Washington at Work--for the Wealthy: Uncle Sam is concentrating America's wealth, not sharing it

[Better Believe It]

Washington at Work--for the Wealthy
Uncle Sam is concentrating America's wealth, not sharing it
By Sam Pizzigati
October 11, 2010

Scroll through the right-wing blogosphere, or listen in at a tea party rally, and you'll find angry people ranting about an out-of-control federal government that's redistributing the nation's wealth to the undeserving poor.

Those rants do have one point right: The federal government is shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into programs that redistribute wealth. But these "wealth-building" programs aren't redistributing wealth from the top to the bottom. They're actually shifting more wealth to the top.

"We cannot avoid the sad irony," as one new report has just concluded, "that government policy aimed at building wealth is largely helping the rich get richer."

This new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Corporation for Enterprise Development--Upside Down: The $400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget--dives deep into the programs that aim to help Americans "buy homes, start businesses, put their children through college, and retire comfortably."

Upside Down's authors added up all the money the U.S. government devoted to these programs last year, and then tracked who exactly reaped the benefits. In nearly every instance, the answer came back the same. Federal dollars, as Upside Down details, routinely "subsidize wealth building for the wealthiest among us, rewarding them for (the) size of their homes and investment portfolios."

We don't need to start redistributing our nation's wealth. We're already redistributing. We just need to reverse the flow.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/washington_at_work-for_the_wealthy


---------------------------------------------

Upside Down
The 400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget Report

Authors: Beadsie Woo,The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Ida Rademacher, CFED, and Jillien Meier,
The Annie E. Casey Foundation

The authors would like to thank the CFED staff who contributed to the research and design of
this report and provided helpful feedback on initial drafts: Amr Moubarak, Kasey Wiedrich, Carol
Wayman, Steve Crawford, Bob Friedman, and Chris Campbell. We extend our warm appreciation to
Robert McIntyre whose microsimulation model and results allow us to paint a more complete picture
of the distributional effects of our current asset-building tax expenditures. Finally, we would also like
to thank Phyllis Jordan and Connie Dykstra of The Hatcher Group for their invaluable assistance in
producing this publication.

CFED (Corporation for Enterprise Development) expands economic opportunity by helping Americans
start and grow businesses, go to college, own a home, and save for their children’s and own economic
futures. We identify promising ideas, test and refine them in communities to find out what works,
craft policies and products to help good ideas reach scale, and develop partnerships to promote lasting
change. We bring together community practice, public policy, and private markets in new and effective
ways to achieve greater economic impact. For more information, visit CFED’s website at www.cfed.org.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation is a private charitable organization dedicated to helping build better
futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. It was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one
of the founders of UPS, and his siblings, who named the Foundation in honor of their mother. The
primary mission of the Foundation is to foster public policies, human-service reforms, and community
supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families. In pursuit
of this goal, the Foundation makes grants that help states, cities, and neighborhoods fashion more
innovative, cost-effective responses to these needs. For more information, visit the Foundation’s website
at www.aecf.org.

To download a copy of this report, please visit:

http://www.aecf.org/~/media/Pubs/Initiatives/Family%20Economic%20Success/U/UpsideDownThe400BillionFederalAssetBuildingBudget/033%2010_UpsideDown_final.pdf

[notesdev]

1. The opening line is misleading

"Scroll through the right-wing blogosphere, or listen in at a tea party rally, and you'll find angry people ranting about an out-of-control federal government that's redistributing the nation's wealth to the undeserving poor."

Right wing blogosphere yes, tea party rally no. The latter is all about the banks stealing everything and the government working hand-in-glove in the process.

[JuniperLea]

2. Where do you draw the line between...

RW blogosphere and TeaBagger rally?

[notesdev]

3. The RW blogosphere is largely old GOP standbys

Guns, God, religion types.

Tea Party types are fiscally oriented.

Granted there is a good deal of overlap but there is a large part of the Tea Party crowd that wants nothing to do with the GOP at all. Easiest way to piss them off is to admit one voted for TARP, which is exactly the type of huge transfer of wealth to the top that we also find unconscionable.

[JuniperLea]

6. I disagree...

I've seen plenty of signs at TeaBagger rallies that are all about guns, god, and religion. Most TeaBaggers couldn't even spell "fiscal" let alone describe it. And the few that have a clue clearly know nothing about economics.

I think you cut them far, far too much slack... and quite frankly, I'm confused and concerned that someone on DU would even bother.

[notesdev]

12. I've been following it from the beginning

While the GGG crowd has been glomming onto the Tea Party, I maintain that the Tea Party is something we can take advantage of, or could have, anyway. Anti-big-money sentiment? Should have been a slam dunk, if we didn't have so many on our side owned by that very same big money.

[Better Believe It]

4. Why are you smearing the Institute for Policy Studies as a right-wing teabagger outfit?

And why are you suggesting that Sam Pizzigati is a right-wing blogger?

IPS associate fellow Sam Pizzigati has edited Too Much, an online newsletter on excess and inequality, ever since the publication first appeared in 1995. He has written widely on issues around the concentration of income and wealth, with op-eds and articles appearing in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and a host of other newspapers and periodicals.

A veteran labor movement journalist, Pizzigati spent 20 years directing the publishing operations of America's largest union, the 3.2 million-member National Education Association. Over the course of his union career, he has also edited publications for three other national unions and co-edited the primary text on trade union journalism, The New Labor Press (Cornell University ILR Press). His latest book, Greed and Good: Understanding and Overcoming the Inequality that Limits Our Lives (Apex Press), won an "outstanding title" of the year rating from the American Library Association (Choice, January 2006). Greed and Good examines just how concentrated wealth is poisoning every aspect of our contemporary lives, from our economy and politics to our health and our happiness.

Pizzigati lives in Maryland. He has served on the boards of directors of Progressive Maryland, the state's most important voice for working families, and United for a Fair Economy, the Boston-based national economic justice advocacy group.

No more personal attacks and slanders against progressives.

Show some rhetorical restraint and common decency.

OK?

[JuniperLea]

5. Please watch where you are clicking in your moments of unbridled rage...

I never said squat about any of that shit. I asked a poster a question... probably the poster you MEANT to respond to.

Talk about the fucking need to "show some rhetorical restraint and common decency."

[Better Believe It]

7. I'm responding to your comments. Calm down. Do you think IPS and the writer are

right-wingers or not?

Now I hope you don't find it necessary to find someone to reply on your behalf.

I'd like to know your views.

[POAS]

8. Get your glasses fixed, she never said those things..

nor implied them.

[JuniperLea]

9. Of for fuck's sake... seriously?

So, tell me this, where do YOU draw the line between RW blogosphere and TeaBaggers?

:eyes:

[Better Believe It]

10. I don't draw a line. In my opinion they usually complement each other.

Now back to the subject.

What's your opinion on the article, the writer and IPS?

[JuniperLea]

11. I didn't care to share my opinion in my first post on this thread...

And I don't care to now... I found the poster to whom I was responding to have the more interesting, albeit bizarre imho, thoughts.

[Better Believe It]

13. If you prefer to comment on "bizarre" posts, that's your right.

It's sure a lot easier!

:)

[JTFrog]

14. Not as easy as doing a search for negative crap and copying and pasting it here.

:shrug:

[Greyhound]

15. Oh my, you're on the list.

:rofl:

The contortions are, at times, truly mind boggling.

Stay strong.
:kick: & R