Start Spreadin' the Wealth ... er ... News
Enough of the "spreading the wealth" already. Barack Obama had it right with Joe the Plumber. In the more than 30 years since Ronald Regan pronounced that "government is the problem", what we have seen is a dramatic constriction of wealth. Despite the glowing economic numbers that can be touted for the three decades since, the fact remains that for most of us Jolene Sixpacks and Joe Plumbers, our wealth has dwindled.
How many of us are there? Well, according to David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, reporter and Rochester, NY resident in his book "Free Lunch: How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill)" that's 90% of the American population.
"The annual income [of the vast majority of Americans] has been on a long mostly downhill slide it peaked at $33,000 way back in 1973. By 2005 it had fallen to a bit more than $29,000. the vast majority has to get by on about $75 dollars less each week, tax return data show."
Johnston asks the obvious question: where did all this wealth go? To large companies to be sure but what about the wages, interest, dividends and the like? "The growth went straight to the top. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent [of the population] got 48.5 cents.
"Within that 10 percent, basically those who made more than $100,000, the gains were highly concentrated at the very top the top half of 1 percent and most of that to the top tenth of 1 percent, who made at least $1.7 million that year."
Just one more note from Johnston: " in 2005, the 300,000 men, women and children who comprised the top one tenth of one percent had nearly as much income as all 150 million people who make up the lower half of our population. Add the income that the very rich are not required to report and those 300,000 made more than the 150 million."
I won't spoil the ending of Johnston's book (the butler definitely didn't do it) but think taxes, tax breaks, tax loopholes and compound interest. The wealth of that one tenth of one percent is not due to hard work. Their wealth is not the just deserts of jobs well done. It is the result of massive government deregulation and an unwarrented sense of personal entitlement. In short, it is greed.
Senator McCain, his campaign and neocon freetraders are giving us an upside down, inside out Alice in Wonderland view of economics. Sharing the wealth among the vast majority of Americans who have been left out of the economic boom times may just be something we all need now.