{"id":6228,"date":"2011-10-29T00:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T07:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/29\/redistributing-the-wealth\/"},"modified":"2011-10-29T00:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T07:03:49","slug":"redistributing-the-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/29\/redistributing-the-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Redistributing the Wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the firs complaints I heard from Republicans about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party is that they would try to redistribute the wealth, taking it from the people who earned it and giving it to freeloaders.  Of course, this is just another Republican lie.  Republicans have been redistributing the wealth since Reagan took office, if not before.  Now we have proof from the CBO,m as this article by Eugene Robinson demonstrates.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"29redistribution\"<\/p>\n

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it \u2014 as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich<\/strong>, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what\u2019s been happening might be theft.<\/p>\n

The gist of the CBO study, titled \u201cTrends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007<\/a>,\u201d is that while we\u2019ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don\u2019t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that\u2019s where we\u2019ve been led.<\/p>\n

Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great \u2014 but only until you look a little closer.<\/p>\n

For those at the bottom \u2014 the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes \u2014 the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This is not what Republicans want you to think of when you hear the word redistribution. You\u2019re supposed to imagine the evil masterminds as Bolsheviks, not bankers. You\u2019re supposed to envision the lazy free-riders who benefit from redistribution as the \u201cpoor,\u201d and the industrious job-creators who get robbed as the \u201cwealthy\u201d \u2014 not the other way around\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

The above graph is from the CBO study itself.<\/font><\/p>\n

Ed Shultz has an excellent example of how Republicans help redistribute wealth at American workers’ expense, ties the story into the OWS movement, and interviews Bernie Sanders.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed only made one mistake here. He did not allow enough time for Bernie Sanders, who unequivocally stated that one party, not both, is standing in the way of recovery<\/strong>.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the firs complaints I heard from Republicans about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party is that they would try to redistribute the wealth, taking it from the people who earned it and giving it to freeloaders.  Of course, this is just another Republican lie.  Republicans have been redistributing the wealth since Reagan took […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}