Kucinich on financial inequality

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-are-we-going-rebuild-our-nation-1334933486

Today, Congress considered a fundamental question that affects the lives of every family in America. How are we going to rebuild our nation? Nearly four years after Wall Street’s near financial collapse, we have committed hundreds of billions of dollars for bank bailouts and trillions for war, but we have still not done enough to help regular, middle-class Americans. Tens of millions of Americans can’t find a job, our infrastructure is crumbling before our eyes, and our long-term investments in our future are cut in every round of budget talks.

The House considered and passed a bill, H.R. 9, which supposedly encourages business to hire more workers. We all want jobs, but the bill doesn’t deliver on its promise because as the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center points out, this bill would change tax policy in a way that primarily benefits the wealthiest Americans by lowering their taxes.

The theory seems to be that if wealthy people have more money, good things will happen for all of us. This is trickle-down economics and it just doesn’t work. If it did work, we wouldn’t have 5.5 million Americans unemployed for 27 weeks or more. Economic disparity is at an all time high. As of 2007, the top 1% of households owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth.