REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, CLASS WARFARE - HOW AND WHY

In my mind’s eye I think about this over and over again…why does it happen, how it is possible, where does that leave mankind’s feelings of compassion and empathy?

Other than overstating the obvious – that greed is behind it, there are many factors that contribute to wealth inequalities and the repugnant redistribution of wealth that has already taken place. You and most Republicans may want to dismiss it as crass class warfare created by the liberal-progressives and yet it is very real to the majority of us and it makes us not only poorer but also brings us pain and misery.

The desire to profit from a business venture is what makes the wheels of the free enterprise system rotate; without it we would not have any competition, innovation, incentives or even a will to do anything as is so obvious under a totalitarian, government owned and operated economy. 

I see that at the root of the problem lies the evil of unchecked, unregulated and oftentimes celebrated unlimited greed. There is one big difference in the philosophy of those who are purist in their approach to capitalism and those who believe as I do that the free enterprise system is the best there is but that it has to have regulations or greed will overpower and dominate everything making it unsustainable for those in the middle and poor classes.

As a country, America finds itself among those where the distribution of wealth is unevenly and overwhelmingly in favor of 1% of the population. This is a fact, not a fabricated concept and it beckons the question of how this can happen in a country where the institutions of government and business were to work in harmony for the good of the nation and its people. We find that this is not only a mirage but it also reflects a terrible and disastrous situation for those who are not getting a piece of the pie. 

Who did what, where and when to whom for how much?

We begin with the erosion of regulations that have been in the works for decades. These regulations that forced the entrepreneurs to stay honest and play fair were systematically dismantled as a result of vigorous lobbying and influence peddling in the halls of Congress.

But you can see and feel this unfair redistribution every day of your life, you look at the charts and compile the figures and it is clear that the incomes of the bottom 98% has remained almost flat while the profits of the very wealthy and the corporations have skyrocketed…and this too is no accident.

Take for example the price of gasoline, it has been a given that oil companies raise the prices just before the summer high demand season…say for the sake of argument that it goes up $1.00 per gallon. Then when the summer is over they reduce the prices…only to reduce it by.70cents…and that leaves the price at .30 cents higher than it was before. You do this year after year and it can explain the high cost of gasoline as well as the oil companies’ obscene profits.

Most middle class and poor people have but one way of accumulating wealth and it is in the form of an investment in the dwelling they live in. Real estate has been the most effective way of accumulating wealth because you can’t fabricate new land. But here too is where that 98% has lost out. When you have the price of the house you bought devalued to half of what you paid for, oftentimes putting you in an upside down situation…there goes your whole life’s savings. There goes the housing market which is just another way of applying “readjustments” resulting in the banks taking over your property…redistribution of wealth at its best.

But suppose that you reached a certain age and your house was already paid or partially paid. But your income and your expenses…some of it perhaps medical made it necessary for you to borrow capital against the property you owned…outrageous schemes like reverse mortgages are just another example of income redistribution…grandma lives at this house but when she kicks the bucket the bank owns it.

You may also have been duped into investing your savings into some retirement account as I was and that money was invested for you only to find out that after some stock market crash it had disappeared. That money existed, you put in $1 dollar and the company you worked for matched…somebody has that money and it is also a way of redistributing wealth. It is alarming that Republicans want to do precisely that with our Social Security which is solvent and the only means most folks have to living their later years with dignity.

On top of all these things you have an entrepreneurial crowd that believes in profits above all else, ignoring the welfare of their workers and the survival of the American nation. These rascals will take their money out of the country and put it in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland to avoid paying taxes…hell; they will even take their corporate headquarters and locate it abroad to avoid contributing to the government of the country that facilitated their wealth creation. 

Along with that these corporations are constantly seeking sources of cheap labor to exact an even bigger profit and that is why they have taken manufacturing out of America and sent it overseas…and then it didn’t stop there, the job drain continued and has become so serious that even those very entrepreneurs realize that they have to bring back some of these jobs to America or they will not have a population with enough income to purchase the products they produce in Sri Lanka or Indonesia.

This also seems to be a reasonable explanation as to why the Republicans want to keep Americans uneducated and poor…so they have a cheap labor force that is desperate to take any job available under the most horrid conditions.

The significance of middle class earnings and poorer workers’ incomes flat-lining is alarming; in view of the rise in costs of health care, food, medicines and utilities. While everything goes up the median income remains the same and that too contributes to the redistribution of wealth.

You also have a great disparity when it comes to property taxes; while the prices of homes have decreased tremendously, the rate at which they are taxed remains at the high purchase price therefore taking money away from the pockets of the people who need it most.

There are many other ways in which the redistribution of wealth takes place. For example: when one of these corporate takeover happen the company they purchased is dissolved, their assets liquidated and the purchaser walks away with millions of dollars; such is the case of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his Bain capital take over. It is done all the time, one very notable case was that of the CEO of several airlines that were driven into bankruptcy by this man (Frank Lorenzo) and the fate of Eastern, Air Florida was sealed along with the loss of income for thousands of airline employees.

My question to some of these corporate cannibals is this: Would it be too much to ask if you only had one of your two mansions in the Hamptons instead of two and kept a thousand of your factory workers employed? Does it really make that much difference if you make 37 billion or 27 billion?

And all of this is excused and explained by this wealthy minority as “TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS” the concept that they are the job creators, to allow them to make these large profits means that the money will percolate downward to the middle class and the poor…which just doesn’t fucking happen!

>

>The actual United States wealth distribution plotted against the estimated and ideal distributions across all respondents.

Source:
Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money
Andrew Price
Good, September 28, 2010
http://www.good.is/post/americans-are-horribly-misinformed-about-who-has-money/

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/the-simple-chart-that-pops-santorums-housing-bubble-theory.php