The Politics of American Greed

From AlterNet, uber-Texan Molly Ivins weighs in on the excesses of the super-class:

Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers -- this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts.

According to the current issue of Mother Jones:

* One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income.

* Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent -- 37 million Americans -- are officially poor.

* Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are saved $42,700.

* In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, compared those who point out such statistics as the one above to Adolph Hitler (surely he meant Stalin?).

* Bush has diverted $750 million to "healthy marriages" by shifting funds from social services, mostly childcare.

* Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities by 50 percent.

* A series of related stats -- starting with the news that two out of three new jobs are in the suburbs -- shows how the poor are further disadvantaged in the job hunt by lack of public or private transportation.

Click here for the rest.

What most people didn't realize when Clinton said that we were changing "welfare as we know it," is that the phrase actually meant changing the economic class of welfare recipients rather than abolishing it or downgrading the amount of money handed out. Indeed, the super-class class is getting waaaay more money from the government these days than its downscale counterpart ever dreamed of getting. In order for all this welfare for the rich to become a reality, however, it is a no-brainer that the poverty class needs to be much larger. That is, this disgusting transfer of wealth to the already-wealthy necessitates that the governmental economic structures which have made a broad middle class possible in this country since the end of WWII be abolished. I mean, the money has to come from somewhere, doesn't it? Besides, financially nervous Americans make for more docile and obedient workers who'll put up with the vilest bullshit just to keep their jobs. It's a win-win situation for the rich: more money and a better variety of peasant in the bargain. On the other hand, I don't see any upside to this at all for everybody else--for that matter, changing the shape of the US class dynamic from our traditional big-in-the-middle form into the hourglass figure found most often in the third world is bound to invite civic instability.

That's when we finally eat the rich.

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