Wealth distribution and the USA's political right

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When Tea Party wants to go back, where is it to?

As battle cries go, the Tea Party's "Take our country back" is a pretty good one. It's short and punchy, and it addresses a very widespread sense that the nation that Americans once lived in has changed, and not for the better.

When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right -- and the polling shows conclusively that that's who the Tea Party is -- the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we've been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now. The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward. From 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent of Americans -- effectively, all but the rich -- increased from 64 percent to 65 percent, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, that means that the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent was growing, too -- from $17,719 in 1950 to $30,941 in 1980 -- a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

Since 1980, it's been a very different story. The economy has continued to grow handsomely, but for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, it's been a time of stagnation and loss. Since 1980, the share of all income in America going to the bottom 90 percent has declined from 65 percent to 52 percent. In actual dollars, the average income of Americans in the bottom 90 percent flat-lined -- going from the $30,941 of 1980 to $31,244 in 2008.

In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich -- the super-rich in particular -- have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.

Looking at these numbers, it would be reasonable to infer that when the Tea Partyers say that they want to take the country back, they mean back to the period between 1950 and 1980, when the vast majority of Americans encountered more opportunity and security in their economic lives than they had before or since. Reasonable, but wrong. As the right sees it, America's woes are traceable to the New Deal order that Franklin Roosevelt, working in the shadow of the even more sinister Woodrow Wilson, imposed on an unsuspecting people.
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In fact, the New Deal order produced the only three decades in American history -- the '50s, '60s and '70s -- when economic security and opportunity were widely shared. It was the only period in the American chronicle when unions were big and powerful enough to ensure that corporate revenue actually trickled down to workers. It marked the only time in American history when, courtesy originally of the GI Bill, the number of Americans going to college surged. It was the only time when taxes on the rich were really significantly higher than taxes on the rest of us. It was the only time that the minimum wage kept pace (almost) with the cost of living. And it was the only time when most Americans felt confident enough about their economic prospects, and those of their nation, to support the taxes that built the postwar American infrastructure.

Since the ascent of Ronald Reagan, though, America's claim to being a land of opportunity has become a sick joke. Unions have dwindled; colleges have become unaffordable; manufacturing has gone abroad; taxes on the rich have plummeted; our infrastructure has decayed.

But the country the right wants to return to isn't the America that the Greatest Generation built. Judging by the statements of many of the Republican and Tea Party-backed candidates on next Tuesday's ballots, it's the America that antedates the New Deal -- a land without Social Security, unions or the minimum wage. It's the land that the Greatest Generation gladly left behind whey they voted for and built the New Deal order. All of us should want our country back, but that country should be the more prosperous and economically egalitarian nation that flourished at the time when America was not only the world's greatest power, but also a beacon to the world.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 05216.html

It should be noted that the super-rich - people like George Soros and Warren Buffett - are mostly Democrats.

That's because it's largely the Democrats who have helped that top 0.1% of the population amass their wealth, first by giving them all sorts of dodges to avoid taxes, then by bailing them out directly.

When you hear Obama wanting to "raise taxes on the rich", he only wants to raise the top rates on earned income. That's because the super-rich don't pay those rates - they make their money from capital gains, not earned income.

It's that kind of behind the scenes maneuvering that the Tea Party wants to roll back. When they're against "welfare", that includes corporate welfare.

Edit: as for the "New Deal" and the '50s, '60s, and '70s - don't forget the '30s, when the New Deal held us in a depression for a decade, and the '40s, when we had a global war. The '50s and '60s were just the bounce back from that, and the '70s was terrible for middle income Americans due to high inflation and unemployment.

The Great Depression was actually a "double dip", the first contraction from 1929-1932, and the second from 1937-1939. During the interregnum, 1933-36, the economy grew very weakly and slowly. Most people didn't notice any difference. The economies of Germany and Japan only grew because those countries became conquering empires, taking control of much of the earth and shipping raw resources back to the home country for domestic use. Hitler actually fueled much of Germany's "growth" with a massive debt binge, similar to what George W. Bush did in the 2000s, and the result was likewise similar, with a giant German economic bubble being formed that popped around 1938. Hitler's solution was to conquer Russia and Britain and turn the resources of those empires into German possessions. It didn't work out too well. But if the US hadn't come to the UK's defense, it might have, and the internet would be in German, if it existed at all. The ONLY reason America prospered in the 1950s is because the industrial infrastructure of the rest of the planet had been destroyed. If America's industry had been destroyed too, it's likely that we'd be in a dark age now.

"I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God." -John D. Rockefeller

"One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends-the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions. ... Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have had the ability and energy to produce it." -Andrew Carnegie

Of course, Rockefeller and Carnegie lived in a world where wealth came from the marshaling and managing of large amounts of resources to produce a desired result. Today, money managers make money with money, depending on economic bubbles to "make money" with very little input (or brains) required.

When the money managers realized that the paper money they made was just that, worthless paper, they demanded the governments of the world print MORE worthless paper to back up the worthless paper, or else they would pull the plug on civilization. So government did so, what with that massive gun to its head. So the money managers squared the impossible circle, and the party went on.

But there won't be another bailout. The money managers are blowing the biggest bubble of all, the government bond bubble, and when THAT bursts, the world economy will be dead. The banks will simply be boarded up and the food will stop arriving at the grocery stores. Billions will wage the Final War with nuclear weapons. After that, there won't be any more humans.

LOL at the OP, Why just re-post lib articles? If I wanted to read the Washington Post, I'd go to the Washington Post not Wrong Planet

A liberal lefty trying to tell tea partiers what the tea party stands for.
That's just like an NT telling an aspie what it's like to be an aspie.
Or a rich white guy telling a poor black man what it feels like to be discriminated against.

Really, the writer of the article does not have a clue.

It reminds me of my boss when we were discussion my depression. He asked me "What don't you like about yourself that makes you so depressed?" I smiled and laughed at him. I told him I could tell by the question that he has no idea what depression really is. There is nothing I don't like about myself that makes me depressed. I'm smart, successful, have a house, a great wife, great job, two great kids, and money in the bank. I have a great life and there is no reason for me be depressed, and yet I am. That is depression.

The writer is clueless in use of statistics. Don't ever try to twist data to your liking because those who understand will catch it immediately. The writer likes to speak of the percent of all income as if there is only a fixed amount of money in the world. It couldn't be further from the truth. A rich man who creates more wealth than another person is not by any means taking anything away from that other person.

If income equality is such a great thing, China and Cuba are waiting for you... Oh... Wait.... What?.... Oh crap, even China and Cuba have figured it out and are trying to change their economies to be more capitalistic? Darn. Well you still got North Korea. I hear that's a great place.

The only way to level the wealth of people is to level everyone to be equally poor.

If income was really the issue, big ticket lottery winners should all be doing great, yet 80% of them file bankruptcy within 5 years. Income has very little to do with wealth.