Growth of U.S. family incomes vs. the top 5% and why the wealthy deserve even more

The wealthy have found a goldmine with Reagan and Bush’s ‘trickle up’ economics (and anti-union attitudes). And in the last decade, when they’ve paid the lowest tax rate EVER, they’ve created so many jobs here in the U.S. So. Many. Jobs.

It only makes sense to redistribute more of our tax revenue into more tax cuts for the wealthy. They deserve to keep getting more. After all they’re smarter and work harder than the rest of us, according to Bill O’Reilly:

“…you gotta look people in the eye and tell ‘em they’re irresponsible and lazy… Because that’s what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.”

Chuck Todd describes what’s causing the impasse: “Neither the president nor the House Republican leadership is truly ready to put agreement down on paper. For the president, the hesitancy is about giving a promise of real entitlement reform. For Republicans it’s reistance to make a pledge that part of tax reform could mean the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans (the Republicans).”

Chuck Todd describes what’s causing the impasse: “Neither the president nor the House Republican leadership is truly ready to put agreement down on paper. For the president, the hesitancy is about giving a promise of real entitlement reform. For Republicans it’s reistance to make a pledge that part of tax reform could mean the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans (the Republicans).”

What doesn’t the average teaparty voter understand about income inequality that’s been growing since the ’70s?

The working- and middle-class teahadists continue to scream for tax cuts for the wealthy, in open defiance of their own self-interests. I don’t get it.

John Cole lays out the case that luxury goods (like $9,000 Chanel sequined tweed coats) are flying off luxury store shelves and mebbe it’s time the rich folks contribute a little more tax revenue to our sinking ship called the USA:

Via Economix: …the nation’s income distribution may be quite lopsided, but its wealth distribution is even more so.

The top 1 percent of earners receive about a fifth of all American income; on the other hand, the top 1 percent of Americans by net worth hold about a third of American wealth. (Note that the top income earners are not necessarily the same people as the top net-worth Americans — after all, lots of high-net-worth people don’t work or have much else in the way of sources of new income.) Wealth-related inequality has also been relatively stable over the last few decades, whereas income-related inequality has been growing since the ’70s.

Cole ends with this:

Our Galtian overlords have the most money they ever have, their taxes are at the lowest levels they have in many decades, and they have plenty of money to blow on luxury items. Why? BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL THE FUCKING MONEY. It’s no coincidence that luxury items are flying off the shelves while concomitantly, the middle class is slowing down their spending on food, furniture, etc. In fact, this is precisely the point many dirty hippies have been trying to make- we are never going to have an economic recovery until some people other than the Kochs and Warren Buffet have money to spend. And with unemployment at astronomical levels and with the official government policy to make things worse with austerity and then hope a magical unicorn comes sliding down a rainbow showering jobs on the middle class, it is going to stay this way. Fer fuck’s sake.

Agreed. WTF, teaparty?

Related:

Matthew Yglesias: Sales of luxury goods are sharply accelerating. …the key sentence in the piece is this one (emphasis added): “Luxury goods stores, which fared much worse than other retailers in the recession, are more than recovering — they are zooming.”

WASHINGTON POST: "Of last year’s 100 highest-paid corporate executives in the United States, 25 earned more in pay than their company recorded as a tax expense in 2010. Those 25 firms reported average global profits of $1.9 billion. Among the 25 were Verizon, Bank of New York Mellon, General Electric, Boeing and eBay."

inothernews:

Yes, by all means, let’s continue to give corporations and the wealthiest tax breaks. Because they’re creating jobs with all that cheddar.

The one thing money can’t buy: an understanding that the fate of the 1% is bound to how the 99% lives

MAYBE THIS WILL BE REMEMBERED AS THE AWAKENING for American plutocrats and multinational corporations — a very slow, painful awakening, surely.

The class warfare the rich don’t understand (via gonzodave)

Is this a class war? Yes, probably. And it’s one of those really long wars, the kind that goes on forever. But in this latest battle, there’s little doubt who fired the first shot. When the financial crisis hit, the Masters of the Universe evaded responsibility and defiantly demanded more sacrifice from their victims. They enlisted their favoured politicians to hold the people hostage and then complained about being unloved despite their crimes. They have won all the early skirmishes – but the people are gathering their forces and starting to fight back.

“The top 1 per cent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 per cent live Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 per cent eventually do learn. Too Late.” — Joseph Stiglitz

DESPITE THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE being kicked into high gear on behalf of the Masters of the Universe — with the hackneyed right wing arguments about “punishing success” or jealousy and sour grapes — there is one simple fact at the foundation of the Occupy Wall Street protests: In America the 99 percent are greater than the 1 percent but are asked to sacrifice more and are given less.

liberalsarecool: When corporations comprising an entire industry fail, and need to be bailed out by taxpayers, there is simply no way of calling it capitalism. Come up with a new word because it is not capitalism.

Related:

…

Bush: Don’t call them ‘rich’ – Bush spoke Tuesday at a tax-policy conference in New York hosted by his presidential institute. “If you raise taxes on the so-called rich you’re really raising taxes on the job creators,” he explained. So if you want “private-sector growth” then the best thing to do “is to leave capital in the treasuries of the job creators,” Bush said. We thought those folks were called “rich” because, well, they are. But that, apparently, is not the proper term. They are the “job creators.”So President Obama’s deplorable class warfare rhetoric pits the so-called poor and middle classes against the job creator class. And don’t try to sneak around that by calling them wealthy, big-wigs, plutocrats, oligarchs, fat-cats, tycoons or robber barons. They are the true working class, working 24-7 to create jobs for you and other ingrates.

Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.

E. J. Dionne

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)

“(The rich) are different from you and me.”

“They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of the very rich

Mitt Romney on a jet ski — the GOP candidate’s Kerry moment? – The Boston Globe