JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum so who really controls the world??

I have to laugh at the old-timers who pine for the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons, the Bankers and Industrialists who got rich exploiting American workers in the times before the Great Depression. Of course prior to Franklin Delano Roosevelt - who they would brand as the first anti-Christ (they've had many since) - most Americans lived in grinding poverty and the average lifespan of an American was less than 60 years and only 48 years for black folk. The anti-government types who romanticize American history in support of their law of the jungle ideology are living longer and far more comfortable lives than their forefathers who reaped the whirlwind of the small government philosophy and the harsh whip of unregulated corporations and businessmen who ruled the roost before 1930.

It's no coincidence that America's greatest economic era - the '50s and 60's - came about during the period when unions were strong and the Congress and President were willing to use government to soften the rough edges of crony capitalism by instituting social programs such as unemployment benefits, social security, medicaid and medicare and, by the way, end overt discrimination against black people, women and minorities.

Since 1980 we've seen a steady erosion of government regulation of business and support for social programs and a corresponding growth in the corrupting influence of wealth on politics and business, leading to a financial system that rewards crookedness and allows the wealthiest few Americans to game the tax system and accrue colossal increases in their own personal wealth far out of line with any value they've added to the economy or nation.

According to a study by William Domhoff, Sociology Department of the University of California, Santa Clara, the top 1 percent owned 45 percent of the wealth and the bottom 99 percent owned 55 percent of the wealth in 1929.

By 1975 the top 1 percent's share of the nation's wealth had dropped to 20 percent and the bottom 99 percent's share had risen to 80 percent.

Enter Ronald Reagan and the right wing horde.

By 1981 the top 1 percent's share of the wealth had rebounded to 25 percent and the bottom 99 percent's had dipped to 75 percent.

By 2007 the top 1 percent's share had grown to 35 percent of the nation's wealth and the bottom 99 percent's had fallen to 65 percent! That's an economic landscape nearly as favorable to the 1 percenters as the one they enjoyed just prior to the Great Depression in 1929, when they controlled 45 percent of the nation's wealth and the rest of us only had a 55 percent share.

So I say to to all those old-timers who support the anti-government, anti-tax, pro-business line and pine for the good old days when the rich ruled and the rest of us got screwed over, be patient and don't blame Obama. Just be happy we're almost there.