Thom Hartmann: You're right, Rick - the smart people will never be on your side...

[thomhartmann]

To understand the plight of the American middle class today - you have to understand that a crime has taken place. The Middle Class isn't dying today because of a random financial crisis in 2007 triggering a deep, and long-lasting recession. The Middle Class is dying today because of a decades-long - arguably criminal - effort to rig the American economy in favor of the corporate elite - and transfer massive amounts of wealth from the vast majority of Americans up to the top 1%. We're now in the final stages of this effort - and more and more Americans are waking up to what's really happening.

In a recent article published for AlterNet - David Degraw - highlights each incident of theft against the middle class by the corporate elite. There're the Reagan tax cuts and destruction of labor unions beginning in the 1980's that fueled an enormous pay gap between CEOs and workers - so that 30 years ago, CEOs made 25 times more than their average worker - and yet today make as much as 500 times more than their average worker. Those same policies have resulted in the top 1% seeing their share of national income triple over the last three decades, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop by 20%. Years of lobbying and outright bribery have rigged the tax code against working Americans - forcing them to pay a higher tax rate than members of the corporate elite like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett.

Not only that - those higher tax rates paid by working people don't flow through the coffers of government to be reinvested to help the working class with better social services, education, and infrastructure. Instead - that revenue goes straight to corporate treasuries in the form of bailouts on Wall Street, tax subsidies to the oil industry, or giveaways to the for-profit health insurance cartel. For example - the Wall Street bailout financed by taxpayers like you and me led to banksters getting paid more than $150 billion in bonuses in 2009, while we the taxpayers lost 25% from the value of our 401ks.

That same year - the richest 400 Americans increased their wealth by $30 billion dollars - giving them more wealth than the bottom 155 million Americans combined. As DeGraw points out in that Alternet article - had our taxpayer money been invested in job creation rather than passed out as Wall Street bailouts - 5 million Americans could have been put back to work earning $30,000 a year each. But that didn't happen. Instead - more than $14 trillion was quietly passed out to Wall Street and corporate America.

Trillions more went to our for-profit military-industrial complex so they could profit from our neverending war on terror - and not a single penny was reinvested in better education, better healthcare, better infrastructure, or job creation for working Americans. And working Americans really needed all that wealth that's been taken from them. Before Bush, Americans spent 7% of their income on food and energy. Today - it's 20%. Working Americans pay 8% of their income on healthcare - more than any other nation in the developed world - and yet we get worse results. Meanwhile, the cost of housing for the middle class has gone up 34%

So when all of these necessities are added together - Americans have to use their credit cards to make ends meet - and are forced to go deeper and deeper into debt - since their wallets have been picked by the corporate elite. As Elizabeth Warren said - the game IS rigged. And if it wasn't rigged - if wages for working people had continued to rise with productivity like during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter presidencies - if the rich still paid their fair share in taxes and the Reagan tax cuts had never happened - and if wealth distribution in America stayed on track with where it was in the Carter 1970's - then the Middle Class today would be thriving.

As Degraw argues - had the corporate elite not stolen so much money from us over the last thirty two years - the average middle class income would be above $100,000. We'd be able to afford free health care for every American. A 4-bedroom house for every American family. Free college for all - and 21st century roads, bridges, and public transportation. And we could also afford a 5% tax rate moving forward for 99% of all Americans. The potential for all of these things I just mentioned was stolen by the corporate elite - with the help of Republicans Ronald Reagan, both George Bush's, and their cronies in Congress. And smart people are waking up to this reality - and saying enough is enough.

Which explains what Rick Santorum may have meant last week when he said this about support for the Republican Party..."'elite smart people' will never support GOP." You're right, Rick - the smart people will never be on your side. They will not vote for you, because smart people will not endorse the sort of middle class-destroying policies that useful idiots like you are pushing. The smart people - the Americans who know about this theft - are standing up and speaking out against it. The smart people know how to reverse the damage that's been done.

They know we have to roll back the Reagan tax cuts. They know we have to strengthen protections for labor unions.

They know that taxpayer money must be reinvested into the community and not given to transnational corporations to build factories in Vietnam and pay their CEOs billions.

They know that free healthcare, free college, and cheap renewable energy is the bare minimum that working Americans are entitled to in the richest nation on the planet.

They know that criminals on Wall Street and in Washington, DC who've defrauded the Middle Class should be in jail.

And they know we need a grassroots effort to overturn corporate personhood to make sure the corporate elite can't do this to us again.

A grassroots effort in the streets to take back our democracy and economy and get it working on behalf of the 99% once again. Don't just sit there - get out and occupy something!

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[marions ghost]

1. "Occupy something"

Before Bush, Americans spent 7% of their income on food and energy. Today - it's 20%. Working Americans pay 8% of their income on healthcare - more than any other nation in the developed world - and yet we get worse results. Meanwhile, the cost of housing for the middle class has gone up 34%.



"People are seeing that the system is rigged against them..."

[bjobotts]

2. Excellent. One of his best rants yet.

To claim workers, whose wages remained stagnant while CEO salaries grew to as much as 500% of average workers, are not paying 'income taxes' and then turn around and complain that these "job profiteers" have to pay taxes on their increased income demonstrates selfishness becoming an art form. What twisted logic.

I wonder if it were put to them before wage increases that in order to have an increase you must decide to pay higher taxes...or pay no taxes but have your wages stagnate or decrease by 20%...what the decision would be, ha.

Republicans now would have us work for $5/day and still complain that it's unfair that we do not pay income taxes.

Romney/Lyin Ryan (neither are too bright) really don't believe in democracy...they believe in an Oligarchy of a totalitarian nature.

Their royalty fantasy brain believes that if you don't vote for THEM...then something must be wrong with YOU. Not that you just disagree but that something must be wrong with YOU.