Enough Tending the Rich

In 2006 Warren Buffet declared the United States to be at war, no not the so called War on Terrorism or War on Drugs. Instead, he proclaimed to Ben Stein, writer for the New York Times, "There's class warfare alright, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." There was hardly a yawn in society, the economy was still in the illusion of a full roar, with hints of cracks just starting to appear. In 2008, as most of us know, the dam burst and the economy came face to face with reality. The middle class took a hell of a beating, losing decades worth of savings, losing homes, losing dignity, and for some, losing their lives. Sure, the rich suffered a bit, and some actually took a hell of a beating but most came out of the debacle richer than ever. Now, even though much of the blame for this lies on their feet, instead of owning up to the problems they created, the rich instead whine through our media. They complain about having the finger pointed at them, about having the same charges they so easily levied at the middle class, given back to them. It's long past time for the wealthy's party to end, and for them to be forced to take care of the mess they created.

Just this past week, Representative Paul Ryan stated that we needed to cut more taxes to the wealthy in order to stimulate the economy. Funny, if you study macroeconomics of the United States you find out that the economy's GDP is mostly gained off of internal spending, about 70% of the GDP. So, who does the spending? Well, primarily the middle class are the ones doing the spending. The other funny thing about that is that we've been cutting taxes to the rich for a few decades now with less and less effect each time it happens. The tax rate for the wealthy was 91% in 1963, the tax cuts proposed by Kennedy dropped that rate to 70%. The rates did help in the economic recovery, but what is less often noted is that the cuts were aimed primarily at the middle class. Since then the tax rate for the wealthy has been lowered to 39.6% but unsurprisingly it's never had the same effect as the Kennedy cuts.

Since those cuts, the wealthy have done quite well for themselves and have so rewarded themselves with higher and higher paychecks. In 1965 the CEO to worker pay ratio was 20-1, by 2000 it peaked at 383.4 to 1 and as of 2012 was at 272.9 to 1. So what causes this massive ratio? The fact that the middle class hasn't seen their income, adjusted for inflation, rise in almost 30 years while those making over $350,000 a year have seen their income rise over 33%. Hmmm, so far we've seen that the wealthy have gotten lots of tax cuts during the last couple of decades, along with a large rise in income while feeding off of the rest of us.

Add to this mess, having more disposable income the wealthy decided to use it to lobby Congress. One of the results of this was the deregulation of the banking system, allowing bankers to enter into new markets and meddle with the country's economy on a new scale. Along with the government, they forged ahead in pushing mortgages and then began to bundle them and sell them as securities. Of course, greed quickly took over and they began to ignore many of the steps and checks needed to ensure the mortgages they were handing out were safe. These were one of the cracks that helped crash our economy. Think they would have learned their lesson? Sure, they made a bundle off of it and got bailed out. So now we not only have mortgage backed securities, but we also have rental backed securities as they took advantage of the population shift from homeowners to renters. There's also been signs that auto loans have become the new mortgages, where banks are lending to people they know they shouldn't be.

Recently bankers have been moving into owning commodities. JP Morgan Chase bought into the aluminum market and devised a scheme to move supplies of aluminum around warehouses to manipulate the price of the metal. This plan, which produced no actual work, no product, and no jobs, caused the price of each can of soda to go up by a penny. Yup, each can of soda you consume cost an extra cent just because a bank moved stockpiles of aluminum around a warehouse. I don't mind paying for labor and materials, but I am not a fan of having prices inflated for simple greed.

Ever notice how the ways that Congress offers to save money typically revolves around the idea of cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Military retirement, or food stamps? Ever notice that they never, ever include COLA cuts to Congressional retirement funds, don't talk about not giving themselves a pay raise for a year, or otherwise curb their own drain on the economy? Did you know that if a member of Congress dies in office their spouse gets one year's salary as a death benefit? Senator Lautenberg's widow received $174,000 of taxpayer money when her husband, worth $57 million, died in office. This is a benefit that's been going on since WWII, yet of course, they never actually talk about getting rid of it. Hypocrisy much?

In 2012 the congressional elections cost $3.6 billion, where do you think they get the funds for all of that? Most of that tends to come from the affluent who of course expect the politicians they helped get into office to help them with legislation they'd like to see killed or passed. It's really sad when you realize just how often members of Congress are away from their offices, traveling around to raise funds for their next election instead of doing their job. Considering how much vacation time they already take, like an entire month in summer off, it's just pathetic how little they choose to work and when they work, it's not often with the best interests of the people in mind.

In 2013 JP Morgan and Chase was hit with a number of fines for deeds they committed over the last few years. The fines were the largest in the history of the SEC, but they paled in comparison to the amount of money that the crimes had brought in for the bank. You would expect that at least the executives would have been let go for having committed this crime. Alas, no, not in the least as instead CEO Jaime Dimon was not only kept on, but given a raise.

One of those things that rich just love to try to point out, is that if you just worked harder well then you could get ahead. Hmmm, the funny thing is that the American workforce as a whole has been working harder, in fact since 1973 productivity has increased by about 80% however wages of course, did not increase by that much. Instead wages were increased by 11% and the rest of the money went to lining the pockets of shareholders, who profited off of the hard work of the workforce.

Australian Gina Rinehart, who inherited her fortune of $30 billion, most famously called her fellow Aussies lazy and inferred that they drink and socialize too much. She's also called for a lowering of their minimum wage because she can get away with paying South Africans much less than the Aussies make. Multimillionaire Tom Perkins recently exclaimed that the average American, making $35,000 a year was in the top 1% in the world. Yes, technically that could be true, however if you look at actual buying power in the United States, that $35,000 does not go very far at all. Of course, if you're a multi-millionaire you wouldn't know that nor would you care to actually find out how to do it. Their words remind me of a quote often attributed to Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake" when informed the peasants had no bread. Cake is roughly translated from brioche, which was a baked item that included milk and eggs which were even harder to come by then and demonstrate just how out of touch the person who uttered those words was. Out of touch is something the world's wealthy seriously are.

Just how out of touch are they? The top 85 wealthiest people have more wealth than the bottom half of the world's population. John Malone owns 2.2 million acres, more than the size of Puerto Rico. Ted Turner, the Irving Family, Brad Kelley, and the Emerson Family all own land equal to or larger than the state of Delaware. And you thought a fifth of an acre with a house was just enough. They don't care to share limited resources, they don't give a damn that they turned numbers of farms into "country homes" or golf courses, and they certainly don't care that it drives up food prices and affects you.

I have nothing against good hard work, so many others have nothing against hard work. We are not the lazy, incompetent beings that they would like to see us as. For many on food stamps and Social Security, it's a last resort when they can no longer support themselves. Yet, when they are down they are the ones who get kicked the hardest. We, the people, ignore the fact that the ones who are sucking the economy dry are the ones who least need it. The rich do NOT need the tax breaks, they are NOT providing the jobs they claim to provide. It is a fucking joke that they can "create" minimum wage jobs and claim billions in tax cuts by destroying the economy. Every damned WalMart siphons $900,000 a year out of the local economy thanks to its low wage jobs that it "creates" while closing better paying jobs found at small businesses.

It's a myth that the wealthy create jobs, it is a fact that small companies create jobs and innovate. Large companies just horde ideas and slow down progress. Just look at our internet systems. If you live in a rural area you are damned lucky to have a halfway decent internet connection, be it dial up or extremely limited satellite access. For many people they find that the major companies are just down the road, but have no incentive to expand. They're more content just bilking the rest of the public. These large companies don't give a damn about bettering human life, they only care about how much money they can make out of it. Pharmaceutical companies don't care about curing diseases, they care about solving symptoms so they can make lots of money off of the medication. People need to realize that these companies do NOT care about you, no matter what they say, they care about the bottom line.

Our economy depends on consumption, 70% of our GDP comes from it. That consumption comes generally from the middle and lower classes. It is that consumption that helps to create jobs by creating demand for goods and services. A million people can create more consumption than one or two people, no matter how wealthy they are. It shows in many of the restaurants and stores that catered to the middle class, just how much the middle class has cut down on it's consumption. Darden restaurants has reported at it's middle-class aimed Red Lobster and Texas Longhorn restaurants are struggling while it's high end steakhouses, like Capital Grille, are doing just fine. You'll find a lot more Red Lobsters than you will find the high end steakhouses and that represents a lot of jobs on the brink of fading away. The same goes for many retailers, most notably Best Buy and JC Penny. Each store of theirs that closes is a large number of people that will find themselves in one of the worst job markets in history.

Speaking of the job market, that silly unemployment number they go on about isn't the real picture of employment in this country. That number comes from the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits that week, which does not accurately reflect the amount of people who are unemployed. There are other numbers that the government puts out, which include an estimate of the number of people who are unemployed and not receiving benefits, the discouraged, and the number of people who are underemployed. This rate is called U-6 by the Bureau of Labor, and as of the end of January was sitting around 13%, not 6% like the unemployment rate touted by the media. Getting very tired of the smoke and mirrors used to con the ever dwindling supply of money out of peoples hands. We haven't left the recession, only the 1% really have and they're leaving us further and further behind.

This isn't a matter of playing fair anymore, these problems are a matter of survival for the rest of us. These gluttons think nothing of laying off thousands of people so they can save a couple of dollars. They think nothing of implying you need to work 60-100 hours a week while calling you lazy and knowing that if they force you to quit or you burn out there will be a dozen more people waiting to take your job. These self-centered assholes feed off of your hard work, drive up prices of goods, horde away resources, and have the gall to blame the rest of us for the problems they create. No more should they even think they have the opportunity to do this. Every day they need to be reminded that they are not exceptional to everyone, that while they were lucky enough to be born into or fall into their wealth that they did so only because so many others did the jobs they were unwilling to do. We need to return the taxes on the wealthy to pre-Reagan era tax cuts, we need to reinstate regulations on the banks, and we need to have a long, hard look at how much we reward those so ignorant of the rest of us.