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Spread the Wealth Around, McCain
Concentration of wealth at the top
Date: 10/22/2008 12:23:43 AM ( 16 y ) ... viewed 2645 times McCain has the audacity to complain about Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around".
If America is a democracy, where democracy means doing the most good for the most people [and there are several definitions of Democracy], then at the very least most Americans should have enough to live on, and no American should have "way much more" than another. Some semblance of "equal" should apply for all who work all day long - is one person's work worth millions, or 1000s of times more than another? how about 100s of times then? Maybe 10 times would be fair?
All jobs are essential to keeping things running - how could Wal Mart succeed without cashiers? Or Janitors? Greeters also help make Wal Mart successfull.
"Billions Vs minimum wage" is the real fact of life in America though, and credit is due to those who can make things happen but in the end there is a lot of help along the way, government help for developers and investors and so on. The "Financial Services Industry" does not produce on single thing but it became the industry with the most income since the 1990s... and not so long ago America didn't even need a "financial services industry" other than a few banks to do business transactions. So who is usefull, who is needed, and who deserves to have billions when others take home $15,000 a year after working full time?
Spread the wealth around means, to some, making incomes a little more equal. To others it might mean to stop giving so much government help to those who are really really rich and can kick back money to government officials, to political campaigns, etc. [and it gets a lot smellier than that!!].
The top 10% of Americans have over 70% of the national wealth of America, and "wealthy" now means having BILLIONS of dollars while "average" means being in debt, and pension plans being threatened with bankruptcy because they were invested in the stock markets and managed by those rich people who got performance bonuses while the stock market tanked and the pension plans went bum-up.
American government policies have helped the rich get richer, even though the wealthy people declared it was simply "merit" - that they are so smart - and that this world is a "meriticracy". Well then, when mistakes were made, did they willingly cede the meritocracy? No, hell no!! They got PAID for their mistakes, they got $750Billion from the Bush government and they collected their huge salaries and some of them, the ones who's banks were bought out or failed, even managed to collect BONUS MONEY for good performance - million and miollions of dollars of it.
One reason the rich get richer is that their money allows them to influence government to make policies that make them richer.
Policies such as Bush legistlated in 2006 that allowed the bankers to make loans without having any collaterol to back them, the same loans that caused the "credit crisis" for which the $750 BILLION was quickly given to those bankers who made those loans. Collaterol is usually required in case something happens such as the house prices falling and so money had to be available to cover the difference between the values of the house loans made and the values of the houses - "Errrr, sumptim like dat."
By comparison, the whole reason that Canadian banks did not have any credit crisis was that they had to have at least some collaterol to back their loans in case they were called in - it is simple regulation. Bush, and the elite wealthy people in America, just forged ahead thinking house prices would rise forever [but they didn't] - and they were wrong, they were/are "not smarter enough" to have avoided the credit crisis, but they didn't lose money, as in, the opposite of getting money when they were [apparently] doing things right.
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Here is the harsh reality of "the wealthy Vs the average" American: {some quotes that don't need credit because this is common knowledge that every American should know by now} -
* Unless you are among the top ten percent, you have experienced an economic downturn over the past decades, and a particularly acute decline in wealth in the past 8 years.
* Since the 1970s, middle- and working-class Americans have seen a fairly steady decline in real income, with brief spurts of recovery in the 1990s. Overall, however, the trend has been downward. By the year 2000, average net worth for Americans, adjusted for inflation, was less than it had been in 1983.
* Between 2001 and 2006 the average income of the top tenth of Americans increased about 15 percent a year, to about $250,000, while the average income of the lower 90 percent decreased
* The average income of the top tenth of wage earners is about 8 times greater than the bottom 90 percent
* Today, about two-thirds of Americans make less than $50,000 per year.
* The breakdown of wealth:
- the bottom 40 percent of Americans controls just 0.2 percent of America's national wealth;
- the next 40 percent has about 15 percent of national wealth;
- the next 10 percent owns about 13 percent of national wealth;
total so far = 28.2% of the national wealth is owned by the bottom 90%
... and the top tenth has the rest: 71.8% of the national wealth is owned by just 10% of Americans
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Two points I want to make to end this rant:
Imagine how many American lives would be greatly enhanced, along with the social fabric of America, if the lowest 40% had, say, 1 whole percent of the wealth of their nation!!
And in there somewhere there is John McCain, whose family wealth exceeds $120 million, and who owns eight houses and thirteen cars. Of course you don't want to spread the wealth around, you have it horded away for your-selfish-self!!
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