With unemployment hovering near 10%, and underemployment much higher, the poor economy is on most people's mind. Many are angry at the government for lack of success in creating jobs. Many are also angry at the amount of money spent to save Wall Street, the Auto Industry, and the Big Banks, allowing CEOs and other millionaires to lavish themselves with huge bonuses while ordinary Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to get by.
The last time income inequality was this high was the Great Depression
Some recent statistics paint an even more dire situation:
Over 43 million Americans live under the poverty line, which goes up to 60 million when other factors are taken into consideration. This is equivalent to one in seven Americans.
50.7 million Americans are uninsured.
In 2005, the income of the top 20% of society was 1,500% higher than that of the lowest 20%, the highest gap ever recorded.
For the latest year that data was compiled, the tax rate for multinational corporations in the United States was about 2.3%, a significantly lower amount than ordinary Americans.
The financial sector's share of domestic corporate profits right before the economic crisis was 41%, up from 16% in 1973.
The share of total income by the top 10% of society went from 34.6% in 1980 to 48.2% in 2008.
The share of total income by the top 1% of society for the same time period went from 10% to over 20%.
Real median income for working-age households has fallen over the same time period.
Income inequality in the United States has widened over the past several decades, making America not only more unequal than other developed countries but one of the most unequal in the world.
Ordinary Americans are struggling to find a job and make ends meet, while those responsible for the financial crisis, Wall Street and the Big Banks, were bailed out by taxpayer money and are able to hand out huge paychecks to CEOs.
The top 25 hedge fund managers earned over $25 billion last year, in the midst of an economic recession larger than any in recent memory.
Over the past several decades, the rich have gotten richer, the middle class and the poor have remained stagnant, and income inequality has increased exponentially. The United States is in danger of becoming a Third World country.
How did this happen? Corporate money and special interest lobbyists have flooded Congress with funds, making politicians beholden to those who have given them the most capital, and not their constituents, the American people. Decades of ever more deregulation and lower taxes, as well as loopholes large enough to drive through, have exacerbated this situation to disproportionately and deferentially help the rich at the expense of the less well-off.
Both parties have encouraged this behavior, and during this most recent crisis, with widespread popular support to hold accountable those responsible for creating this situation, the Democrats and the Obama administration negotiated directly with those they would try to regulate, making concession after concession until the final bill was basically meaningless, as far as real reform was concerned. Of course, this hasn't stopped Wall Street financiers from complaining about Obama's "anti-business" policies, though this sentiment could not be farther from the truth.
Wall Street and other corporate influences need to be reformed
This is the result of runaway capitalism, whose corporate and special-interest influence extends over the U.S. government, basically running the economy and shaping policies that directly benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of the country.
Capitalism is not evil. Its ability to create wealth can be used to help people from all strata of society, not just the rich. It only becomes cruel when it is allowed to run its logical path, with profit as the only motivating factor and ever-increasing wealth going to an ever smaller circle of those at the top of the pyramid.
The influence of private money on Congress, elections, and politics in general in the United States is out of control. Many on the left point the finger mainly at the Republican Party, but the Democrats are guilty of the same crime. It is impossible to either gain or maintain political power in the United States without corporate or private money of some kind.
As a result, American democracy is under attack, with the voice of the people unable to be heard over the drone of private money. If this trend of increasing income disparity and corporate and special-interest money influence over political policies continues, the United States will become substantially weakened and degrade into a Third World country.
This vicious cycle is what is truly at stake in America.
The American people want to reform Wall Street, so that they can never again have the ability to bring down the rest of the country's economy. They want universal health care. They want better public education. They want the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. They want to help the environment. They want job security, unemployment benefits, higher minimum wages, and other things that Big Business would not agree to otherwise.
The only thing standing in the way of real progressive reform is the ruling-class of millionaires, billionaires, corporations, and special-interests, all of whom have the most to lose from their loss of privilege.
The solution is to take the money out of politics: Clean elections, clean politics, clean politicians.
Publicly-financed campaigns would make politicians beholden to the people, not the corporations.
Lobbyists are not inherently bad. They only become so when the difference in disposable income to spend means that an environmental lobby can spend $10 million for all of Congress while a corporation who pollutes the environment can spend the same amount on a single senator. Putting a cap on the amount of money lobbyists can spend would equalize the playing field.
The battle to implement clean elections will not be easy, as the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations the same amount of free speech as an individual citizen shows. This is something that every American should want, in order to reclaim political power for those whose right it innately is.
True, progressive reform of campaign financing and economic-political structures is absolutely vital for a better, more prosperous, more equal, more democratic America.
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