Sanders: Middle class ‘should be angry’ about inequality

[kentuck]

Enough is enough...
=============

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/dem-primaries/240072-sanders-middle-class-should-be-angry-about-inequality

<snip>

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rallied South Carolina voters Saturday morning as he weighs a potential presidential bid to challenge early Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Speaking at the South Carolina Democratic Convention, Sanders said he understands middle-class fury about what he calls nationwide inequality.

“They should be angry,” Sanders said, according to the South Carolina’s Post and Courier.

Sanders drew a line between the wealthy and the middle class, which he said is struggling through one of the most difficult economies since the Great Depression.

“They have the money, but we’ve got the people,” Sanders said. “Our job is to educate, to organize and to say enough is enough. America does not belong to the billionaire class it belongs to all of us."


....more at link

[Autumn]

1. I'm not middle class anymore but I am angry

in fact I'm downright furious.

[kentuck]

2. I think Bernie could get a lot of Republican support if he runs for the Presidency...

Many of them are just as pissed off as are some Democrats about the direction this country is headed. Maybe he should run as a "non-partisan"?

[appalachiablue]

4. I also think that many regular Americans & conservatives would go berserk if they knew the truth

intentionally hidden or omitted by the corporate owned media. When will we ever have an independent, accessible and affordable Media for the People- TPM, The People's Media I call it. (One can still dream).

Bernie is the most vocal and honest public figure in the M$M railing rightly about the rotten, serious issues Americans face. Thank God for him, Warren and some others-

[Enthusiast]

19. Oh, it is intentionally hidden alright.

[Autumn]

8. At this point I don't care what he runs as, he has my vote.

[Enthusiast]

18. I hate to say it, but me too.

[Enthusiast]

17. I believe you are correct.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[kentuck]

60. I think he should actively pursue their votes...

In my opinion, a lot of Republicans are very, very pissed off at their Party and are looking for something different. Bernie can be very persuasive.

[Enthusiast]

20. The sad part is, they're still not satisfied, they want to take even more from you

by cutting "entitlements" and enacting standard of living killing trade deals.

[Autumn]

21. It's just crazy that we people have to fight this bullshit and each other.

[Enthusiast]

24. That is why they have propaganda outlets and sockpuppets working full time to keep us divided..

We can't adequately fight back when we are divided.

[Autumn]

25. Those are easy to spot but when it's the very people we elect that go along with it

and pretend to be powerless and don't bother to shout it from the rooftops because they are only concerned about their future that's pretty damn shitty of them.

[Enthusiast]

57. They are setting the record for shittiness.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[merrily]

31. We don't HAVE to. Some choose to fight for Third Way.

Some of us choose to fight those who fight for Third Way.

[Autumn]

33. While we are fighting they are robbing us blind.

It almost looks like it's by design.

[merrily]

34. How many milennia ago do you suppose it was when someone said for the very first time

in human history "divide and conquer?"

[Autumn]

35. As soon as man could talk. You would think modern people would be smart

enough to look back and say, wait just a damn minute, I see your game and it isn't chess. maybe in another millennium mankind will get it together.

[merrily]

36. Evolution is much too slow a process. We have to act sooner.

[Autumn]

38. I don't see it happening.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026570277

[merrily]

39. I see signs. I am much more hopeful now than I was a couple of years ago.

I have my hopeless moments, too. I guess everyone does. But, I think things are looking more possible now.

[merrily]

26. True. As we know, regular political board posters tend to be more aware than the

general public. It's important to get the general public informed and motivated.

[MrMickeysMom]

42. You aren't alone...

Additionally, the Census Bureau can't define middle class, but it sure knows how to define income inequality trends…


Ref: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/inequality/middleclass.html

Narrative (Middle Class)

The Census Bureau does not have an official definition of the "middle class," but it does derive several measures related to the distribution of income and income inequality. Traditionally, the Census Bureau uses two of the more common measures of income inequality: the shares of aggregate income received by households (or other income recipient units such as families) and the Gini index (or index of income concentration). In the shares approach, we rank households from lowest to highest on the basis of income and then divide them into equal population groups, typically quintiles. We then divide the aggregate income of each group by the overall aggregate income to derive shares. The Gini index incorporates more detailed shares data into a single statistic which summarizes the dispersion of the income shares across the whole income distribution. The Gini index ranges from zero, indicating perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share), to one, perfect inequality (where all the income is received by only one recipient).

Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.

Researchers believe that changes in the labor market and, to a certain extent, household composition affected the long-run increase in income inequality. The wage distribution has become considerably more unequal with workers at the top experiencing real wage gains and those at the bottom real wage losses. These changes reflect relative shifts in demand for labor differentiated on the basis of education and skill. At the same time, long-run changes in society's living arrangements have taken place also tending to exacerbate household income differences. For example, divorces, marital separations, births out of wedlock, and the increasing age at first marriage have led to a shift away from married-couple households to single-parent families and nonfamily households. Since nonmarried-couple households tend to have lower income and income that are less equally distributed than other types of households (partly because of the likelihood of fewer earners in them), changes in household composition have been associated with growing income inequality.

Comparing the shares of aggregate income received by quintile between 1993 and 1994 would suggest that the amount of inequality in the income distributions of households did not change. Between 1992 and 1993, however, the amount of inequality in the income distributions of households increased significantly, although part of the increase may have been due to a change in data collection methods. For more information on the 1992-93 change in inequality see the article by Paul Ryscavage, "A surge in Growing Income Inequality?", Monthly Labor Review, August 1995, pp. 52-62.

[polichick]

3. Taking his message to South Carolina now - his decision should come soon.

[merrily]

40. This morning I heard someone on some talking head panel guess in a few days.

Sorry, I have no clue which show or which network.

[onecaliberal]

5. Mad doesn't even begin to describe it.

Deep seeded disgust. Completely furious. Never thought I'd see this country become a nation of greedy, selfish, narcissists hell bent on shoving their fake religion and hate down the throats of all. They won't be happy until we are all in the street begging for their crumbs.

[ananda]

6. Why don't we just say it: POOR!

The poor should be angry!

[jwirr]

14. Been poor most of my life. I have been unequal to the middle class. I am tired. Feeling hopeless.

Beyond angry.

[Dragonfli]

50. We are, even tho by far the largest demographic, invisible to media and politics

We are the malformed child kept in a locked room that visitors never see.

If anyone ever bothered to champion the poor and ask the hard questions as to why so many of us have become so even tho we are the hardest workers, they would find the missing half of voters that don't show up for elections.

A few of us are wonks, and therefore engaged, but most poor have little time to spend outside of the struggle to eat and stay in homes to vote for or even acknowledge politicians that appear to them to only care about the rich or the comfortable suburbanites that hire us to fix their houses and mow their laws.

A war on poverty would engage an extremely large block of voters. Pandering to the middle class is silly when you think about it, they are a quickly shrinking demographic.

Tired, hopeless, beyond angry describes my feelings as well and I am willing to bet are the most common feelings of the fastest growing demographic in the country, the invisible sub middle class.

[jwirr]

56. Exactly. Especially since the disappearing middle class are not getting richer - they are joining us

[merrily]

28. Thank you! The poor AND the middle class.

[MrMickeysMom]

46. I'll say it another way...

The working poor and forgotten impoverished.

[Dragonfli]

51. It is worse than that, the forgotten working class that make up most of the impoverished

and those impoverished that lack the opportunity or the ability to work, together they make up most of the country, but only those classes above them are ever mentioned.

In other words America the invisible.

[MrMickeysMom]

55. Yes, you are right...

There it went…

1) Now, what are we going to do about it? (question may be rhetorical, but may not)

2) Are we going to let fear keep us FROM doing anything about it? (dangerous, only if not enough follow through).

[AzDar]

7. K & R

[L0oniX]

9. Not when the new "middle class" is all banksters and Wall Street thieves.

[merrily]

29. If your BONUS is a million bucks, you just might not be middle class.

Last edited Sun Apr 26, 2015, 11:57 AM - Edit history (1)

(Apologies to Foxworthy. Then again, he was a Romney supporter. So, no apologies.)

[pampango]

10. Krugman: Americans are more likely than Europeans to believe that they live in a middle-class

society even though income is really much less equally distributed here than in Europe. I’ve truncated the table to show the comparison between the U.S. and France: the French think they live in a hierarchical pyramid when they are in reality mostly middle-class, Americans are the opposite.



... evidence also says that Americans vastly underestimate inequality in their own society – and when asked to choose an ideal wealth distribution, say that they like Sweden.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/inequality-delusions/

[merrily]

30. Most Europeans don't look down on union and union workers.

So, they don't have to disassociate themselves from "working class" people in order to feel better about themselves.

They also seem to have more of a sense that the fruits of their tax dollars should be theirs than we do.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Mr. President, you can't be "for" TPP and "against" Citizens United!!!

Or, did you mean you were against citizens,
united

[Skittles]

12. I am very angry

they are stealing our pay, our retirement, our security - everything, they're talking it all, because it's never enough for those greedy bastards

[hifiguy]

13. I have yet to hear a word from Bernie

with which I disagree.

[Enthusiast]

16. Me too.

[MrMickeysMom]

44. Me, neither, highfiguy

How is it that he can step away from the Insular indie those houses of Congress?

It doesn't take a great feat of mental agility to see where we have going after learning our history.

[Enthusiast]

15. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[MrMickeysMom]

48. ^^^^^^^^^EVERYONE SHOULD VIEW THIS^^^^^^^^^^

View it, and review it, and then show your co-workers, and then start asking questions…. It doesn't matter where you start asking them.

I'm going to get in big trouble pretty soon if I go through with asking them directly of our CEO… you can count on it.

Well… that's my fate and legacy, but it's OUR MONEY! Oh, yes, when you look how this is and WHY this is distributed the way it is…. Maybe you should ask as many people as you can "WHY"?

Then, ask what are we getting from trade agreements like NAFTA, GATT and the TPP?

We're getting fucked… that's what.

[Enthusiast]

49. I kept the Youtube link so I could drag it out as needed.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[onecaliberal]

52. Can I have the link?

[Enthusiast]

53. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPKKQnijnsM

[onecaliberal]

54. Thank you!

[hifiguy]

62. Make this an OP NOW!

[kentuck]

63. I shared it on FB... with these comments...

"This is very good information to have. It is rather short but good to know. Share it and you will become an honorary member of Degrees in Good Standing. "

[Enthusiast]

64. Good idea. The video demonstrates how badly misinformed the American people are on this issue.

Every position we take would be enhanced if the people were aware of this massive discrepancy. There would certainly be more resistance to the TPP and cutting "entitlements". More people would be against the Republican plan to abolish inheritance taxes.

[Octafish]

22. Most people don't know.

Corporate Owned News hasn't given them a clue.

[merrily]

37. Why would they? But, they are starting. So many people are publishing and

talking, that media HAS to say something.

[Octafish]

41. Alex Carey studied the phenomenon: Corporations use propaganda to counteract Democracy

Maria Galardin's TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio helps explain how we got here and what we need to do to move forward, starting with putting the "Public" into Airwaves again:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html

If you find a moment, here's the first part (scroll down at the link for the second part) on Carey.

http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3

It's important for there to be more than a handful of companies providing "news." Democracy depends on it.

[woo me with science]

23. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thank you, Bernie.

[Thinkingabout]

27. Good, if Bernie is concerned about inequality then he and Hillary are on the same page.

[merrily]

43. Bernie's been on that page all his life. Hillary turned to it after she saw how many wanted Warren

to run against Hillary. But newly-crafted/copied campaign rhetoric is not going to fool everyone into forgetting about Hillary's most recent thirty or forty years.

[Thinkingabout]

61. Hillary is truly an amazing lady, to have known in 2007 Bernie was going to run in

2016 and start talking about inequality in 2007 to advance her position in this issue. It encourages me to listen closely to her in the next few months to see more amazing stories.

•Outraged at CEO compensation. (Oct 2007)

This information was obtained from:

http://ontheissues.org/hillary_clinton.htm

[merrily]

65. Oh? What did she do about cutting it during the 6 years she sat on the WalMart board?

How about while she sat in the Senate?

Rhetoric from her last campaign proves nothing and has nothing to do with my Reply 43.

Also, your link is of no help. I am not going to click on every link on that page to hunt for what you are referring to.

[Thinkingabout]

66. She accomplished the same as Bernie who has been in Congress longer.

I put the quote in the post so you would not have to click on the link. Facts are facts, some people likes facts.

Why would you say Hillary is only talking about wage inequality after Bernie has been talking about running? Strange, huh?

[merrily]

67. But, you didn't show me the source of the quote or the context. I like facts.

some people likes facts.

Why would you say Hillary is only talking about wage inequality after Bernie has been talking about running? Strange, huh?

Um. Fact is, that is not what I said. Fact is, 2008 primary campaign rhetoric doesn't mean any more than 2016 primary campaign rhetoric.

Fact is, neither Bernie nor Warren sat on WalMart's board for six years, neither doing, nor attempting to cut executive compensation, then claimed to be outraged by it. Btw, does her campaign rhetoric about alleged outrage over executive compensation extend to her own compensation and that of her family?

[Thinkingabout]

68. The truth does matter.

[merrily]

69. Yep. Truth is, Hillary's campaign talk has little to do with the last

40 years of her life, just as my post said.

[Thinkingabout]

71. This is foolish, I am outta here.

[merrily]

72. Truth matters.

[Joe Turner]

32. From all apperances it looks like Bernie is going to run

Like Elizabeth Warren, his message resonates with most Americans. And it would be great if EW changes her mind and runs too. The political establishment would be turned upside down.

[merrily]

45. It already has been.

Hillary Clinton a co-founder of the DLC, who traveled with Al From to spread the DLC gospel to Europe, is trying to sound like a populist who empathizes with poor people.

That's a symptom of a sea change.

[seabeyond]

47. if sanders would get in the race, i would jump behind. i would go to my youth and give them someone

to be jazzed about. he would reach them. hands down. easily.

and he would appease the white male establishment, hand across the forehead in relief.

[hifiguy]

58. What is the point of your cheap, cheesy and unwarranted slap

at Bernie Sanders in your second sentence?

[seabeyond]

59. firstly it is not a slap to sanders. secondly, it is reality. fact. you think they do not have

these conversations when addressing their campaign and demographics? really?

and are you going to argue what i say? that sanders will appease men?

if you want to argue the point, go for it.

if you are making up shit for a cheap cheesy slap across my face? no fuggin' way.

[merrily]

73. He has said he WILL get in, if he sees support. So, if you want him in the race, the time is now.

However, I very much doubt anyone in the establishment, regardless of gender or hue, is going to be relieved if runs. If they'd be relieved, he'd already have all the money and party support, on this board and off, that anyone could want.

[liberal_at_heart]

70. K&R