more of a right to live in luxury that the other 99% has a right to live at all? Are all men (and women) endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Does the 1% determine how much life, liberty, and happiness that the other 99% may enjoy? Weren't the 99% only endowed by the top 1% with only "certain" unalienable Rights? And that "occupying" was not meant to be one of them? Now, what will become of 1% if the 99% no longer obeys them? Will we soon have chaos by December 21, 2012? Will the top 1% then become part of the bottom 99%?

Will we then all have a "Right to Life"? But don't we already have a piece of paper that says so? And doesn't it also say "...that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

The 99% and the 99ers are doomed!

First of all, tax revenues are way down.

Individual Federal Income Tax Revenues for:

2007 - $1,883,540,000
2008 - $1,812,530,000 < layoffs, housing collapse, stocks crash
2009 - $1,369,130,000
2010 - $1,392,990,000

SOURCE: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/

America has lost $500 billion a year in federal income tax revenues paid into the U.S. Treasury since the mass layoffs began during the Great Recession in 2008.

Now by January 2012, with 20 million unemployed Americans without any income at all, more jobs still going overseas, and more cuts in government workers, how can this go on? How can the economy sustain itself?

And the Republicans want to cut SS disability, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and food stamps too. But banks and big corporations continued to earn record profits and give themselves HUGE bonuses.

New York Times: "Banks are due to begin reporting earnings this week, and the numbers are likely to leave investors as frustrated as ever, making the banks even more desperate to impose new charges on consumers’ accounts and rack up bigger trading profits. Wall Street types have dumped their bank shares en masse. The government-mandated cuts in once-lucrative debit-card swipe fees, have prompted banks to try to recoup billions of dollars in lost revenue with increases like Bank of America’s controversial new $5 monthly debit card fee. Stocks for Bank of America, the nation’s biggest bank, are down more than 50 percent since the start of the year, while Citigroup is down more than 40 percent."

Meanwhile, Bank of America's CEO got a $9 million bonus.

As thousands of people across the nation are "occupying" to protest corporate greed, some economists already think the party might soon be over for the big bankers and other Wall Street fat-cats.

As an aside: One commentator on Fox News tonight said "the left" had Tea Party envy, and that's why we have the "Occupy" protests. Why do the Republicans and Fox News always call the people protesting "those on the left" and think they align themselves with Democrats? Just because, unlike "the right", they care more about real people as opposed to corporations?

In 1929 the Harvard Economic Society declared that a depression was “outside the range of probability.” Whoops!

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently testified to Congress that the recovery is "close to faltering." Goldman Sachs said Europe could fall into a recession by the end of the year and push the U.S. "to the edge" of one itself.

Companies have already laid off so much staff, and are now running so lean, that it won't be as easy to cut as many jobs like they did during the last recession. But even so, that doesn't give much consolation to the 20 million unemployed Americans who have already been suffering greatly. And with low tax revenues and more budget cuts and more government jobs lost, couldn't that number swell to double? Maybe 40 million by the end of 2012?

With 45 million Americans dependent on food stamps and no light at the end of the tunnel, how will they fair when the Republican's plan is to cut taxes more, bringing in less revenues, and making up the difference in lost tax revenues by cutting assistance to those who lost their jobs -- and cutting more jobs in government. It's almost ironic in that that is the Republican's strategy for "fixing" the economy...tax the rich less and withhold more from the poor.

Which also begs the question: Why wouldn't a wealthy "job creator", who hasn't suffered during the recession, be willing to pay a little more in taxes to help fund food stamps for a jobless person who was laid off, especially if that "job creator" wasn't willing to hire them?

From the New York Times: The Economic Cycle Research Institute has correctly predicted the beginning and the end of the last recession. Over the last 15 years, it has gotten all of its recession calls right, while issuing no false alarms. That’s why it’s worth paying attention to its current forecast. It’s chilling. As bad as the economy has been, it’s about to get worse. The institute’s CEO also says the timing will be brutal, and not just for portfolio managers and incumbent politicians. Millions of people who lost their jobs in the 2008-9 recession are still out of work. And the unemployment rate in the United States remained at 9.1 percent in September. More pain is coming. The CEO thinks the unemployment rate will certainly go higher.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes back up into double digits,” he says. Taken as a whole, he says, these and other indicators are quite clear. “We’ve entered a vicious cycle, and it’s too late: Another recession can’t be averted.”

And as for the original 99ers, those who were first laid off in 2008 and have already been unemployed for over 3 years, their futures looks very bleak. They have already maxed out all their jobless benefits well over a year ago, and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in Obama's new jobs bill will help them at all. If there is a "double dip" recession, then those poor bastards are toast...they are doomed!!!