Rich Getting Richer, Poor Getting to the Polls
The rich are still getting richer and the poor are still getting poorer; and while you're forking out at the gas pump and noting the sudden change in the price of milk (just be glad you're not in Saudi), chances are that you've known this long before the NYT had to tell you. But my guess is you had no idea how much:
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
Income disparity, just in time for the South Carolina Primary!
From our friends at the Palmetto State Progressive: More reason to scoff when Republicans try to tell you that all Americans are benefiting from our so-called economic growth.
And that's something they're trying to sell in South Carolina, where the GOP vote in their primary on Saturday and the Democrats follow on the 26th. In South Carolina, the eleventh poorest state in the Union, job loss is the number one concern among voters this year, SFGate reports. Economic concerns aplenty.
The job losses are a good campaign theme for Democrats, although the candidates rarely mention that free trade also has brought thousands of new jobs to the South, especially to the Interstate 85 corridor between Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., where BMW, Michelin, Fuji and other multinational corporations have built huge new plants.
"South Carolina is a microcosm of what NAFTA and free trade have done around the country," said Danielle Vinson, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. "There is a big boom going on in the upper part of the state. We've gained a lot of jobs . . . But there's no denying that the textile mills here have really suffered because of free trade. "
So how are the republicans using this to their advantage?
Thompson protested the expansion of the federal budget, saying, "We're spending ourselves into oblivion." He accused Romney of telling Michigan voters that "the federal government was going to come in there and bail out the state. … That is not the way to get elected president."
Ah, that's right. It's the spending. We must be using taxes to pay that top 1 percent to get richer. It's not like they drive the roads our taxes repave (chauffer? private jet? I don't even know how that works) or put their kids in the schools those taxes support. Clearly, tax cuts solve everything. And then there's the sterling argumenet that Mitt turned around the olympics' economic situation. The whole of the United States couldn't be that hard. And for McCain, well, the military spends efficiently, doesn't it?
So when the economic line falters for those on the right, don't worry. They can always look to that good ole standby: killing babies.
that's right, and how many of the candidates know what it's like to be anything shy of the top 10% ??? It's time we get a candidate for the people, of the people. oh wait. they're too poor to run.
That McCain ad is Scar-Y. I've never let women make choices. Not just recently. Always. Never Wavering.