New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.
The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest -- not only in amount but also as a percentage of income -- which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.
..."If income growth had been shared equally among all income groups, the families at the bottom would have $6,000 per year more than they do now, and the middle would have $13,000 more," he said.
In my humble opinion, this gap is not nearly wide enough. What really needs to be done to keep the dirty plebs away from the beautiful people is Austerity.
We need to debone federal and state services further, strip jobless benefits from the unemployed, widen the deficit by making the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest permanent, raise your Social Security retirement age while trimming the benefits, loosen up regulation on the Banksters and the polluters, and repeal that deficit-reducing health care bill that would have finally made insurance affordable for you.
Do I have the basic GOP plan down, or am I missing anything?
It'll be so awesome if Republicans gain national and/or state congressional majorities in November so that they can get right to work on this.
And if you stay home in November because you were not delivered your own personal pony by Hope and Change, they will, along with a steady stream of impeachmentesque subpoenas from Darrell Issa.
To be serious for a second: everyone reading this knows at least five normally non-political friends who nevertheless voted in the presidential election (I should know, I used to be one of them). The time to reach out to them is now, not three months from now.
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