America as Plutocracy.
         Tax The Rich More, for Goodness Sake.  
         They Have Nearly All The Money.

                   Obama's Subservience to The Rich WIll Surely
        Send The Market Higher,.

                                            2008                                                                            2009

                   

                                                                           2010
                                              
                            by William Schmidt, Ph.D. (Columbia University)
                                (C) 2007-2011   All rights reserved.  Reproducing any part of this page without
                                                                      giving full acknowledgement is a copyright infringement.

           Polls show a majority of voters support raising taxes
     on the rich.  Obama might have reasserted himself
     as champion of working Americans after the Democrats’
     November losses.  Not Obama - the Puppet of Wall Street.
  
                    Why must Obama and Republicans always be so solicitous of the very wealthy? 

                    Why do the rich need the Bush tax breaks?  Why can't Obama stand up, just a little,
                    for the  people who voted for him.  The Treasury has been looted by Halliburton and
                    the Wall Street banks.  The Bush tax cuts will have given the rich a trillion dollars
                    more by 2020 if extended.  With executive pat and bonuses rising again and
                    real unemployment at 17% and pay down sharply,  the rich have  nearly all the
                    money now.  They are the only ones who can pay any more taxes! 

                               I remember the 1950s when the economy was booming.  The marginal
                   iax rate for the rich was 90%. Now it's under 40%.  What are the rich doing with their
                   money that helps America or Main Street.  Investing in multinationals.  Hiding the
                   money off-shore.  Buying yachts and third , fourth or fifth vacation homes. 

                               One out of every seven Americans is in poverty.  25 million are unemployed.
                   Many more are working part-time, not being paid much and having a terrible time
                   feed their families.

                               The wage gap between the rich and poor is the widest it has ever been.
                    Washington allowed this.  The political system is clearly a plutocracy.  The only
                    thing missing are corporate logos on the American flag.    

                             The "Democratic" Congress did nothing about outsourcing of jobs.  That's
                    not an oversight.  Their corporate sponsors do not want things changed.

                             Obama's Budget Deficit Panel refuses to consider any increases of taxes
                    on the super rich.  Instead, they want Social Security to renege on their promise
                    to the elederly and raise the age of retirement with full social security to 69
                    from 65 1/2,

"The percent of income garnered by the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households hit 48.2% in 2008, up from 34.6% in 1980, according to a recent report on income equality by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. "Much of the spike was driven by the share of total income accrued by the richest 1% of households. Between 1980 and 2008, their share rose from 10% to 21%, making the United States one of the most unequal countries in the world."

"And the income gap has actually widened since the financial crisis: According to the 2010 Census, the top 20% of workers -- those making more than $100,000 each year -- received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4% earned by those below the poverty line. As reported by Slate.com, that ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968. (See: "Great Recession" Pushes Gap Between Rich and Poor to Record Levels)
SOURCE

              Obama and the Rpublicans will extend the Bush tax cuts for the very richest.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman writes:

"What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

"And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

"How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits? Well, history is repeating itself. The original campaign for the Bush tax cuts relied on deception and dishonesty. In fact, my first suspicions that we were being misled into invading Iraq were based on the resemblance between the campaign for war and the campaign for tax cuts the previous year. And sure enough, that same trademark deception and dishonesty is being deployed on behalf of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

"So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?

"Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.

"No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience. " 
==================================================================================

                                                            FOLLOW-UP
Dec 10, 2010                     
Obama Admits That Tax Cuts For The Rich Won't Create Jobs
President Obama was on NPR's Morning Edition Friday discussing the compromise on the Bush tax cuts when in response to a listener's question ...www.politicususa.com/en/obama-tax-npr - Cached

Dec 6, 2010
Did Obama Make Tax Cuts for the Rich Permanent by Kicking Them to ... ... A central part of the White House compromise was putting the tax-cuts-for-the-rich issue
in the middle of the 2012 campaign.
www.politicsdaily.com/.../did-obama-make-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-permanent-by-kicking-them-t/ - Cached

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==================================================================================
9/10/2010                 Despite How Glaringly Obvious are The Failures of
                         The "Free Market", Obama Still Promotes This Myth
                         And Lets Millions Suffer... He Was Elected To Lead
                         in A New Direction.  He and His Party Have Failed Terribly.

                 Just 21 years ago after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Socialism and Marxism
                     were dismissed as complete failures.  The "free market" seemed vindicated
                     to many.  But, now the boom and bust of Wall Street, the trillion Dollar bailout
                     of banks too big to fail, a real unemployment level of 15%, homelesness,
                     escalating medical insurance costs, unending wars a world away, Global Warming
                     and the obvious domination of both political parties by Wall Street show that
                     Americans needs to fundamentally change the status quo. Even now, Wall Street
                     behaves as though everything is back to normal.

                 America and The Planet Can No Longer Afford To Be Guided
                 by This "Free Market" Ideology Whose Sole Purpose Now
                 Is To Befuddle Common Sense and Protect The Rich and Powerful.    
          
                                   Lots of Reading for the Curious.

    2008        OBAMA: "I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.
                   I think it is the best invention to allocate  resources."   (Source.)   
                   In theory this means,  businesses are regulated through the dictates of supply and demand. 
                   Prices and and distribution are controlled by business owners and investors. Profits are
                   distributed among the owners and shareholders. In a word, "greed is good".

                               Obama was either being naive or telling the rich and powerful that he was no threat.

                   If we really had a free market, the Wall Street banks that made stupid investment decisions
                   would now be bankrupt, to be replaced by more intelligent banks and managers. Instead
                   they have been “bailed out” -- at taxpayer expense -- and permitted to continue with
                   hardly any new restrictions.  (B

                   Very few industrues are competitive.  Most are "oligopolies" and dominated by a just a few corporations.
                            For example, as of fourth quarter 2008, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile together control
                            89% of the US cellular phone market...Firms may employ restrictive trade practices (collusion, market
                            sharing etc.) to raise prices and restrict production in much the same way as a monopoly. Where there
                            is a formal agreement for such collusion, this is known as a cartel. A primary example of such a cartel
                            is OPEC which has a profound influence on the international price of oil.
                            Many examples: Airlines, tire, banking, autos, steel, soft drinks, tobacco, TV networksm film, aluminum,
                            cell phone, gas distribution, music companies (4), beer, healthcare insurance and corn flakes.
                            Anti-trust laws are no longer enforced very much.  The result is higher priced products, slower
                            innovation and emphasis on TV marketing.  Prices are set by leaders where outright collusion might
                            bring legal action.

                   Corporations depend heavily upon government handouts and contracts.

                   Corporations have bought Congress and the Networks and subverted Democaacy..

                   The very rich have so much political power, they cannot be challenged and so get richer.

                   Corporations are run as fiefdoms with those on top getting huge salaries that often bear no realtionship
                   to their true productivity and the company's success.

                   America has lost its indistrial and manufacturing base to the international free traders..

                   American workers are being impoverished more and more. It is ti the interest of the
                   corporation to pay as low as possible to Labor.

                   Boom (greed unmitigated) and Busts (unmitgated fear) cause severe unemployment for
                   unbearably long periods of time. 

                   Economic decisons are made with very imperfect information, because of the pervasive corporate
                   misinformation, fraud and concealment of relevant information to shareholders and consumers.

                   Pollution is inevitable. Corporations want to operate as cheaply as possible.   Over-all concerns
                   about the planer are not the concern of a business seeking to maximize profits.

                   Finite and non-renewable energy resources and food (fish) are exhausted.  Long-term, future and
                   global concerns are secondary to exploiting resources to maximize profits in the present..

                   See http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Marketfailures.htm