Robert Reich: The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt

[kpete]

Robert Reich

Former Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley; Author, 'Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future'
Posted: September 24, 2010 09:16 AM

The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt

The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us. According to Forbes magazine's annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

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Only twice before in American history has so much been held by so few, and the gap between them and the great majority been a chasm -- the late 1920s, and the era of the robber barons in the 1880s.

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Democrats have decided to delay voting on whether to extend them for the top 2 percent of Americans or for the bottom 98 percent until after the mid-term elections.

Democrats have thereby given up a defining issue that could have enabled them to show the big story of the last three decades -- the accumulation of almost all the gain from economic growth at the top -- and to make a start at reversing it.

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more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-super-rich-get-richer_b_737792.html

[mmonk]

1. .

Edited due to op edit.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[Jackpine Radical]

3. The Dems have decided to postpone the vote on tax increases

until after the election and Reich doesn't like it.

What it says to me is that they plan to do something that the average voter isn't going to like. For example maybe continuing the breaks for the top end.

I smell something funny about to happen. Yesterday I attended a lunch for Julie Lassa, who is the Dem running to replace retiring Dave Obey. Somebody asked her about ending the tax cuts for the rich, and she waffled in her answer, dancing around about having to see what the OMB says the effect will be before she makes up her mind.

[kpete]

4. trying to

control my anger..........grrrrrrrrrrr, kp

[blindpig]

6. And then there's the timing of the Cat Food Commission's...

release of their recommendations.

Smells funny indeed, like a waft of roadkill.

[Hydra]

10. Well put

Makes me wonder where the 3rd shoe is.

Protect the top earners

Strip the bottom some more

...More war?

[bullwinkle428]

8. My own Congressman, who is not a blue dog in any way, danced around

the very same issue at a fundraiser a few weeks back. All attendees, including myself, were NOT happy about this at all!

[dgibby]

5. It would appear the Dems are in need of an emergency

suicide intervention. I have never seen a more masochistic group of people in my life. It's like they've all come down with a terminal case of Munchhausen's. The self-inflicted wounds are mindbogglingly!

[Bullet1987]

7. It's because they're in on the take and unlike the Rethugs...

try to act as if they aren't. And they're being exposed more and more as time goes by.

[TBF]

9. This is just like "impeachment is off the table" -

the fix is in.

[MichiganVote]

11. The Long Dression and The Great Depression.

So the next Long and Great Depression to come?