Noam Chomski was talking about America on Public Radio tonight-Bankers are doing great.

[midnight]

This professor says Working class not do so well. So I was reminded of this little thank you from the two per-centers.

Let's be honest: you'll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you'll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That's because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let's face it — you're a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don't have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you'd probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That's why we're so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about "justice" and "equal opportunity" in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there's never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it's already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there's usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our totalitarian corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

Don't you wish the bankers and the corporations would be this brave and thank us instead of wanting more from us. They like to call what they are taking from us this go round "entitlements"

[dkf]

1. Meredith Whitney is predicting 80,000 layoffs in banking.

That should make things better right?

[MajorChode]

2. Here's the greatest irony

Most of the Forbes 400 members are new money, so the notion of being born into some type of caste in America is really pretty dated. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (the two richest men in America) both came from upper middle class households and made their own money. Most millionaires came from modest income families. Certainly it's true that the rich are getting richer at a pretty fast pace these days and we are once again seeing the top 1% accumulate a proportionate share of America's wealth not seen since before the Great Depression. However, it's interesting to see how it got that way. Undoubtedly the biggest factor is favorable tax laws, but how did that happen? Out of the 30 richest counties in the US, 22 vote reliably Democratic. If you take a look at the poorest states in the US, you'll see they vote reliably Republican in the vast majority of instances. 3/4ths of the Republican constituency make less than $50K.

You try to suggest that the rich are the ones who "intend to keep it that way", but the reality is the poorest Americans are those who "intend to keep it that way."