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Inequality In America: The Richest 20 Own More Wealth Than Half The Population
By Eric Zuesse, author of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.
Inequality in America, the Fish that Rots from the Head
Inequality of wealth is inequality of power. A study just released finds that "America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet — now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.” How much political power do the people who would be inside that jet — and their friends — actually have?
The first-ever thorough scientific and academic study of whether the U.S. is a democracy was published in 2014, and it finds, as an overwhelming statistically established fact now, that the U.S. definitely is not a democracy. This landmark study, by Gilens and Page, finds that, "When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
Conservatives tried to deny the very meaning of this study by saying such things as that “America is a republic, not a democracy,” but they were just trying to distract from the findings, which are: the U.S. is a dictatorship, not a democracy. A republic is simply another word for a “democracy.” Every democratic nation functions by means of elected representatives. So what? The “republic” matter is raised only to distract away from the reality, not in order to understand the reality.
No matter how much the conservatives try to cheat or lie their way out of the reality, America is a dictatorship. There is simply no getting around the fact: America is a dictatorship, by and for the richest. The landmark Gilens-and-Page study found the elected representatives in America don’t actually represent the public nearly so much as they represent the people who finance the political campaigns that sucker the voters to vote for the aristocracy’s preferred candidates. America’s reality is rule by the richest, rule by the people who finance those TV commercials and political operatives who make a political winner a political winner in this republic of the richest, this government of the people, by the super-rich, for the super-rich, who make the actual decisions about which candidates will have a chance to win, and which won’t.
Just the way that the Grand Ayatollah in Iran chooses which candidates there will have a chance to win the Presidency, etc., America’s few super-rich here choose which candidates will have a chance to win the Presidency etc., and which won’t. In Iran, the Grand Ayatollah is chosen by, and serves, the mullahs; and, in America, the Party chiefs etc., are chosen by, and serve, the super-rich.
In America, the aristocracy wanted Saddam Hussein removed and replaced in Iraq, “regime change in Iraq”; so, it was done — the public were suckered into supporting an invasion (and then into re-‘electing’ the man who did it).
There is no accountability for the aristocracy’s agents (such as President Bush, or President Obama). None were prosecuted for the tortures and murders and destruction that were done to Iraq, and for the trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were spent by us to perpetrate that destruction of Iraq.
America’s aristocrats and their agents call America ‘the opportunity society.’ (Read all about it there, from Obama, and also from self-acknowledged Republicans. But, of course, Obama is playing the ‘good cop,’ to their “bad.” The man who was Obama’s chief economist, Larry Summers, does the same. Their propaganda-line sounds as if it comes from central headquarters.) As if equality of opportunity can actually rise while inequality of wealth is rising. It can’t really happen. The PR line is only for fools. The aristocracy enjoys playing the public for suckers. How else could the aristocracy continue to exploit the public? How much longer can it continue?
Ron Fournier headlined in National Journal on Thursday December 2nd, "The Fish Rots From the Head in Chicago,” and he opened:
President Obama needs to mail Rahm Emanuel a dead fish in a box. Hillary Clinton should deliver it. For the integrity of the party that represents a vast majority of black voters, Democratic leaders everywhere need to send the Chicago mayor a message: You’re dead to us.
A longtime lieutenant for the Clinton family and former chief of staff in the Obama White House, Emanuel never hesitated to muscle weak or disloyal Democrats out of power. It’s time to flip the script on the enforcer nicknamed “Rahmbo.”
Emanuel once sent a pollster who was late delivering a survey result a dead fish in a box. The night Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, his aides were celebrating around a picnic table when Emanuel picked up a knife and shouted the names of politicians who had “f****ed us.” After each name, Emanuel declared, “Dead man!”
I’ve got nothing against Emanuel. I’ve known him since 1992 and benefited from his strategic leaks in the Clinton White House. And I know this: Emanuel epitomizes a brand of politics that puts loyalty and electoral success above all else. He was educated in the school of Clinton, where the ends justify the means, and ruled the Obama White House when it capitulated to the culture of Washington that his boss had vowed to fight.
Then, Fournier summarized the lengths that the Emanuel Administration went to cover up their murder of this Black — for which cover-up they charged Chicago’s taxpayers $5 million.
Obama himself has been the biggest cover-upper of American corruption. He refused to prosecute Bush, Cheney, the banksters, the torturers, etc. He lied by saying “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” and the U.N. called him on it. (Aristocrats don’t mind that; the U.N. has no teeth; and aristocrats own the ‘news’ media, so America’s public won’t know anyway.) This is how the aristocracy works. It is non-partisan. Most aristocrats are right-wing, but some are left-wing; and, yet, when it’s the aristocracy versus the public, the aristocracy are united — and the public get conned worse than ever. For example, the U.S. aristocracy were united not only on seizing Ukraine, but in slaughtering Ukrainians who rejected the seizure. America’s elite Brookings Institution even urged the U.S. government to step up the slaughter. The U.S. line was that the victims there were simply ‘terrorists,’ or ‘pro-Russians.’ They were actually the residents of the areas that had voted overwhelmingly for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom the U.S. aristocracy overthrew. The American aristocracy said he was “corrupt.” So were all other recent Ukrainian Presidents — but the U.S. ‘news’ media politely avoided mentioning that fact. And Ukraine now is more corrupt than ever — and a lot more in debt: bankrupt.
When the American government is prosecuting a blue-collar crook, it doesn’t “look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” but, when prosecuting a white-collar crook, especially if that’s an aristocrat, then, for some mysterious reason, it does. “Looking backward” is only for blue-collar crimes — the type of crimes that the aristocracy want to be prosecuted, because that type isn’t the aristocracy’s specialty (which is generally fraud). What ‘justice’ is this? It’s ‘justice’ to fool suckers.
The fish rots from the head, in Washington.
No matter, Republican or Democrat, the American public’s Commander-in-Chief is the American aristocracy's Commander-in-Cheat. He or she is the head, in Washington, and it smells much the same, either way: like rotten fish.
Said one American Judge, in issuing his verdict:
Today’s reality is that the voices of “we the people” are too often drowned out by the few who have great resources. And when the fundraising cycle slows (it never stops), lobbyists take over in a continuing attempt to gain influence over and access to elected officials.
This is not a left or right, liberal or conservative analysis, but all the points on the political spectrum are increasingly involved in shaping this country’s political agenda. In today’s neverending cycle of campaigning and lobbying; lobbying and campaigning, elected officials know where their money is coming from and that it must keep coming if they are to stay in office. Ordinary citizens recognize this; they know what is going on; they know they are not being included. …
The Court is bound, however, to follow the Supreme Court and Second Circuit's clear guidance. Accordingly, the Court holds that the limitations contained in New York Election Laws §§ 14-114(8) and 14-126, as applied to independent expenditure-only organizations, cannot prevent quid pro quo corruption.
Of course, those higher-court ‘Justices’ had themselves been appointed by corrupt federal officials, including U.S. Presidents. The U.S. aristocracy holds iron control.
And, so, the fish keeps stinking, and the aristocracy keep lying and pretending that America is a ‘democracy.’ And the public are told that the only problem is inequality of opportunity, not inequality of wealth — no matter how enormous that inequality of wealth is. After all, there’s a self-sustaining aspect to any aristocracy. Their children even get “legacy admissions” into the elite’s colleges. So: the more extreme the wealth-concentration is, the more-extreme it will be in the future. But, no matter: “America is the land of the self-made man.”
And the suckers keep on believing it. People just get accustomed to the smell. The preachers tell them that it’s somehow ‘the will of God,’ and so must be ultimately good. The preachers and teachers know where their money is coming from, too. And, if it’s not coming from the right people, there won’t be much of that sweet smell to cover over the fish-stench. So: worshipping The Almighty is taught — even though it actually means ‘Might makes right’ (which everyone knows to be wrong).
So: everybody does what he must do to “go along to get along” — with “the right people,” of course.
And this is called ‘the free market,’ and ‘democracy,’ though it’s neither. It is, instead, as bad as it smells, even if its direct victims, such as Iraq and Ukraine (just to mention two nations that America’s aristocracy destroyed), smell even worse.
If you want to know how bad and how scary it really is, see the documentary on the Edward Snowden case, Citizen 4; but, even that documentary pulled its punch by limiting to only a single enigmatic sentence its bare reference to the international aristocracy behind it all, whose agents are stealing the public’s freedoms, in order to expand those aristocrats’ now-unprecendentedly sophisticated network of control over the publics throughout the world. It’s no longer just government, and the press, and the ‘intelligence’ agencies, and the military and the police. This is no longer science fiction — it is control over the mass-public, the termination of democracy, in all but name. It is already, and frighteningly, science-fact. This is why the last American President before our new system started to become instituted, Jimmy Carter, recently despaired in public, that America has become a dictatorship. And this is an increasingly global dictatorship. It’s where the global fish-head stinks the worst.
Not to expose it is to hide it — to become part of what promotes the stench, not part of what would reverse the rot that causes it.
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Of course I'm not. Either that, or I'm not a communist. Pick one.
you are both of those, and might I add disingenious and a liar
Ask the average poor person how they feel the war on poverty is going for them. Then follow the money to the corporate coffers and banksters collecting tolls on same. Then STFU.
To rationlize theft by your own benefits is not reason, to point out those who should share in shouldering a sacrifice to right what has been set wrong is not demonization.
LOL, you mean the Great Society?
To QUOTE LBJ a Progressive:
I'll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
That war on poverty? the one that has ruined many black families?
Or Roe v Wade, where 60 million babies have been murdered by the DemonCrap Progressives.
FUCK YOU
Don't kid yourself a "Use It or Lose It 1% Wealth Tax" would never get past the PM & Pb stackers, much less anyone else who even owns paper wealth in a ZIRP environement, which is why they are launching NIRP - to achieve 80% of the confiscation goal at only 20% of the cost.
Conservative vs Progressive
Democrat vs Republican
Nonsense...
In the end, what the "aristocrats" or oligarchs really believe in is always MOAR FOR THEMSELVES.
And they don't mean by working for it.
Bias, I understand where you are coming from, but Progressivism since Woodrow Wilson right up to now is the PROBLEM, for you see, both R and D's wear the label. It is that scumsucking ideology that has ruined America, and the world.
Bank on it!
I think we have fascism in America today, and an Oligarchy rules it with an iron fist...so your point there is quite valid!
Sure. Neoconservative military industrial complex spending and neoliberal laissez-faire economics had no part in any of it.
Fucking simpleton. Doesnt even know where four of the five fingers in that iron fist came from.
So you read selectively now don't ya moron...might want to read my posts more carefully...I did blame the mic to moron. Find your second brain cell, maybe you can rub the two together to form a valid synapse, until then STFU
this is what happens when you attach usury to currency created ex-nihilo..........
that 20 will turn into 10 people, then 5 then one.........its fractional reserve lending in reverse
A republic is simply another word for a “democracy.”
Well, that's news to me.
Cato was also taken by surprise. ;)
"Well, that's news to me."
And with the founders as well. I think we got 'democracy' when women got the right to vote.
In a Republic only homeowners are allowed to vote. And women have never really traditionally been land owners in any nation like here. So what we have is a democratic oligarchy.
“It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”
Alexander Hamilton June 21, 1788
“The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.”
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli -1850
“The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.”
Duke of Northumberland 1931
“I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay
“Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
Agnes Repplier
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C.S. Lewis
A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H.L. Mencken
Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)
Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy.
Benjamin Franklin (letter to John Alleyne, 9 August 1768)
Be sure to thank your teacher with a double tap. Letting them bleed out would be cruel (and rude).
Wanted:
Subservient sort, must be very good at public speaking, extensive travel, able to read from a script and or teleprompter. No experience necessary, minority status a plus. Must be able to take directions well, as free thinking is not tolerated. Ability to convincingly lie repeatedly a plus!
Benefits are, we will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, all expenses paid, armed security detail and first class accommodations. White, middle aged males, need not apply...
See how easy it's to change the status quo. Only have to Sacrifice 20 vs. 350,000,000.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...
except in America where the needs of the 20 outweight the needs of the 300 million.
Congressmen, Presidents, Judges, Military, Police, Officials - all bought and paid for by the 1%
And they might wonder why many Americans would like to see the USA have its arse handed to it on a plate, since whoever is running the place aint doin it for Americans.
Four fingers up and split in the middle...
Live long and prespire.
Spoctor Din
The super wealthy happy fews have always run the country .. and it is not about to change!
Revolutions only happen when people have nothing left to lose ! Today, each citizen has to much to lose: an Iphone, an Ipad, a TV, a car .... so nobody will fight to reduce inequalities!
Welcome to the Land of the Free (Wealthy People) !
The problem is so many people in the bottom 50% are there because they are stupid and lazy.
Stupid + lazy = worthless.
It is not the richest person in America's fault that millions didn't bother learning how to read, can't do simple math, have no marketable skills and are basicly worthless losers.
Take five trillion dollars away from the richest people and divide it up between the poorest 100 million - each get $50K
Come back a year later and the bottom 100 million will have spent the cash and will again be poor and stupid.
You can't fix stupid by redistributing wealth.
Americans have lost some of their freedom - but they still have the freedoom to remain stupid and lazy - and many people exercize these rights to the max.
all-priced-in...you are spot on. It's too bad the unwashed masses here and everywhere cannot understand it.
I might add, we have fascism, and crony captialsim now, that has to stop too!
I agree. Plenty of people in America who really should have been culled from the gene pool generations ago, our feral Africans just for starters.
Problem is, our masters never cull the fuckwits. They expropriate and exterminate the smart people who might one day have a realistic chance of overthrowing them or developing the innovation that will destroy all the wealth their fathers made other people work for.
The fuckwits, whose populations were formerly controlled by plagues they could never have eradicated without the assistance of smarter breeds of humanity, are encouraged to breed like rabbits and head north like so many hordes of locusts.
Natural selection eventually sees off stupid, lazy people. That such people not only still exist but breed more quickly than smart, hard-working people is a deliberate policy decision by people who want less competition for high-IQ jobs and more competition for low-IQ jobs.
The more Washington DC does, the worse things get.
Why is that???
Because they are all Progressives now. The crony capitalists and the communist pols...a match made in Hell.
It's a rigged game with players that are bought and paid for. Here is a quick look at how all this started:
Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1913, beating incumbent William Howard Taft, who had vowed to veto legislation establishing a central bank. One year earlier, in 1912, Wilson was brought to Democratic Party headquarters by Bernard Baruch, a conspiring banker mogul. Here Wilson agreed to a deal with the devils in exchange for political and financial support from the Rockefeller-Morgan bankers. Wilson swore in secret that if elected President, he would support the banker's Federal Reserve scam and push for the first ever progressive income tax on the American people.
To divide the Republican vote and elect this relatively unknown Wilson, J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller bankers played both sides of the election battle and poured money into the candidacy of Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive Party to pave the way for Wilson's ticket to win. These sophisticated political maneuverings were unknown to our great grandparents, but today we are beginning to wake up to the truth.
Once elected, President Wilson obeyed his dark masters and enacted unprecedented changes to our great Constitution. In that single year of 1913, President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act and the Revenue Act of 1913, chaining all future Americans to the dual horrors of the FED and the IRS. In order to make these acts binding and appear legitimate to Americans, President Wilson pushed through congress two Constitutional Amendments: the 16th and 17th Amendments. These two amendments remain in our Constitution like a malignant cancer destroying the once healthy body of our great nation. The year 1913 stands as the year that America changed forever. It is time to repeal these amendments, and right the wrongs that Wilson did to our great nation.
President Wilson knew what he did was wrong. After serving the dark forces, he would later lament in his diary, "I have unwittingly ruined my country."
Wilson also broke his campaign promises and took America into WW1, and later the failed League of Nations. Wilson shows us a revelation that Americans must guard against elected officials who guide us into unrighteous wars and desire to establish entangling international systems of rules, organizations and government.
Key Quote: "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit... all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world, no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
It's an ok analogy, but capitalism had the response to this dictatorship in 2008. It's called a "bank run". It would have been the complete reshuffling of the deck. Those who control assets with leverage were in a position to liquidate (meaning sell) assets to someone else at much lower prices. The wealthy would not have been so wealthy anymore. Assets would have transferred to others not in the establishment and the political influence of the "wealthy" would have been diminished. Quite possibly, no one would have ever leveraged themselves to that level again; permanently destabilizing the current Wall Street-DC cabal. And this all could have been done peacefully. It's even happened in this country several times: the richest people have been ruined in a banking panic. It's a beautiful thing.
Instead, we get bailouts. And when you really get down to it, a bailout has nothing to do with finance. It has to do with power and control. The rest of the population gets to flush half their purchasing power every 8-10 years so we can keep the status quo which we increasingly despise. All brought to you by the Federal Reserve.
Any discussion relating to wealth inequality and power without mentioning the Fed is pure mental masturbation.
Well of course the top 20% are scooping up all of the casino chips. You can’t play the game against an opponent who has an unlimited bank to hammer you with.
Duh!
~ DC
Like Carlin said:
It's a big fucking club and you (and I) ain't in it!
The man had a way with words, no?
Yes, he could cook down the lies and bullshit and make it taste..........well, like the over cooked bullshit it is.
BTW, I stumbled upon a talk by Drake the NSA whistle blower and former national security adviser the other day and was struck by how much he looks and sounded like George Carlin in later years. He makes things sound as dismal as George did but not nearly as funny and chewy
~ DC
20 persons don't garner more wealth than half the population without systemically corrupting the entire system.
These people using all the wealth to generate jobs for Americans....LoL
When wealth like that is attained it is hoarded, paper shuffled in corrupted markets to make more, not to build factories.
Building industries to make money is so 19th Century.
The wealth that these people have is probably held out of the market, draining wealth for capital investment.
Yeh and those 50 million poor, all decided they wanted to eat out of rubbish bins because it is such a great life and long term future.
Never ceases to amaze how the MSM narrative over the years has corrupted the thinking of the sheeple to learn to hate their own for not having jobs, but not the Oligarchs for creating jobs overseas, or simply hoarding and or playing paper markets. You know a society is totally fucked when the populace turns on itself and blames each other, like the idiot earlier.
I don't care who owns it.
I care about what they're doing with it.
Yes and no .... if they burn it .... or if they bury it in plastic pickle barrels .... all the other money is not withdrawn from life's auction .... and is worth more .... very much like the guy who chooses not to vote .... he enhances everyone else's voting power ?
I'm not talking about the man who own $5 million and thinks he's wealthy.
I'm talking about the guy who owns $5 trillion and thinks he owns you, and your future.
those people live in the shadows for a reason.
Not to expose it is to hide it — to become part of what promotes the stench, not part of what would reverse the rot that causes it.
Did I miss something? Where's the list of 20 people?
The thinking and rationale of 'all-priced-in' comment really encapsulates how systemically sick American thinking has become.
He has been taught to hate his own kind, thinking he is safe, until it is his turn. Then he will scream like a pig in a slaughter house. He loves and praises his rapists and has learned that the victim obviously deserved to get raped.
And they eat their weight everyday .... in Lobster and endangered species .... oh, and their money is intelligently employed creating wealth for everyone .... they have shown themselves to be worthy stewards and good husbands to the people .... you don't want to divide their assets amongst the poooor .... and have it mal spent .... and pilfered away on triffles and vanities of the stoopid class .... they'd lose it quicker than their lottery winnings .... and we'd be standing in line with Latina Lover .... for pasta and paper .... cut the socialist boiler plate crap .... we're trying to put together an intelligent quorum here ?
Monetas, makes sense to me, not sure, but I think you have a serial junker too. Not to worry, it's those types that are insane anyway. All they have is their pitiful little down arrows and their fucking social justice.
Critical thinkers don't agree with what's going on here in the world, but I don't subscribe to the communists either. We have crony capitalism, fascism, and oligarchy.
We need Free Markets back, the joke is over, sanity needs to return, not this social justice, income equality for all...that is communism friends.
"you don't want to divide their assets amongst the poooor .... and have it mal spent .... and pilfered away on triffles and vanities of the stoopid class .... they'd lose it quicker than their lottery winnings"
Just once I'd like to see someone make the argument you're making while taking into account the concept of "velocity of money." If you give $100 to an oligarch, they will put it in the bank, and it will sit there forever. If, on the other hand, you give $100 to a poor person, that money will be quickly spent, and the person who it was given to will also spend it, and then it will be spent again and again. Every transaction is a multiplier, if that $100 changes hands ten times in a year then it will have the impact of $1000 on the economy. I'm weary of seeing people making apples to oranges comparasions when talking about taking money from oligarchs and redistributing it among the people; without any consideration of the velocity of money your argument is simply worthless.
The turnover of dollars deposited into the Federal Reserve system is over 80. The velicty of M2 in the US is under 1.5, and the velocity of M1 is under 6. Perhaps the "velocity of money" is better left alone for now...
This old chestnut again?
Anyone who has a nickel and no debt has more wealth than the poorest 100 million Americans.
Because having more debt than assets (as so many Americans do) means you have no "wealth" whatsoever.
My dog has an old blanket worth $0.50 and no debts, so he's wealthier than the poorest 100 million Americans.
My dog.
Stats can be made to show anything you want, expect the truth.
You're right, and yet (a) it's still not something to brag about, (b) as you get up to the next 50 million or so it becomes worse, and (c) wealth is more concentrated today than ever before and getting quickly worse.
It's a real problem, the social and economic structure of the US is falling apart and this is one of the most glaring symptoms and/or causes.
Your dog does have a pretty low earning potential going forward, but with a reverse mortgage on that blanket, I think we can scare up some liquidity as long as you're willing to place it with these specific pension funds.
>The first-ever thorough scientific and academic study of whether the U.S. is a democracy
If the study was whether the U.S. is a representative republic, it would actually have more validity.
Do you hear the sound of more tax dollars being flushed? I thought you did.
Standard Disclaimer: The results, however, would have been the same.
This is how they do it, with computer code-code hosing USA. The problem is with news rigging is that people don't want to see the truth and it's hard as you can't see, touch or communicate with one sided algorithms that are created to make you click here, click there, and come back around for a 100 more clicks. Facebook engineers are highly paid just to figure out how to get people to click and share more.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/05/privacy-duping-of-america-intangible.html
The wealthy pay software engineers and developers good money to dupe the consumer and get that personal data for sale, $180 Billion dollar a year business and the White House just gave corporations carte blanch as well with stating "if the data goes to a government agency" well hell, go ahead and harvest it. You know how that gets twisted. I've had a subtle campaign for about 3 years now about needing a law to license and index all data sellers, so we know who in the hell they are. Can you imagine a world without stock brokers being licensed and regulated? Well that's what we have here, data brokers and companies doing their thing. You don't even know the half of who's selling data and what kind outside the major data brokers as that's all that gets covered in the news. Wake up as that's only the tip of the iceberg.
http://www.youcaring.com/other/help-preserve-our-privacy-/258776
I'm flat out tired and disgusted with the self worth of US consumers being pounded and lessened with flipping algorithms that assess every damn risk to your name that some quant or data scientist dreams up with some spurious correlation and then then the flipping score about you that gets sold! The data is flawed!! They make any kind of profile they want about you and lots of that profile data is flawed. This is how the wealthy do it and you can put Facebook right at the top of the list for profiting on this. A quant, did a great video a couple years ago about "modeling for inequality using segmentation", they know as they write the models and people cheat with computer code and deceive. I'll never get off the soapbox on this topic as I saw it first hand years ago in CA when managed care first arrived, MDs were cheated on pay with computer code and it's grown from there.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/04/modeling-for-inequality-with.html
Relax, inequality in Middle-East with its frontmen United Arab Emirates and Qatar is even more inequal than US and A. Unless USA.gov appoints beheading squads, there is a long way to go to match such oligarchies. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh may actually have originated due to economic inequality in Middle East; though haven't seen comparable factions in US (yet): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/inequality-is-behind...
Hey, I have an idea! Lets pass more socialist regulations that only benefit the wealthy while chaining the people down... that should solve the inequality problem!
In two words:
Progressivism Sucks!
If US of A returned control of it's money back to the people from the international bankers, stopped meddling in the affairs of other countries, engage in trade and not wars, the world would be a much much better place.
Thanks for that, just add all the other countries to the list as well.
Name your top three. I'm curious. I've always wondered what business is getting by with margins so thin that a well-placed fart could take it out of the running.
Every single business that is not directly linked to the fascist money flows.
Power, and wealth, even for the 30,000, is a means to an end. That end is to own everything, and strongly encourage all breeds of humanity who pose a threat to their rule to stop reproducing.
Once robots can do everything our masters' debt-slaves can do, the first order our masters will give them is to exterminate the debt-slaves. Once cars could do everything horses could do, all but a few of the horses were sent to dogfood and glue factories.
(What horses remain are rich women's playthings. We won't be so lucky. Even the dullest human is too intelligent and lives too long to make a good pet.)
Then the 20 (or so) will give similar orders for the rest of the 30,000 and help themselves to their wealth.
The 20 themselves plan to have their own consciousness uploaded to computers, allowing them to spend the next few billions of years amusing themselves overseeing the conquest of the observable universe by their robot servants, who will make far better New Socialist Men than humans ever have.
It's called the Singularity---our masters' horrifying parody of the heresy of the Rapture, dispensing with the concept of a just, loving God having a say over who gets to live happily in heaven forever and who gets cast into the pool of fire.
If this sounds like lunacy, well, that's because it is.
oops
What make you believe the first order of business hasn't already started in stealth. You ever drive into a town that says population 250k but it feels the size of another town youve spent time in that states population far less. When you look at consumption statistics like petroleum consumption at 2001 levels or the shrinking real GNP it make one wonder. Herd people into tighter geographic areas and they will feel like there is more people. Feel lots next to slaughter houses are packed tight. A couple weeks ago Drudge had an article about how they are finding human DNA in hotdogs..... "Soilent Green its people" or "Oscar Meyer its people"
>A study just released finds that "America’s 20 wealthiest people
> — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream
>G650 luxury jet — now own more wealth than the bottom half
>of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in
>57 million households.”
You lie, 20 people would not fit comfortably in a G650.
The author was correct in his descriptions of how an unelected abusive elite control the government through a party apparatus that is purchased.
This would make Washington DC some part of the Beast... But certainly not the head..
Then the author makes a 90 degree pivot and declares Washington as the source.
Which is it???? Do you think Washington is controlled? Or that it is the ultimate controller???
I think the politicians are sociopathic dupes scrambling to join an ever smaller power circle that will forever exclude them.
To be a politician is to be a tool of those who wield powerpower, not to yourself wield it. When they depart from the program they get assassinated like the Kennedy's.
Ultimately their function is to be a public palliative and theater while actually deciding little of substance.
We know who the tiny elites are.
They are Warburgs, Rothschilds, and a handful of tradtional Euro Royalty. Their deputies in the US are the Rockefellers, Morgans, and a handful of others. Your guess as to whether the US deputies sit in the front row or the second is as good as mine.
To say Washington is the problem is to not even address one head of the hydra, but only its claws.
NYC and London are each more of a power center than DC, for is they who decide who goes to DC and what they will do there.... And the evidence is that the Warburgs again operate from Germany...too.
There will be no victory from over simplification, only a new face to the terror. Rumor is they are shifting their power base East.
Good points. One of the stupidist things the US Aristocrats are doing is debasing their own power structure because they want to play in the same arena as the Old World elites. The Eurocrats regard US aristocrats as provincial hicks, wannabes that will never be.
The desperation of the wealthy here to be considered in the same realm as Europeans is palpable and if anyone was paying attention for the past few decades you could see the sickening Euro worship in the politics they practice. In particular, the "Progressive" wealthy have a Euro fetish that never seems to stop.
This is why a broad section of political observers think that elitist politicians are trying to turn the US into a "European Welfare State". That is supposed to sound good to the poor as well, but "welfare state" here is not about creating programs for the poor. It's about choking the poor to death with poverty, while smiling and pretending to care.
All that money, but a lot of them are old farts with health problems.
So on that score I'm well ahead (at least for the moment).
One of the most difficult facts to get across to the people who call themselves "progressive" or "conservatives" is the purpose of the graduated income tax. "Progressives" like to think the Income Tax punishes the wealthy, while "conservatives" believe the Income Tax pays for the "strong defense" that they have been taught to desire.
The purpose of the Income Tax is to destroy generational wealth building capabilities for the non-elite. And nothing else.
Governments do not require money. They use force to coerce, so flows of "currency" are simply a means to an end, disguising the iron fist in a velvet glove. The Income Tax is not about funding anything- if you can borrow half the budget you can borrow all of it. The Income Tax is about keeping everyone worried and stressed about their lives and their futures so they cannot concentrate or think.
If you cannot think rationally, you do not pose a threat to the aristocracy.
Deprivation is the primary tool of control that the aristocrats employ against the people. The problem is that technology has advanced to the point where even the poorest sense that we live in a post scarcity world. This isn't some sci fi fantasy that is far off in the future; we are post scarcity now and have been for a very long time. It is getting difficult to convince the people that they need to starve to death.
Once you understand that the Income Tax is a huge fraud that is central to aristocratic rule, the rest of their rotten edifice starts crumbling in your mind. The mountain of lies comes tumbling down. This is what needs to happen for all those who still have faith in Democrats, Republicans, and the aristocratic system they mistakenly believe is "democracy".
This isn't a "rule" per se, but unless your family had a reasonable amount of money or unique education at the turn of the 20th century then you're basically screwed.
Exceptions exist but they are not common. I love it when folks claim they are the "exception" until you dig a little under the surface and find out their grandfather attended Harvard in 1923 or something like that.
The playing field is more "fair" here than elsewhere but it's far from fair.
Fuck this board to hell, a lot of you idiots just down arrow for the fuck of it, and no discussion, no proof, nothing, and you call yourselves edumacated? ROFLMAO
I said a LOT, not everyone, not lumping in those that disagree, but post sane replies.
down down down there's a burning ring of fire
There are long term trends having to do with modernization that naturally reduces the need for workers in production which has traditionally employed people.
Trickle down doesn't work when the very richest hoard their wealth and don't spend it the money is taken out of circulation and stored so the rest starve.
Don't yell at me that's how it's designed if you want to allow generational wealth transfers and you don't recapture it then if it's hoarded and causes these imbalances don't look at me.
I'm not a believer in socialism and I'm not a believer in cronyism but it's the crony skew of our legislature that tilts the board so that vast hoards of wealth can rather easily be maintained and increased.
Wealth disparity = social instability. Always has.
Dear Santa,
For Christmas this year, please put these 20 people on a Gulfstream jet and have it crash into the White House .... preferably while there is a big party with the Parliament of Whores in full attendance ... and of course Mr. Special Sauce himself.
Best. Present. Ever.