Save the American Dream by Fighting the Plutocracy

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truth-out.org/saving-dream-fighting-american-plutocracy/1317665442

"Right now, the American dream is endangered. America has become, Citibank analysts wrote, a 'plutonomy,' made of the rich and the rest – and only the rich count."

Thousands rally to defend worker rights in Wisconsin, then nearly a million force a referendum in Ohio to repeal a similar assault. Tens of thousands fill congressional town meetings to demand "Jobs, not Cuts" in August. Over 100,000 join in vetting provisions for a Contract for the American Dream. Nonviolent protestors occupy Wall Street, and stay restrained despite police provocation, and now demonstrations are spreading to financial districts in cities across the country. The press isn’t looking, but there’s a movement building of citizens challenging the gridlocked debate in Washington.

What Washington can’t seem to understand is the scope of the crisis that Americans face. It isn’t just the 25 million people in need of full time work. We have fewer payroll jobs now than we had in 2000 but 30 million more people. Wages and household incomes are falling. Barely half of employees get health insurance at work, and those that do pay ever more out of pocket before the insurance kicks in. One in eight homes is in foreclosure or in arrears; one in four is under water. A staggering $12 trillion in wealth that people thought they had – much of it in their homes – has been lost. Only half of employees have any kind of retirement plan at work, and now Social Security and Medicare are under attack.

The middle class is getting crushed. And this isn’t an accident; it is a defeat. It is the result of conservative ideas and corporate interests that have dominated our politics for over thirty years. They launched an attack on labor, lowered the floor under the poorest Americans, and raised the roof for the rich. The money that was supposed to trickle down instead congealed at the top. The richest 1% captured all of the growth of the last decade, while the bottom 90% lost ground. They had a wilding, inflated a bubble that eventually burst, and the economy went over a cliff.

More at the link --