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Growing Inequality Threatens Middle Class and Democracy
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Here’s why the One Nation movement is so important. The growing inequality between the super-rich and the rest of us is not only shrinking our middle class, it’s threatening our democracy.
One Nation is a multi-racial, civil and human rights movement whose mission is to reorder our nation’s priorities to invest in our nation’s most valuable resource—our people. One Nation is holding an Oct. 2 rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with tens of thousands of activists, including thousands of union members, taking part.
Speaking at Harvard University this past April, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned that massive unemployment and growing inequality are fueling the forces that are spreading hate and misinformation. Saying “the stakes couldn’t be any higher,” Trumka told the audience:
If you care about defending our country against the apostles of hate, you need to be part of the fight to rebuild a sustainable, high wage economy built on good jobs—the kind of economy that can only exist when working men and women have a real voice on the job.
A recent article in Germany’s Der Spiegel looks at the widening gap between rich and poor in the United States that threatens to destroy our middle class. Here are a few disturbing facts:
- Fifty million Americans couldn’t afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point last year…
- In 1978, the average per capita income for men in the United States was $45,879. The same figure for 2007, adjusted for inflation, was $45,113..
- Statistically, less affluent Americans stand a 4 percent chance of becoming part of the upper middle class—a number that is lower than every other industrialized nation except México and Turkey.
Writing at MyDD, Charles Lemos says this rising inequality is dangerous:
Academic research has shown that…as income inequality rises, the power of a wealthy elite to control the political process increases.
It shouldn’t surprise that we now live in political environment were unlimited amounts of money can be spent to influence the outcomes of election. In California, Meg Whitman has spent over $104 million dollars of her own money in an effort to win the governorship… In Connecticut, Linda McMahon spent $22 million to win the GOP primary… In the GOP gubernatorial primary in Florida, healthcare CEO Rick Scott has spend $38.7 million so far.
During its Aug. 4-5 meeting in Washington, D.C., the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a statement supporting One Nation and saying we must fight the fear mongering and scapegoating that is dividing our country. Read it here.
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11 Comments
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I like to know how you create good paying jobs? Just talking about does does not do it. I have not heard any specific ways. Having government do it is a waste of time. Government does not create wealth it only takes wealth. The only way you do it is to create incentives. How about cutting taxes like John Kennedy did it?
@sweartogod
The most democratic way to “create incentives,” as you say, is to lower taxes ON WORKING PEOPLE. Cutting taxes on the wealthy (as you have advocated in other posts) doesn’t create jobs as much as it creates speculative bubbles.
Btw, government spending- if put towards those goods of the commonwealth, eg infrastructure, schools, etc- DOES create wealth, despite what your ideological leaders claim.
Regards,
Sam
followingsylvis.blogspot.com | twitter.com/followingsylvis | facebook.com/followingsylvis
Unfortunately, very few of your readers will punch the correct button to reveal your very revealing graph about the wealthy.
Very few Americans want to be labeled anything “lower” than Middle Class and too often that fear is transformed into a vote for the wealthy and the snippets on television.
New Mexico is destined to have its first woman governor in that both Democrat (Diane Denish) and Republican (can’t remember her name–ha) are in a neck-to-neck battle.
Denish has come out flat opposed to vouchers of any kind or name for school tuition, but the Republican waffles on the fence being in favor of “choice.” This is just one of the more noticeable differences in their platforms; yet, because Lt. Gov. Denish is tied to the outgoing governor’s mismanaged 8 years in office over which she had absolutely no control, she is having a real struggle to get her message out there.
Some of us are working tirelessly behind the scenes to help Diane and we sincerely hope election day will swing her way.
Exactly Cappy- like the first poster proves many people are misguided about reality. Lowering taxes and allowing corporations to invest overseas is what created this mess.*
*and people not speaking up about it.
Try raising taxes and see if that works. They will still stay where there at. I bet that Nov will see dems defeat because the stimulus was a failure and no jobs were created under Obamas watch. I am a Union supporter but I can see reality . John Kennedy showed the way by creatiing incentives. You will never get job creation unless you have incentives. Raising taxes is no incentive . Have more money in my pocket is a great incentive.
Raising taxes and not allowing corporation to move overseas will force business to go bankrupt. their foreign competition will bury them with cheaper goods. Then if you put high tariffs on imported goods you will have higher costs and you screw the poor. You lose.
Our CEO’s shouldn’t be making the obscene amount of money that they profit over their employees. I calculated how long it would take me to make as much money as the CEO of my company makes in a year..it would take me 192 years. Is this crazy or what? We need more co-op type corporations so everyone has a piece of the pie. After all we are making these pigs in the trough rich.
I feel the only way we are going to make a difference is a revolution because our votes don’t seem to make a difference. I know I am totally frustrated with this country. This isn’t the country that I grew up in. It has become a play ground for the rich. Corporate welfare country.
the new United States is ….THE CORPORATE STATES OF AMERICA…If you are RICH you are in, IF you are middle class get to the back of the line cause you are gonna be the next underclass for the Corporate States of America, they only use you up …….then toss you aside, when will you smart people wake up…soon i hope…
It is beyond me why anyone who is not wealthy has any interest in the Republican Party.
Granted, there are those who are too ignorant of the true facts of life in the U. S. to understand this fact of life, and those are the people the Republican’s pull in – just look at the people in Congress who are of the Republican Party. Would anyone with a brain vote for them? No.
The problem is getting the facts to the public in no uncertain terms somehow that the only interest the Republican Party has in anyone is to facilitate the furtherance of their own bank account.
Trumka’s call for “a real voice on the job” is the key. Workers don’t have a real voice on the job when organized workers make up only seven percent of the U.S. private-sector workforce, down from one third not that long ago. Check out my book “Go to the Worker” (Marquette University Press, 2010) for some background on how this came about and for some ideas on how workers can empower themselves and get that real voice. I blog at http://www.gototheworker.wordpress.com.
We are workers and not middle class. The middle class is professionals – like architects or doctors, small farmers, or small business owners. They are a minority. The workers, who sell their ability to work in order to make a living are 85% of the population. Start talking about the working class, and stop using the politician’s phony, deliberately confusing moniker.
We do not need any more middle class people. We need social and economic justice for working people, and respect for the dignity of work. Ultimately, all of these parasites depend on our hard work. Before we can move forward, we must recognize who we are and what we need – power. As 85% of the population, all of Congress should be completely dominated by workers with dirty hands from the hard work that we do which provides all wealth to our society.