Craigsub
Craigsub,
Your post has a good quality: it has some substance to try to support your views.
However, it hist about every pothole on the right-wing road on the issue, closely following the arguments made by paid propagandists for the right.
I'm not sure if that's because you have gotten a lot of your info from right-wing sources or what, but it's the case.
Normally, I'd lay out what I see as the 'correct' context, including the facts.
But I'm going to try something a little different, which just happens to also save me a couple hours re-compiling the info.
Instead, I'll just describe some issues with your topics, and ask you the relevant questions, so you can get your own answers.
Your first point is that the number of people working has grown every decade since the 1950's. Well and good, but it says nothing on the issue you made a claim on, about whether the 'good' jobs are being replaced with lower-paying ones.
An interesting side topic on your mention that the number of people working far outstrips the population growth is that you seem to hold it up as an unqualified good; in fact that's debatable, representing a large growth in two-income households over the years.
While that is good in general for society's overall productivity, there's a real price in 'quality of life' issues, children not having a stay at home parent, and other 'infrastructure' family issues, and much of the increase productivity goes to the very top's pockets. For things like home prices, which are determined largely by competitive wealth in the community, when your neighbors have more money by becomeing two-income households, home prices go up and you either get a cheaper house or you become a two-income household, too, to afford the same hourse as before - not exactly an attractive development or increase in wealth.
You also mention the significant increase in average wages, but because you fail to break it down by income bracket, it's meaningless for measuring how the typical AMerican did, like saying that the average neighbor's wealth skyrockets because Bill Gates moved to the neighborhood. During the democratic period FDR-LBJ, it would have been ok, because all brackets went up comparably; that's no longer the case.
OK, heck, I've abandoned the approach I described and am spending the 2 hours of my evening recompling info. Here goes. I'll use pictures.
I mentioned the history of income since FDR - let's start with a long-term view of the typical American versus the top 1%.
(Note - this is a pattern I'll point out consistently - that the bottom 99% increases that did occur almost excatly map to the democratic era FDR-LBJ).
Next, you pointed out that average *wages* increased - besides the point I already made about not breaking that out by income bracket, there's also an issue that wages are the primary income for most Americans, but they do not reflect the typical income for the very wealthy.
But let's look at a chart comparing the average wage increases in real dollars, and contrast it with the increasing productivity.
Historically, they went up together. Since they aren't in the post-Reagan years, where is all that wealth going?
How the typical hourly worker is:
(Note the increases under the democrats through LBJ - and then the decrease under Reagan/Bush followed by some recovery under Clinton.)
But the bottom line: real wages for most Americans are flat from 1970, while as noted above by the ski slope, the top 1% is doing wonderfully.
(And not all the story is simply in wages in taxes. For example, remember the savings and loan scandal of the 1980's, the one in which another Bush, Neil, was involved? It had 'deregulation', that right-wing sacred cow, let savings and loans implement very risky, irresponsible programs that greatly profited the very wealthy - and then of course crashed and burned, and the very wealthy involved were bailed out by the government.
That was a $153 bailout by the public taxpayer, wealth redistributed to the very wealthy who lost the money in the bad programs.)
Next, you make an argument that the wealthy are paying a very high rate of taxes compared to others.
One factor you don't mention is the fact that the poor pay much more of their income in taxes other than the income tax, so only looking at the income tax - as opposed to taxes like the payroll tax - is a very incomplete picture on taxation.
Well, let's look at a picture on the taxes paid, not just income tax, and the picture isn't quite the terrible unfair burden you suggested.
You go in to a personal story how you have done well in car dealerships.
That's great, but a common fallacy of people who do that is to think that 'anyone can', when in fact that's now how a society works. There are limited spots for the high end. They also commonly forget much sense of the goal of society for everyone to do ok - certainly to have large inequality, because that inequality is necessary for incentives that drive productivity which enriches the society - but balanced by some sharing of the wealth.
You are dependant on the rest of society being able to afford cars.
Once, Henry Ford showed Walter Reuther his new automation and said he didn't have to pay salaries to those machines.
Reuther responded that was nice, but who was going to buy the cars?
All of this has had the effect of 'class warfare' by the most wealth, the top 0.1% especially.
In the late 70's, the bottom 90% and the top 10% each had about half the wealth; now the top ten has three times as much as the bottom 90%.
I'll close out with a couple graphs that pain even bigger pictures of what's going on.
But first, I'll say I think your comments about Senators' personal wealth are basically about something very unimportant.
We're dealing with a multi-trillion dollar economy, and the issue is the policies they set; their own compensation is relevant only insofar as it affects their policies/motives etc., for the most part.
For example, Kerry's desire to increase taxes on the top 1% would make him pay more - so he's hardly incented by selfish motives. On the other hand, Cheney has saved huge sums by the tax borrowing (again, Bush has passed not a dollar in tax cuts, only tax borrowing), and his big bonus from Halliburton in exchange for getting them a several hundred increase in tax income, knowing he was about to be VP and in a position to help them get yet far more, is a conflict in interest.
It's the democrats who have been effective at reducing poverty - not republicans proclaiming ironic lies like 'trickle down' to hide their grabbing.
(Note again how JFK and LBJ cut poverty in half - how it was even or up uncer the republicans, down a little under Clinton).
Does all this have an effect on th eaverage American? Of course it does.
For example, look at the savings rate change for the average American post-Reagan.
Even worse, it's not just that there's a radical shift of wealth from most Americans to the top 1%, something which will be greatly compounded as their wealth further increases their power and domination of the political system, yet further increasing their conentration of wealth. It's destroying our nation's economy in coming years with debt, to spend tax dollars we don't have, borrowed, to enrich the top wealthy now.
Look at how the debt under republicans outgrows the economy:
Finally, one of the most important graphs, if a bit off-topic. It paints the picture of how the public feels about Bush's policies, outside of war.
It shows why it's essential for him to use fear and war to keep public support while robbing the nation blind.
For this one, you need to click the link for the image, I can't get it to work right. It's worth clicking to see the 45-degree negative approval throughout Bush's presidency outside of spikes.
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm
I hope this info is useful to you in helping you see the right-wing economic lies for what they are, and who they benefit, and how they hurt the country.
