Wake Up, America! Wake Up! PLEASE!!

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Really I don't lie, I tell it the way I see it. God is in control your difference of understanding is between you and your maker, I only mention God because many of what I post can't be expressed by me other then through my understanding and Faith.
Getting a bit tired of the religious posts, but not getting Involved. For now.
I remember everyone agreeing to keep God off here. Broken word?
 
]
Getting a bit tired of the religious posts, but not getting Involved. For now.
I remember everyone agreeing to keep God off here. Broken word?
Isn't that a shame, I don't recall my agreeing to that, so no broken word here. This is how I feel about that.

Mark 8:38 - Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the ******* of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his ******* with the holy angels.
 
Reagan also founded the "Trickel-Down-Economics-Theory", which only provided a "Smooth Highway of Excuses" to give massive tax breaks to the top 1- 5% and corporations! For the unknowing, the Trickel-Down-Economics-Theory claimed that if tax breaks were given to the very rich and large corporations, they'd reinvest every dollar of those tax breaks into business which in turn would create increased employment opportunities for the poor and under-employed! The only problem was, and still is, "it didn't work then, it doesn't work now and it won't work in the future! Why?
G-R-E-E-D!!! The top 1-5% will never be satisfied with the amount wealth they have, i.e., enough is never enough, likewise, corporations are the embryos of greed! Ask yourself this simple question, and honestly, "Have you ever heard of a corporation state they've made enough profit, again and likewise, have you ever heard of an ultra-rich individual say I got all the money I want?" A few give away a lot of money but guess what, it's always a tax write-off, so why not give it away, after all they get a lot of rewards and recognition by giving a few dollars away and bringing public attention to it! Finally, guess what, the joke is on those who may not be aware of it, their tax write-off's are eventually at the expense of those having to pay taxes, mostly the lower 50-60% of society's taxable income payers!

Answer to your thoughts !
Reagan's action, was to cut the tax rates of the bottom 38% of earners and the Top earners by 2% His Financial men Art Laffer was his chief policy advisor who gave the President what became known as the Laffer curve. Which are you lower the tax rate of the bottom earners, and give the top rate payers a tax break for business investment, It would send money into expanding Small Business, Thus creating jobs, and sending more spendable income into the economy or (The Trickle down theory} during that time America came out of the recession and high unemployment. If one did not work during the Reagan years, it is because he chose not too, The middle class, grew, and the poorest, started coming out of poverty.
Now the Democratic's to save themselves fought and passed the rewrite of the National Mortgage act. Allowing small banks to not have as much in the ratio of assets to loans. and eliminating the usual down payment of 20% and to lower credit standard so more people could buy houses. So savings banks began writing loans and selling the to Fanny May and Freddie Mack, they had to maintain a 45 % asset to outstanding loans Well you know the story it was called the saving & loan default in the eighties and as you know Reagan was the blame for this due to his tax cuts.which is not true

As for the greedy Corp thieves.and the overloads that keep the American middle class poor, I only need to say tell me one thing the Congress or the Senate just one product just ONE they have invented for the people, Name one thing they have done to advance medical, help or improve surgery cure a disease, or improve any product every made. The greatest achievement the Government has ever achieved, is making life harder, taking more of peoples money, creating roadblocks to stop Americans from succeeding. If they were a Company all would have been fired long ago, They create more problems than solutions.

Corporations put money into all America's communities, providing monies for people to spend for a better life. The Obama Lie was an affront to anyone with a brain, When he told America, (Business didn't build that, The Government did. What load of manure I just never understand the amount of ignorance that America produces from school's and collages people who just have no thought reason or even pursue the truth.

I have found those that spill all this nonsense is the poorest amongst us, and the least educated.
 
Answer to your thoughts !
Reagan's action, was to cut the tax rates of the bottom 38% of earners and the Top earners by 2% His Financial men Art Laffer was his chief policy advisor who gave the President what became known as the Laffer curve. Which are you lower the tax rate of the bottom earners, and give the top rate payers a tax break for business investment, It would send money into expanding Small Business, Thus creating jobs, and sending more spendable income into the economy or (The Trickle down theory} during that time America came out of the recession and high unemployment. If one did not work during the Reagan years, it is because he chose not too, The middle class, grew, and the poorest, started coming out of poverty.
Now the Democratic's to save themselves fought and passed the rewrite of the National Mortgage act. Allowing small banks to not have as much in the ratio of assets to loans. and eliminating the usual down payment of 20% and to lower credit standard so more people could buy houses. So savings banks began writing loans and selling the to Fanny May and Freddie Mack, they had to maintain a 45 % asset to outstanding loans Well you know the story it was called the saving & loan default in the eighties and as you know Reagan was the blame for this due to his tax cuts.which is not true

As for the greedy Corp thieves.and the overloads that keep the American middle class poor, I only need to say tell me one thing the Congress or the Senate just one product just ONE they have invented for the people, Name one thing they have done to advance medical, help or improve surgery cure a disease, or improve any product every made. The greatest achievement the Government has ever achieved, is making life harder, taking more of peoples money, creating roadblocks to stop Americans from succeeding. If they were a Company all would have been fired long ago, They create more problems than solutions.

Corporations put money into all America's communities, providing monies for people to spend for a better life. The Obama Lie was an affront to anyone with a brain, When he told America, (Business didn't build that, The Government did. What load of manure I just never understand the amount of ignorance that America produces from school's and collages people who just have no thought reason or even pursue the truth.

I have found those that spill all this nonsense is the poorest amongst us, and the least educated.



where in the hell do you get your info...…...way off......waaaaay off......well maybe not all off...the second part fairly true...….greenspan is the one who told him how to fuck the country on taxes and etc...…..and when Greenspan saw trickle fucking down was not working and gov going broke......he convinced Reagan to raid Social security to pay the bills.....when he had robbed a bunch out of it and still not going well he had Reagan go in front of congress saying social security was going broke and needed to raise the amount paid in...….the Dems didn't buy it...but he convinced enough to get the raise......NONE of that raise ever went into social security and is still used to run the government
 
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Answer to your thoughts !
Reagan's action, was to cut the tax rates of the bottom 38% of earners and the Top earners by 2% His Financial men Art Laffer was his chief policy advisor who gave the President what became known as the Laffer curve. Which are you lower the tax rate of the bottom earners, and give the top rate payers a tax break for business investment, It would send money into expanding Small Business, Thus creating jobs, and sending more spendable income into the economy or (The Trickle down theory} during that time America came out of the recession and high unemployment. If one did not work during the Reagan years, it is because he chose not too, The middle class, grew, and the poorest, started coming out of poverty.
Now the Democratic's to save themselves fought and passed the rewrite of the National Mortgage act. Allowing small banks to not have as much in the ratio of assets to loans. and eliminating the usual down payment of 20% and to lower credit standard so more people could buy houses. So savings banks began writing loans and selling the to Fanny May and Freddie Mack, they had to maintain a 45 % asset to outstanding loans Well you know the story it was called the saving & loan default in the eighties and as you know Reagan was the blame for this due to his tax cuts.which is not true

As for the greedy Corp thieves.and the overloads that keep the American middle class poor, I only need to say tell me one thing the Congress or the Senate just one product just ONE they have invented for the people, Name one thing they have done to advance medical, help or improve surgery cure a disease, or improve any product every made. The greatest achievement the Government has ever achieved, is making life harder, taking more of peoples money, creating roadblocks to stop Americans from succeeding. If they were a Company all would have been fired long ago, They create more problems than solutions.

Corporations put money into all America's communities, providing monies for people to spend for a better life. The Obama Lie was an affront to anyone with a brain, When he told America, (Business didn't build that, The Government did. What load of manure I just never understand the amount of ignorance that America produces from school's and collages people who just have no thought reason or even pursue the truth.

I have found those that spill all this nonsense is the poorest amongst us, and the least educated.




How Reagan Destroyed America & The Middle Class

Reagan is directly responsible for destroying the Middle Class of America, and I am not the only one who thinks so. A number of political analysts have written on this very subject.
James Joiner on allvoices.com calls him "the destroyer of main street" and "the ******* of this nightmare we are living.

He goes on to state of the Republicans: "They call themselves the party of Ronald Reagan! That scares the hell out of me because Reagan was the ******* of the war mongering high Deficit compassionate Conservatives that gave Birth to much war present and future unless Obama can turn around the disaster they created around the world with their war mongering!" (http://www.allvoices.com/contribute...in-street-and-a-ronald-reagan-jr-i-agree-with).

Pablo Mayhew, a columnist on rawstory.com goes so far as to refer to Reagan as a criminal no better than his Republican predecessor, Richard Nixon. He relates Reagan's role in the Iran-Contra affair in which Reagan pled "forgetfulness" when pressed about it.

Mayhew concludes with these words: " as one great writer has contended, that Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream, then Reagan broke its back Now.... the American Dream is clearly down for the count." (http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/mayhew/reagan_destroyed_american_dream.htm)

And listen to what Thom Hartmann, prominent television and radio talk show host and commentator, had to say about the devastation today on our economy that was the direct result, he reports, of Reaganomics when he appeared as a guest on
Dateline just prior to Obama taking office.

"when Reagan came into office we were the largest exporter of manufacturing goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet. And, the largest creditor--more people owed us money than anybody else in the world. Now, just 28 years later, we're the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods; the largest exporter of raw materials--which is kind of the definition of a third-world nation -- and we're the most in-debt of any country in the world. This is the absolute consequence of Reaganomics." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/thom-hartmann-defends-the_b_150964.html)

These graphs bear out exactly what all these people have been saying about Reagan being directly responsible for destroying America and the Middle Class. In looking at these pay particulular attention to 1981, the year Reagan took office.

Obviously, George H. Bush, Clinton, and Gorge W could have reversed this trend; instead, they, for the most part became keepers and harbingers of it.

Working people's share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:

This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:

And ****** working people to spend down savings to get by:

Which ****** working people to go into debt: (total household debt aspercentage of GDP)

"Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest
creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then: " So avows the author who researched the subject and collected the graphs. (http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010062415/reagan-revolution-home-roost-charts)


You can find all kinds of books and articles praising Reagan, but what I have presented are the cold, hard facts about what the man did to our economy with his Reaganomics. For those who would like to read more on this subject, go to:


Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America IsCrumbling
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation
 
Reaganomics killed America’s middle class

This country’s fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980


There's nothing "normal" about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it's a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class.

Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens' novels.

At the top there is a very small class of superrich.
Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs.
And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.

So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "normal" capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.


You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits
. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.

This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years.

The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich.

French economist Thomas Piketty has talked about this at great length in his groundbreaking new book
, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He argues that the middle class that came about in Western Europe and the United States during the mid-twentieth was the direct result of a peculiar set of historical events.

According to Piketty, the post-World War II middle class was created by two major things: the destruction of European inherited wealth during the war and higher taxes on the rich, most of which were rationalized by the war. This brought wealth and income at the top down, and raised working people up into a middle class.

Piketty is right, especially about the importance of high marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes being necessary for the creation of a middle class that includes working-class people. Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their companies or rip off their workers. After all, why take another billion when 91 percent of it just going to be paid in taxes?

This is the main reason why, when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America's middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.

Other policies, like protective tariffs and strong labor laws also help build a middle class, but progressive taxation is the most important because it is the most direct way to transfer money from the rich to the working poor, and to create a disincentive to theft or monopoly by those at the top.

History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class.

If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you'll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich - the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations - was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

You'll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.

Even more striking, during those same 33 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.

Coincidence? I think not.

Creating a middle class is always a choice, and by embracing Reaganomics and cutting taxes on the rich, we decided back in 1980 not to have a middle class within a generation or two. George H.W. Bush saw this, and correctly called it "Voodoo Economics." And we're still in the era of Reaganomics - as President Obama recently pointed out, Reagan was a successful revolutionary.

This, of course, is exactly what conservatives always push for. When wealth is spread more equally among all parts of society, people start to expect more from society and start demanding more rights. That leads to social instability, which is feared and hated by conservatives, even though revolutionaries and liberals like Thomas Jefferson welcome it.

And, as Kirk and Buckley predicted back in the 1950s, this is exactly what happened in the 1960s and '70s when taxes on the rich were at their highest. The Civil Rights movement, the women's movement, the consumer movement, the anti-war movement, and the environmental movement - social movements that grew out of the wealth and rising expectations of the post-World War II era's middle class - these all terrified conservatives. Which is why ever since they took power in 1980, they've made gutting working people out of the middle class their number one goal.

We now have a choice in this country. We can either continue going down the road to oligarchy, the road we've been on since the Reagan years, or we can choose to go on the road to a more pluralistic society with working class people able to make it into the middle class. We can't have both.

And if we want to go down the road to letting working people back into the middle class, it all starts with taxing the rich.

The time is long past due for us to roll back the Reagan tax cuts.
 
where in the hell do you get your info...…...way off......waaaaay off......greenspan is the one who told him how to fuck the country on taxes and etc...…..and when Greenspan saw trickle fucking down was not working and gov going broke......he convinced Reagan to raid Social security to pay the bills.....when he had robbed a bunch out of it and still not going well he had Reagan go in front of congress saying social security was going broke and needed to raise the amount paid in...….the Dems didn't buy it...but he convinced enough to get the raise......NONE of that raise ever went into social security and is still used to run the government

Thanks for your response! Saves me a lot of frustration in not having to respond to "alternative facts!" 👍
 
Reaganomics killed America’s middle class

This country’s fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980


There's nothing "normal" about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it's a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class.

Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens' novels.

At the top there is a very small class of superrich.
Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs.
And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.

So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "normal" capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.


You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits
. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.

This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years.

The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich.

French economist Thomas Piketty has talked about this at great length in his groundbreaking new book
, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He argues that the middle class that came about in Western Europe and the United States during the mid-twentieth was the direct result of a peculiar set of historical events.

According to Piketty, the post-World War II middle class was created by two major things: the destruction of European inherited wealth during the war and higher taxes on the rich, most of which were rationalized by the war. This brought wealth and income at the top down, and raised working people up into a middle class.

Piketty is right, especially about the importance of high marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes being necessary for the creation of a middle class that includes working-class people. Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their companies or rip off their workers. After all, why take another billion when 91 percent of it just going to be paid in taxes?

This is the main reason why, when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America's middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.

Other policies, like protective tariffs and strong labor laws also help build a middle class, but progressive taxation is the most important because it is the most direct way to transfer money from the rich to the working poor, and to create a disincentive to theft or monopoly by those at the top.

History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class.

If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you'll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich - the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations - was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

You'll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.

Even more striking, during those same 33 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.

Coincidence? I think not.

Creating a middle class is always a choice, and by embracing Reaganomics and cutting taxes on the rich, we decided back in 1980 not to have a middle class within a generation or two. George H.W. Bush saw this, and correctly called it "Voodoo Economics." And we're still in the era of Reaganomics - as President Obama recently pointed out, Reagan was a successful revolutionary.

This, of course, is exactly what conservatives always push for. When wealth is spread more equally among all parts of society, people start to expect more from society and start demanding more rights. That leads to social instability, which is feared and hated by conservatives, even though revolutionaries and liberals like Thomas Jefferson welcome it.

And, as Kirk and Buckley predicted back in the 1950s, this is exactly what happened in the 1960s and '70s when taxes on the rich were at their highest. The Civil Rights movement, the women's movement, the consumer movement, the anti-war movement, and the environmental movement - social movements that grew out of the wealth and rising expectations of the post-World War II era's middle class - these all terrified conservatives. Which is why ever since they took power in 1980, they've made gutting working people out of the middle class their number one goal.

We now have a choice in this country. We can either continue going down the road to oligarchy, the road we've been on since the Reagan years, or we can choose to go on the road to a more pluralistic society with working class people able to make it into the middle class. We can't have both.

And if we want to go down the road to letting working people back into the middle class, it all starts with taxing the rich.

The time is long past due for us to roll back the Reagan tax cuts.

Very well written and definitive! Both posts well researched! Great job, subhub174014
 
And did I read, or hear somewhere that "The Dear Donald" and his Trumpeteers (I.e., ex-Republicans) add an additional $1+ trillion to the US deficit and it continues growing by the day! So much for budget constraint!
 
And did I read, or hear somewhere that "The Dear Donald" and his Trumpeteers (I.e., ex-Republicans) add an additional $1+ trillion to the US deficit and it continues growing by the day! So much for budget constraint!

yes he added 1 trillian last year and just asked for a trillion in "handouts"....some of which is needed...….some just plain bullshit....I can see the airlines losing a ton right now and might need some help...….but boeing……..they fucked them selves a while ago on their plane fuckups!...they should NOT be getting a handout for poor management and etc....and there are others....that are being rewarded for failing to run a company properly
 
I have those two articles stored on here....actually I have a folder full of facts in a folder I keep stored
Reagan...Social Security...NAFTA.....Clinton......etc
he was off on his first part....but pretty close on the second part about corps...and congress

Totally agree with you, however it's my understanding "pretty close" is a term best applied to the game of horse shoes!
Just say'n! Lol
 
Reaganomics killed America’s middle class

This country’s fate was sealed when our government slashed taxes on the rich back in 1980


There's nothing "normal" about having a middle class. Having a middle class is a choice that a society has to make, and it's a choice we need to make again in this generation, if we want to stop the destruction of the remnants of the last generation's middle class.

Despite what you might read in the Wall Street Journal or see on Fox News, capitalism is not an economic system that produces a middle class. In fact, if left to its own devices, capitalism tends towards vast levels of inequality and monopoly. The natural and most stable state of capitalism actually looks a lot like the Victorian England depicted in Charles Dickens' novels.

At the top there is a very small class of superrich.
Below them, there is a slightly larger, but still very small, "middle" class of professionals and mercantilists - doctor, lawyers, shop-owners - who help keep things running for the superrich and supply the working poor with their needs.
And at the very bottom there is the great mass of people - typically over 90 percent of the population - who make up the working poor. They have no wealth - in fact they're typically in debt most of their lives - and can barely survive on what little money they make.

So, for average working people, there is no such thing as a middle class in "normal" capitalism. Wealth accumulates at the very top among the elites, not among everyday working people. Inequality is the default option.


You can see this trend today in America. When we had heavily regulated and taxed capitalism in the post-war era, the largest employer in America was General Motors, and they paid working people what would be, in today's dollars, about $50 an hour with benefits
. Reagan began deregulating and cutting taxes on capitalism in 1981, and today, with more classical "raw capitalism," what we call "Reaganomics," or "supply side economics," our nation's largest employer is WalMart and they pay around $10 an hour.

This is how quickly capitalism reorients itself when the brakes of regulation and taxes are removed - this huge change was done in less than 35 years.

The only ways a working-class "middle class" can come about in a capitalist society are by massive social upheaval - a middle class emerged after the Black Plague in Europe in the 14th century - or by heavily taxing the rich.

French economist Thomas Piketty has talked about this at great length in his groundbreaking new book
, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He argues that the middle class that came about in Western Europe and the United States during the mid-twentieth was the direct result of a peculiar set of historical events.

According to Piketty, the post-World War II middle class was created by two major things: the destruction of European inherited wealth during the war and higher taxes on the rich, most of which were rationalized by the war. This brought wealth and income at the top down, and raised working people up into a middle class.

Piketty is right, especially about the importance of high marginal tax rates and inheritance taxes being necessary for the creation of a middle class that includes working-class people. Progressive taxation, when done correctly, pushes wages down to working people and reduces the incentives for the very rich to pillage their companies or rip off their workers. After all, why take another billion when 91 percent of it just going to be paid in taxes?

This is the main reason why, when GM was our largest employer and our working class were also in the middle class, CEOs only took home 30 times what working people did. The top tax rate for all the time America's middle class was created was between 74 and 91 percent. Until, of course, Reagan dropped it to 28 percent and working people moved from the middle class to becoming the working poor.

Other policies, like protective tariffs and strong labor laws also help build a middle class, but progressive taxation is the most important because it is the most direct way to transfer money from the rich to the working poor, and to create a disincentive to theft or monopoly by those at the top.

History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class.

If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you'll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich - the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations - was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.

You'll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.

Even more striking, during those same 33 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.

Coincidence? I think not.

Creating a middle class is always a choice, and by embracing Reaganomics and cutting taxes on the rich, we decided back in 1980 not to have a middle class within a generation or two. George H.W. Bush saw this, and correctly called it "Voodoo Economics." And we're still in the era of Reaganomics - as President Obama recently pointed out, Reagan was a successful revolutionary.

This, of course, is exactly what conservatives always push for. When wealth is spread more equally among all parts of society, people start to expect more from society and start demanding more rights. That leads to social instability, which is feared and hated by conservatives, even though revolutionaries and liberals like Thomas Jefferson welcome it.

And, as Kirk and Buckley predicted back in the 1950s, this is exactly what happened in the 1960s and '70s when taxes on the rich were at their highest. The Civil Rights movement, the women's movement, the consumer movement, the anti-war movement, and the environmental movement - social movements that grew out of the wealth and rising expectations of the post-World War II era's middle class - these all terrified conservatives. Which is why ever since they took power in 1980, they've made gutting working people out of the middle class their number one goal.

We now have a choice in this country. We can either continue going down the road to oligarchy, the road we've been on since the Reagan years, or we can choose to go on the road to a more pluralistic society with working class people able to make it into the middle class. We can't have both.

And if we want to go down the road to letting working people back into the middle class, it all starts with taxing the rich.

The time is long past due for us to roll back the Reagan tax cuts.
Sub we differ in views, you seem like a nice enough person, but for one thing our value system is focused different, not a bad thing either way. I was raised dirt poor but my family never used government aid, dad almost went bankrupt and our old home was all we had to take from us. My ******* and mom both went to work in a woolen mill and managed to get us on a more successful path. My ******* worked double shifts sometimes 3 times each week. We had health insurance through the mill $2.50 a week that paid 100% when we needed a doctor. One year I saw my dad's gross pay stub for his W2 it was between 2 and 3 thousand dollars for the whole year. My family never asked for government handouts, as my ******* called them. I don't know your history but I hold on to these values.
 
Sub we differ in views, you seem like a nice enough person, but for one thing our value system is focused different, not a bad thing either way. I was raised dirt poor but my family never used government aid, dad almost went bankrupt and our old home was all we had to take from us. My ******* and mom both went to work in a woolen mill and managed to get us on a more successful path. My ******* worked double shifts sometimes 3 times each week. We had health insurance through the mill $2.50 a week that paid 100% when we needed a doctor. One year I saw my dad's gross pay stub for his W2 it was between 2 and 3 thousand dollars for the whole year. My family never asked for government handouts, as my ******* called them. I don't know your history but I hold on to these values.


similar......I grew up on a family farm...no money....dad worked in town for Better Homes n Garden magazine and mom a waitress....we never asked for *******!....when I got out of the army...disappointed the family and did not go to the farm....even worse got a union job!....
but I learned how important politics is on the pay and benefits we receive....the more I saw and was involved in politics the madder and more determined I go to be involved...…….

If you read the 2 articles I posted you will see they are pretty factual and with links....Reagan opened the door to the fucking this country is still suffering from!
 
Just for you Hottobe


A Wealthy Capitalist on Why Money Doesn’t Trickle Down

The fundamental law of capitalism is: When workers have more money, businesses have more customers. Which makes middle-class consumers — not rich businesspeople — the true job creators.

A thriving middle class isn’t a consequence of growth — which is what the trickle-down advocates would tell you. A thriving middle class is the source of growth and prosperity in capitalist economies.


Our economy has changed, lest you think that the minimum wage is for teenagers. The average age of a fast-food worker is 28. And minimum wage jobs aren’t confined to a small corner of the economy. By 2040, it is estimated that 48 percent of all American jobs will be low-wage service jobs. We need to reckon with this. What will our economy be like when it’s dominated by low paying service jobs? What proportion of the population do we want to live on food stamps? 50 percent? Does this matter? Should we care?

Business people tell me they cannot afford higher wages. Not true. They can adjust to all sorts of higher costs. The minimum wage is much higher here in Seattle than in Alabama, and McDonald’s thrives in both places. Businesses adjust to higher costs, even when they say they can’t.

Our economy can be safe and effective only if it is governed by rules. Some capitalists actually don’t care about other people, their communities or the future. Their behavior, if left unchecked, has a massive effect on everyone else.

When Wal-Mart or McDonald’s or any other guy like me pays workers the minimum wage, that’s our way of saying, “I would pay you less, except then I’d go to prison.”

Which brings us to the civic dimension of what the campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 is really about. We’re undeniably becoming a more unequal society—in incomes and in opportunity. The danger is that economic inequality always begets political inequality, which always begets more economic inequality. Low-wage workers stuck on a path to poverty are not only weak customers; they’re also anemic taxpayers, absent citizens and inattentive neighbors.

Economic prosperity doesn’t trickle down, and neither does civic prosperity. Both are middle-out phenomena. When workers earn enough from one job to live on, they are far more likely to be contributors to civic prosperity — in your community. Parents who need only one job, not two or three to get by, can be available to help their ******* with homework and keep them out of trouble — in your school.

They can look out for you and your neighbors, volunteer, and contribute — in your school and church. Our prosperity does not all come home in our paycheck. Living in a community of people who are paid enough to contribute to your community, rather than require its help, may be more important than your salary. Prosperity and poverty are like viruses. They infect us all — for good or ill.

An economic arrangement that pays a Wall Street worker tens of millions of dollars per year to do high-frequency trading and pays just tens of thousands to workers who grow or serve our food, build our homes, educate our children, or risk their lives to protect us isn’t an expression of the true value or economic necessity of these jobs. It simply reflects a difference in bargaining power and status.

Inclusive economies always outperform and outlast plutocracies. That’s why investments in the middle class work, and tax breaks for the rich don’t. The oldest and most important conflict in human societies is the battle over the concentration of wealth and power. Those at the top will forever tell those at the bottom that our respective positions are righteous and good for all. Historically we called that divine right. Today we have trickle-down economics.

The trickle-down explanation for economic growth holds that the richer the rich get, the better our economy does. But it also clearly implies that if the poor get poorer, that must be good for our economy. Nonsense.

Some of the people who benefit most from that explanation are desperate for you to believe this is the only way a capitalist economy can work. At the end of the day, raising the minimum wage to $15 isn’t about just rejecting their version of capitalism. It’s about replacing it with one that works for every American.


A Wealthy Capitalist on Why Money Doesn't Trickle Down | BillMoyers.com

The fundamental law of capitalism is: When workers have more money, businesses have more customers.
billmoyers.com
 
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