Taxes Wealth Meet Bill Mahr / Lies, damn lies, and statistics

[digidigido]

http://www.justpeace.org/structures/squeeze.htm
Real weekly wages in the U.S. rose until 1973, and have been declining since. From 1977 - 1989, the wealthiest 660,000 families gained 75% of "average pretax income" increases, while most middle income families saw only a 4% increase -- and those in the bottom 40% of income cohorts had real declines. The average annual earnings of the top group increased from $315,000 to $560,000 in twelve years. In 1990, the median income was $29,934; in 1973, it was $30,943 (constant dollars).

Distribution of income and wealth, 2004
Distribution of:

Household income Net worth Net financial assets
All 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Top 1% 16.9 34.3 42.2
Next 9% 25.6 36.9 38.7
Bottom 90% 57.5 28.7 19.1

For detailed information on table sources, see Table Notes.
Source: Wolff (2006).
Table 5.1 from: Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America 2006/2007.
An Economic Policy Institute Book. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2007.

[truedelphi]

1. Thank you for posting this. And welcome to DU! n/t

[JackRiddler]

2. Maher showed a lot of ignorance in the discussion last week (stop the presses)...

He didn't know about the consolidated federal budget (which includes expenditures raised and paid out in separate systems, such as Social Security) as opposed to the regular federal budget (the part raised mainly from income taxes, the discretionary part of which is mostly the military; also, the non-discretionary interest payments are largely thanks to past military expenditure). So he was surprised and acted like it couldn't be true that most of the regular federal budget is military (and war).

He also showed he had no clue that the Social Security fund has been "borrowed from" (plundered) to finance the regular federal deficit to the tune of 2 trillion (which will never be repaid - Bush called it "meaningless IOUs"), and in his ignorance and rush always to the next irrelevant topic prevented Reich from clarifying this very basic and important matter.

Like any guy whose income must be in the top 1 percent, he repeated the canard about how the top 1 percent pay the largest share in income taxes while the bottom 90 percent get what he called a free ride. He didn't seem to know the top 1 percent by official figures possess more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. And the official figures are a joke, as they cannot account for 1) offshore or 2) wealth hidden in foundations or 3) cheating, and they do not account for 4) equity as a fraction of the corporate assets it represents. 70 percent of all capital moved in a day goes through offshore havens - no one is on top of the accounting any more.

That "conservative" woman was unbearable in her smug, happy ignorance, by the way. You could reduce her to zero in about five minutes by starting with the question, "How do you define 'conservative'?"

All of these leeches live off a media talk system where no one gets to talk for more than 30 seconds and the next topic always starts in three minutes. So they can get away with knowing absolutely nothing, long as the pre-scripted bits are funny or memorable.

[fascisthunter]

3. She's Nothing But a Paid Hack with Good Looks

I watched her while I starting eating my fist.... I wanted somebody to tell her to STFU. Her timing was impeccable. As soon as someone was about to make their point, she interrupted. That was deliberate...

[JackRiddler]

4. And a poser, too...

So obvious that she would shill for any high bid. So obvious that she's clueless, and proudly so. Did you catch the bullshit about sex education?

According to polls and from ample experience, 90 percent of black people are not remotely what's usually called "conservative," and yet all you ever see on network TV (C-SPAN excepted, praise the lord) is from the 10 percent, who invariably shill in this unreflexive soundbite fashion as "conservatives" (a now meaningless term, since neocons are radicals).

[fascisthunter]

8. Good Point....

They use that 10 percent to push their agenda so as to sheild themselves from much criticism. It doesn't work though.... They just don't get it. You can put lip stick on any pig, but it's still a pig. It's not about whether a person is black or white, male or female, it's that person's position on issues that inavariably harm all.

Shills such as her are cold to the core.... sociopaths. Gives me the creeps to think of being so oblivious to morality and not being able to judge wrong from right because it's so easy to justify every heinous position one holds. Blech....

Could you imagine being that hollow?

[truebrit71]

6. For those of us that have no clue....whom are you speaking of?

???

[fascisthunter]

7. Sorry... Amy Holmes

[truebrit71]

9. Black, woman, AND a republican? Say what???

...seems to me she's rather dumb then...seeing as how a black person (especially of the female persuasion) being a republican makes about as much sense as a chicken being pro Col. Sanders...

[fascisthunter]

10. No... she's an opportunist that doesn't care

a sell out of her soul, just like white women, white men, black, men, black women, etc..... they prefer to parade minority or a female to diminish the "white male conervative" stereotype.

[JackRiddler]

12. She's not dumb, she's opportunist...

a category that precludes any question of intelligence or lack thereof.

And the onus is not on her but very much on the networks, who out of the vast pool of talentless actors they could hire to play "conservative pundit" (very much a role rather than a reality), they seek out a few black faces so that it's not always Lou Dobbs or Pat Buchanan or some other curmudgeon pushing the same old cliches -- and who among black people certainly wouldn't choose anyone with actual accomplishments or thoughts to their name, like Ishmael Reed or Cynthia McKinney or... Reverend Wright!

[truebrit71]

5. I cancelled HBO a little while back....

..i've been enjoying my Friday nights more...especially since BBCAmerica has Newsnight on at the same time..

[nichomachus]

11. Funny how that correlates

Funny how that correlates with the infusion of the fascists into the US government after Nixon was brought down and Cheney, Rummy, the Bushes, Wolfie, Feith and others flooded through the gates while the bumbling cipher Gerry Ford played with his putz in the Awful Office.