Income inequality and chutzpah

Why Inequality Matters

January 1, 2011
Higher Taxes on Top 1% Equals Higher Productivity

Michael Hudson: History of US shows economy grows when top tier tax rates and workers' wages are high


"...Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times provides these grim statistics: “C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” (November 6, 2010)..."

Michael Barone is an idiot and a tool. Read this nonsense and laugh.


Ezra Klein says basically Oooh, deficit is bad and infrastructure is crumbling, but:

"...Here's the good news: Infrastructure investment is the best deal in the economy right now. Government borrowing costs are lower than they've been since the 1950s. Unemployment in the construction sector is above 15 percent, which means companies are desperate for work and bids to complete projects are coming in low. A weak global economy means cheap raw materials. Bottom line? These investments are more affordable now than they're likely to be in a few years. We'd be foolish to miss this opportunity..."

Right. Remember when taxes were our way of investing in the infrastructure and in America?

Fuggedaboutit. Unless you are some Goldman Sachs punk selling US infrastructure revenue to some sheik in Abu Dhabi so he has some place to park his oil profits and watch them grow you don't matter.

It's a brave new world for those with enough chutzpah. Yes, I said chutzpah, and since I lived some of my early life in a working class Jewish neighborhood, I don't mean the "good" kind. I mean the kind that would sell your mother if it might make a profit. Or keep some crooked politician in office.

I'm almost finished reading Taibbi's Griftopia. It's disturbing, the class war exposé.

Danny Schechter and Matt Taibbi speak.