Bush to Working America: Let Them Eat Hedge Funds

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/23/bush-to-working-america-let-them-eat-hedge-funds/

by Tula Connell, Aug 23, 2007

If Bush were running for president in 2008 and his opponent asked an audience, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” the hands of the richest 1 percent in this nation would shoot up. But not the hands of the millions of America’s workers who make this nation’s economy hum, and who are not even seeing their wages keep up with productivity, let alone seeing economic improvements.



New data came out this week showing home foreclosures jumped 93 percent in July from last year, even as U.S. workers earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year they had to make ends meet with less money. But that’s just part of the story. As The New York Times reports:

The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005 from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.

So what does the Bush White House have to say about the nation’s income growth concentrating among the very richest while the majority of Bush’s tax breaks went to those making more than $1 million? This information, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto

“is not a very interesting story.”

As political commentator David Sirota writes of this comment:

To them, it is just an annoying distraction from their bigger goal of manipulating the labor market through immigration and globalization policies specifically designed to drive wages down even further.

FULL story at link.