The Math Behind “Class Warfare”-A Middle Class Under Attack [La Prensa (San Diego, CA)]
Copyright: | (c) 2011 La Prensa San Diego |
Source: | Proquest LLC |
Wordcount: | 895 |
ANALYSIS
To be among the bottom 90 percent of income earners in
That nine in 10 Americans have been struggling for decades is a direct consequence of policies that have stacked the deck in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Those policies range from the tax breaks highlighted in Obama's address to the decline in wages and benefits received by rank-and-file workers, as unions have lost power.
The Racial Wealth Gap?
One way to get a sense of the consequences is to go to an
This handy chart shows that between 1994 and 2000, the richest 10 percent of Americans gained 71 percent of income growth. What remained was spread among the lower 90 percent.
Look at what happened from 2002 to 2007, the period featuring the tax cuts of
As a whole, African Americans and Latinos have fared the worst.
Recent data from the 2010 U.S. Census show that in the past decade the median income of African American households dropped 14.6 percent, while Latino household income fell 10 percent.
The result underscores a record racial wealth gap the
The disappearing middle class, the increasing concentration of wealth at the top and the widening wealth gap between white people and people of color coincides with a series of policies championed by the very lawmakers who are invoking the "class warfare" charge today.
One particularly pernicious inequity involves capital gains, money made by selling stock and other assets. That income is taxed at a much lower rate than earned income. It is how billionaire
To his credit, Buffett has called for a higher tax rate on such income.
What's driving this "class warfare" language is the continuing defense by conservative ideologues of a world view that idolizes society's "haves" and be littles, if not outright scorns, society's "have-nots." That view is at the core of the writings of the late Atlas Shrugged author
"Job Creators" Did Little
Out of that ideological context comes the constant exaltation of corporations and the rich as "job creators," even though these members of the moneyed class did precious little hiring - at least not in
Between 2003 and 2007following the economic "dotbomb" slump - job growth was at the slowest pace of any previous economic recovery this century. Those meager employment gains were more than wiped out by the 2008 economic implosion caused by
The combination of policies that
If anything,
It's no surprise that people who can look down on economically struggling households and command "shared sacrifice" from the comfort of their mansions are pushing back against the bottom 90 percent.
The message from those standing up for their interests says, "If you share the sacrifice, you also have to share the prosperity."
Progressive activists are now working on the strategy to overwrite the "class warfare" mantra of conservative lawmakers with the principle of shared benefit.
That will be a dominant theme of the "Take Back the American Dream" conference in
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