The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago, according to an updated study by the prominent economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.
The top 1 percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913, when the government instituted an income tax.
The figures underscore that even after the recession the country remains in a new Gilded Age, with income as concentrated as it was in the years that preceded the Depression of the 1930s, if not more so. (read more)
I don't know what people expected. That the rich wouldn't make the recession work to their advantage? Let's not kid ourselves. The recession wasn't a problem for the rich, it was an opportunity!
And the bottom 80% did the majority of the work to generate that cash flow. God Bless America, everybody.
Who the hell said it was a choice? Rich people literally worship money, and they'll do anything to get it. 9/11 was a tragedy for everyone, but you have to remember what building it was that got blown up. it was the world trade center, where Lots, and Lots of bankers worked, and a lot of money passed through. The attack on the world trade center was like an attack on a temple. Banksters saw it as a direct offense to them. That's why they got their puppets in congress to pour 1.1trillion dollars into the defense budget. Rich people do what money tells them to do. That's why we're "Defending ourselves" in the oil soaked middle east, It's why we're in a pissing contest with Syria, it's why we owe so much money to China, and it's why Walmart won't give their employees a decent livable wage and worthwhile benefits. It's why Insurance companies won't save your life, It's why Argentina is a third world nation. The US Dollar has the word GOD printed on the side, and the more god you have in your pocket, the more likely you are to get into heaven.
I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I have no proof that the rich man actually does worship money, but it fits, and that's what their behavior suggests. Take it with a grain of salt and a twist of lime.
This is a huge hijack in my own post, but I guess they're finishing up the so-called Freedom Tower—the replacement building to the twin World Trade Center towers—is being finished. Supposedly, it's been redesigned to be far more crashproof. But what does that mean? Are jumbo jets just going to go splat and fall the the pavement below?
Who in the world would want to work in the building, especially a high floor?
I suspect it'll be a fiasco. The world's tallest empty building.
I was working as a electrical design engineer at a plant that had about 1,500 employees. Everyone made decent pay and had good insurance. Janitors, assemblers, middle managers, HR, IT, engineers, tech's, sales and marketing, etc. The place was making a good (not stellar) profit making non-military, high end electronics.
The old boss retired and the new guy came in and just destroyed the company. He closed the plant down, fired 80% of us and relocated the other 20% "to improve efficiency". The new boss left the company immediately after destroying it-to pursue his quest to destroy other companies. How do these assholes sleep at night?
They believe in trickle-down-economics, which means those on the top get to piss on everyone below.
They learned in the 80s that hiring sociopaths for management positions improved the bottom line. Not kidding. The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson documents this change in part. That's how they sleep at night: they don't care.
From the graph is looks like things were best between WWII and Reagan. Once he got in office things went up for the rich and downhill for everyone else. Not that there is necessarily a causal relationship there but there is correlation. :(
What does surprise me is that the current situation is not unique - that the richest people in America have been that filthy rich before (as a class since it's been long enough that almost none of those people are still around).
I would never have pegged you as pro-capital punishment person.