Ted McLaughlin : Class Conflict and the Disappearance of the Middle Class

Class conflict rises
as middle class disappears

The growing inequality of wealth and income in this country has reached a point where it is now causing a conflict between the rich (the 1%) and the vast majority of Americans.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2012

The graphic above (from Think Progress) shows what has been happening to the American middle class in the last 40 years. To put it bluntly, it is disappearing. While the rich continue to get much richer (with their income growing by over 240% since 1980), the loss of millions of jobs and the stagnant non-growth of wages for most Americans has shrunk the middle class and thrown many more Americans into working class status (if they're lucky) or even worse, into abject poverty.

The Republican "trickle-down" economic policies, instituted by Ronald Reagan and accelerated by George W. Bush, deregulated financial institutions and encouraged Wall Street to play dangerous games with investor funds -- culminating in the loss of trillions of dollars, many millions of jobs, and the start of the most serious recession since the Great Depression. In addition, these same politicians encouraged corporations to outsource millions more American jobs by rewarding them with tax breaks.

The idea was that when the rich and corporations had a lot of money they would use that money to create jobs and the growing wealth would be shared by everyone. It didn't work, because the wealthy aren't the real job creators -- no matter how much money they have. This is clearly illustrated by our current situation -- where the rich have a larger share of the country's wealth and income since before the Great Depression and American corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. And yet only a pitiful handful of jobs are being created.

There is only one thing that creates jobs -- demand for goods and services. When the working and middle classes have money to spend demand is created, and jobs are created to meet that demand -- and all classes in society benefit (including the rich). But Republican policies have taken money from the working and middle classes and given it to the rich. Since the mass of our society no longer has much money to spend, demand is depressed and the recession continues with little or no job creation.

The chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Alan Krueger, says the shift in income over the last three decades is the equivalent of moving $1.1 trillion from the 99% to the 1% every single year of those three decades. Is it any wonder that the middle class is disappearing, and we look more like a banana republic every day?

Class distinctions were not important when our economy was working for everyone. But in this current economy, where the rich get richer and everyone else becomes poorer, class is again becoming an issue. It's become an issue because the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" is huge, and growing larger all the time.

The Republicans and the 1% call this "class warfare," but the truth is that the class war has been going on for the last 30 years -- and it has been waged by the rich against the rest of America. But Americans are finally waking to realize what has been done to them over the last three decades by the rich (and their Republican lackeys).

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that a full two thirds of the population (66%) now believe there are "strong" or "very strong" class conflicts between the rich and the poor. That's a jump of 19% over just two years ago, in 2009, when only 47% believed that. And this increased belief in this strong class conflict cuts across all ethnic, political, income, age, and education demographics. In the following list, I give the current percentage who believe this (followed by the 2009 percentage in parentheses):

Total population...............66% (47%)

Whites...............65% (43%)
African-Americans...............74% (66%)
Hispanics...............61% (55%)

Republicans...............55% (38%)
Democrats...............73% (55%)
Independents...............68% (45%)

Less than $20k...............64% (47%)
$20k to $40k...............66% (46%)
$40k to $75k...............71% (47%)
Over $75k...............67% (49%)

Age 18 to 34...............71% (54%)
Age 35 to 49...............64% (48%)
Age 50 to 64...............67% (45%)
Over age 65...............55% (36%)

College grad...............66% (48%)
Some college...............70% (50%)
High school or less...............64% (44%)

The growing inequality of wealth and income in this country has reached a point where it is now causing a conflict between the rich (the 1%) and the vast majority of Americans. And it has also caused an erosion of the American dream.

Many no longer believe the old canard that anyone can get rich in America because America has a vibrant class mobility. About 72% of those who say there is a strong class conflict, also say the rich got that way either because they were born into it or because they knew the right people -- not because they earned it by working for it.

The rich, through their Republican cohorts, may have started the class war back in 1980, but the rest of America is waking up and starting to fight back. It will be a long and tough fight though, because the rich and the corporations own far too many members of Congress. But that fight can be won -- it must be won if democracy is to survive in America.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

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Ted McLaughlin : The Occupy Movement is Changing the Conversation

It's changing the conversation:
The wealth gap and the Occupy Movement

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / October 31, 2011

The image above brings home a very disturbing fact about the United States -- the vast inequality of wealth and income in the country. This inequality, which grows worse with each passing week -- since Congress has done nothing about it -- was the primary cause of this Great Recession (just like a previous and very similar gap caused the Great Depression).

But there is a big difference between the previous gap causing the Great Depression, and the current gap causing the Great Recession. The previous gap was caused by the Republican Party favoring the rich and the corporations. But when the Democrats got into power they changed the economic policies, put people back to work (using WPA and CCC), created the Social Security system, and gave the country new hope.

But things were different this time. After the Republicans went back to their old ways of favoring the rich and the corporations, causing the current economic mess and the loss of millions of jobs, the people again put the Democrats back in power in 2008. But this time nothing happened.

It turns out that the rich and corporations had gotten smarter -- instead of just buying the Republican politicians, they also bought a passel of Democratic politicians (the blue dogs). And the Republicans combined with the blue dogs were powerful enough to prevent any economic changes or job creation.

After watching the Congress muddle around for nearly three years without changing the failed "trickle-down" Republican policy or doing anything to create a substantial amount of jobs, it became obvious that too many members of Congress (of both parties) were controlled by the corporations and the rich and nothing was going to be done to help ordinary and hurting Americans.

In fact, the situation was being made worse by cuts to education and social programs while the rich continued to get unnecessary tax cuts and the corporations received unnecessary subsidies.

If any needed change was going to occur, it would have to start with the American people -- not the corporate-owned politicians in Congress. When this became obvious, it resulted in the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

It may have started small with only a few hundred protesters in New York City, but it struck a chord with the American people and spread quickly to many other American cities -- first the large cities, and then in the smaller cities, and finally to cities around the world. It has now grown so large that it can no longer be ignored.

But can the movement cause real economic change in the United States? Probably not until and unless it grows even larger, but it has caused a couple of minor changes already -- and one of those could lead to much bigger changes down the road.

The first change is that it is starting to scare the big banks on Wall Street. At about the same time that the Occupy Wall Street movement started, one of the biggest banks (Bank of America) announced they would start charging their depositors a $5 a month fee for using their debit cards (accessing their own money). Several other of the giant Wall Street banks indicated they would do the same.

But the American public, led by the Occupy Wall Street protesters, gave voice to their anger over this latest insult from the greed-mongers of Wall Street (whose illegal actions triggered the recession).

Many people threatened to pull their money out of the giant banks and put it into local banks and credit unions. There was even a day set aside, November 5, to do this en masse. Now the big banks are backing down. J.P. MorganChase, U.S. Bancorp, Citigroup, PNC Financial, KeyCorp, and other banks are now saying they will NOT follow Bank of America's lead in charging for use of a debit card. And frankly, it would not surprise me if Bank of America didn't reverse their decision soon.

But the Occupy Wall Street movement has caused an even more important change -- one that could lead to needed economic changes down the road. They have altered the national dialogue, especially on the nation's news media outlets. Last summer all the media wanted to talk about was the national debt, an issue that is far less important than job creation and income inequality. A review of the 24-hour news sources (MSNBC, CNN, Fox) in the last week of July showed the following mentions:

Debt...............7,583
Unemployment...............427
Unemployed...............75

But after a month of the Occupy Wall Street movement that has changed. A review of the same news sources during the week of October 10-16 showed the most popular word references had changed to:

Jobs...............2,738
Wall Street...............2,387
Occupy...............1,278
Unemployment...............506
Debt...............398
Unemployed...............194

This is good change. A problem cannot be solved until the public is discussing it as an important issue, and that is unlikely to happen until the issue is being covered by the media. The movement still needs to grow to be the catalyst for a real change in economic policy, and that can happen now because the nation is now paying attention and starting to discuss the real issues.

[Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger. Read more articles by Ted McLaughlin on The Rag Blog.]

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Paul Beckett : Reprising Ford's 'Radical' Tune

Fiddlin' Henry Ford doubled workers' wages. Image from FiddlingAround.
Henry Ford on why there
isn’t going to be a recovery

By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / November 22, 2010

Nicholas Kristof is concerned. The United States, he says, “now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.” Kristof speaks for many of us. Even Alan Greenspan (who helped so mightily to make it so) is concerned about America’s rampant level of income and wealth inequality.

But Wall Street and most of the Republicans don’t care. No doubt -- for them -- it’s good the U.S. is still Number One in something! They place no value on equality itself. There seems to be no concern for fairness. And they have convinced themselves that inequality -- even extreme, exaggerated inequality -- is good for the economy.

Wrong! What they are not seeing is that rampant, out-of-control growth in inequality is bad for the economy. What they have forgotten is something Henry Ford (another unlikely preacher against extreme inequality) told us.

In 1914 Ford astonished most of his American fellow capitalists by abruptly doubling the wage level of his workers. He announced a $5.00 a day wage policy, when going market wages (what he COULD have got workers for) were about half as much. Applying the Consumer Price Index, that $5 would be more than $100 a day now.

In his famous memoir, on the subject of wages, Ford wrote:

No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the “liquidation of labour” and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages -- market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as to not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages -- most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living – the rate of their wages -- determines the prosperity of the country. [Emphasis added.] -- Henry Ford, My Life and Work, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923, p. 116]

This was “Fordism.” Workers should not only be worker-producers, but simultaneously be consumers of the goods produced (very much including Henry Ford’s automobiles).

It was a powerful idea. Marx’s progressive impoverishment of the working classes leading to the end of capitalism didn’t occur. Capitalism got new wind instead.

Aldous Huxley, publishing Brave New World in 1932, jokingly located his vision of the World State in the year 632 A.F.: “After Ford.” (1 A.F. is the year 1908 when the Model T first appeared.) In 632 A.F. people swear oaths “By Ford,” and the Christian cross has been converted to a T.

Good fun. But Ford and Fordism were almost that important. American post-World War II prosperity, and the enormous advances of Western Europe, were based on always-growing consumption by the masses whose incomes and standards of living also grew constantly. The Consumer Economy had been invented, and it flourished.

How amazing that the political-economic managers of our society seem to have completely forgotten this basis of the American prosperity they love to celebrate! First, our industrialists have been permitted -- in many ways encouraged -- to seek the absolutely lowest market wages elsewhere in the world to build their products.

American workers suffer and, in the longer run, the country suffers; but owners and managers greatly benefit since their profits are easier than ever. They pay labor there; they sell the product here. Good business. (And, let us admit that in the short run, as consumers, we all benefit and are all, in a measure, complicit.)

The real level of wages has been stagnant, not improving, for several decades. Virtually all the income (and wealth) growth since 1965 has been within the top 20%. In fact, per Kristof, “from 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.”

Timothy Noah has presented a wonderfully comprehensive review of inequality data in Slate. (Don’t miss the excellent set of slides accompanying the first article!)

But wait. This process has been going on since Reagan, yet our consumption has continued to grow in the face of stagnation in income for two-thirds of the population. Was Henry Ford wrong? Is “Fordism” contradicted?

No. There was a huge boost in family income and consumption as more women joined the work force. But that’s a one-time thing. After that, we’ve been living on borrowed time. Literally borrowed: the development of credit cards put deficit finance at the disposal of us all. And easy mortgages and home equity loans fueled a housing price bubble, and gave us more to spend with. It seemed too good to be true. It was.

So these bullets are now fired; the gun is pretty well empty.

Everyone agrees that recovery from the Great Recession depends on returning to (if possible, surpassing) the consumption rates of the 1980s and 1990s. But where is that supposed to come from?

We still find our Captains of Industry crowing (and adding to their personal fortunes) every time they can further “liquidate” their labor forces. (Maybe they should read My Life and Work!)

We keep our minimum wage set to absurdly low rates, far too low to support a family’s consumption.

I spend a lot of time in Denmark where I have close family, and find that our U.S. median wage falls about where their lowest new-worker entry wages are set. Our conservative economists would tell us that such high wages must produce high unemployment and economic stagnation. Sorry: not so. Denmark is weathering the Great Recession better than we are. And their unemployment is put at under 5%!

The U.S., meanwhile, tolerates an unemployment rate of almost 10%. But surveys put under-employment at 20%.

Finally, thanks to decades of hard work by corporate forces and their political allies trade union membership within the private sector labor force is under 8%. We are back to 1901 levels. (We always knew the right is out to abolish the 20th Century!)

America’s economic future clearly is at a tipping point. Our economy is not going to expand again unless we remember Henry Ford’s lesson: the prosperity of the country depends not on the how well the few at the top are doing, but how well most of the people are doing. The “scale of their living... determines the prosperity of the country.”

For those of us on the left, it’s a matter of fairness, of equality, of equal rights, of humanity. The right doesn’t see that. OK. But they had better see that it’s a matter of preserving the economic vitality and shared prosperity that we once were famous for.

Here are three ideas that could get our country moving again. First, a national minimum wage of at least $12 (indexed for inflation!). Second, let’s reverse the tax and other incentives that have encouraged our industrialists to export our productive capacity. Let’s bring good jobs home.

Third, we must push back hard on the levels of inequality that give even conservatives pause. We must restore tax progressivity in general and, in particular, distinguish more intelligently between the large numbers who are wealthy and the small numbers who make super incomes (the ones most of us call “obscene”).

We are fortunate: the U.S., among developed countries, is not at all an over-taxed country. Relatively modest tax increases can rebalance government revenues and expenditures, while beginning a return to a more “American” balance between economic equality and inequality.

If these obvious and common sense ideas sound “radical” -- well, it shows how much we have lost as a nation in recent decades, and how successful the extreme right has been.

But -- by Ford! -- there is time, in this year 102 A.F., time to make the American dream real again!

[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]

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Distribution of Wealth : Way Out of Whack

Image from OECD / CBS News.
Trickle UP theory:
The recession and its roots

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / July 15, 2010

Have you ever wondered just what caused the deep recession that the United States is in? Many people believe it was the meltdown of Wall Street and the financial industry. That was the trigger that began the recession, but was it the true cause of it? Robert Reich has a very good article in The Nation that the folks over at Alternet have reprinted.

Reich agrees that the Wall Street meltdown was the trigger to the recession, just as the Wall Street disaster in 1929 triggered the Great Depression. But the real cause of both the current recession and the Great Depression was the absurdly lopsided distribution of income. In 1928 the income distribution had reached a point where the top 1% of the population was making 23.9% of all income in the United States. With only 76.1% of the country's income left for 99% of the country's people, the situation created was like a loaded gun waiting for something to pull the trigger (and that trigger was pulled with the Wall Street crash of 1929).

Conservatives don't like to admit it, but a capitalist economy such as ours simply cannot function correctly when such a large proportion of the country's income is going to such a small percentage of it's people. The country did not pull out of that depression until the income was redistributed in a more equitable way. This was accomplished by the New Deal programs putting people to work, World War II (which employed even more people), the GI Bill (which educated many soldiers, qualifying them for higher-paying jobs), the Great Society, which decreased the number of people in poverty, and higher income taxes.

By the 1970's the income percentage of the top 1% had been reduced to around 7% or 8% of the nation's total income -- a much more manageable figure. But the Great Depression had taught the Republican Party nothing it seems. In 1980, Ronald Reagan became president and began the process of again redistributing the income toward the top 1%.

The Republicans did this with a really good propaganda campaign which convinced many Americans that a "trickle down" theory of economics would work. This was the idea that if we just let the rich make more and more money, then they would share it with the rest of us -- in other words, it would trickle down and benefit all Americans. Sadly, all it did was fatten the bank accounts of the rich.

The Republicans redistributed the country's income by busting unions, deregulating the stock market and the financial industry, severely cutting social programs, deregulating college tuitions (which priced college out of the budgets of many Americans), and by repeatedly and radically cutting taxes for the richest Americans. By 2007, the top 1% of Americans was again controlling 23.5% of this country's total income.

Once again the country's economic gun was loaded and cocked. The trigger was pulled by the meltdown of the financial industry. Reich says the reason this has not caused another depression was the bailout of the financial industry with the TARP funds. I'm not so sure we have yet escaped that. The bailout saved the financial giants and the rich, but many smaller banks have gone under (and it's still happening), and all but the rich are still mired in a deep depression because of the loss of 12 to 15 million jobs. We may still see a deeper recession (depression?) because the jobs situation has not been adequately addressed and the income distribution is still way out of line.

So what can be done to cure the current recession? Further deregulation or tax cuts will not help. That would only exacerbate the situation and make the income distribution problem even worse (which was the cause of this mess in the first place). The problem must be attacked on a broad front by government targeted at re-distributing the country's income. Conservative's hate the term "income redistribution," but they have been doing just that for the last 30 years. The problem is they have been redistributing the income away from the people who need it and toward the richest among us. This process must be reversed.

The government must spend a lot more money on job creation. Much of this can be directed at the private sector through the building and revamping of our transportation infrastructure (bridges, streets and highways, mass transit, trains, etc.). They could also create government programs to clean up and improve our National Parks, wetlands, monuments, and other things along the lines of the New Deal's WPA and CCC.

Another thing needed is a massive influx of money into low-cost and easy-to-pay-back loans for small businesses (since small businesses provide the bulk of jobs in this country). These small businessmen and -women are hurting too, and they are certainly not among that richest 1% of Americans. Although the government bailed out the financial giants, these financial giants have not repaid Americans by making loans available to small businesses as they should have. They have instead used that money to speculate in the stock market and give themselves enormous bonuses.

A couple of other things that could be done: strengthen worker unions and have the government provide a much larger portion of the money needed for a college education. Strengthening unions would insure workers' wages and benefits and guarantee that those workers receive their fair share of increased production. Paying a much higher portion of the cost of a college education would once again let all Americans take advantage of educational opportunities to create a better and higher-paying future for themselves.

Finally, income taxes should be raised significantly on the richest Americans -- especially that top 1%. I know the right-wingers will whine that this would hurt job creation. That is false. High taxation does not cause job losses and low taxation does not create jobs. Businesses will hire only the number of workers needed to appropriately deliver their goods or services to their customers -- regardless of what the tax rate is.

In fact, there is a good argument to be made that our country prospers the most when the rich are highly taxed (as they were during the boom times of the 1950s). For one thing, it helps to distribute the country's income more evenly and fairly. It also encourages business interests to re-invest their excess income back into their business to save on the taxes they would owe, thus creating new jobs and helping the economy (and creating even more income for the business).

The right wing will scream that much of what I have proposed will increase our already large deficit. That is true. But it must be done if we are to stave off an even deeper recession and eventually pay off that deficit. As the income is redistributed and jobs are created there will be an ever increasing number of people paying taxes. The higher taxes on the rich and the increasing number of tax-paying workers will pay down the deficit as these proposals begin to take effect.

The deficit is important, but just trying to reduce it without creating jobs and redistributing income will not bring the country out of the recession. It will only make it worse. Job creation and income redistribution are much more important -- not only to bring the country out of recession but also to prevent another even worse recession.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Conservative Economics : Just Plain Loco

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle / MSNBC.
Still trickling after all these years...
The insanity of conservative economics

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / July 9, 2010

Like a bunch of lemmings following each other over a cliff to disaster, conservative politicians, pundits, and economists refuse to give up their allegiance to Reagan's "trickle down" economics in spite of the fact that the last 30 years have shown it simply does not work.

They cling to the belief that if we just keep making the rich people even richer they will share their good fortune with everyone else. They have obviously overlooked the natural greed of humans (especially after they have amassed a lot of money).

What has this ridiculously simplistic view of economic policy done to this country?

• It has tripled the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1% and the middle and poorest fifths of the country since 1979.
• It has increased the wealth of the top 1% of families from 10% of the country's income to about 25%.
• By de-regulating Wall Street and the financial industry it created the conditions leading to the financial meltdown that kicked off the current recession.

Instead of creating an economic vitality that resulted in increased wealth for everyone, it has just created an ever-growing and enormous gap between the rich and everyone else in this society. Making sure the rich got richer has been a real boon for the rich, but it has been an economic disaster for everyone else.

Now some conservatives would like to take this "make the rich even richer" policy even further. A member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Stephen Moore, appeared on CNBC and said the government shouldn't let Bush's tax cuts for the rich expire next January. He went on to say, "In fact, if I could have my 'druthers, I'd raise the 10 percent tax rate to 15 percent and lower the [top] rates."

Incredible! He wants to raise taxes on those taxpayers who make the least money and lower the taxes on those who make the most. How will this help to end the recession? It won't. It will do nothing but vastly increase the huge gap between the haves and the have-nots and mire those have-nots even deeper into the recession. But he is certainly not the only conservative wanting to "make the rich even richer" as an answer to our economic problems.

Arthur Laffer, a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Board, has an even crazier idea. Laffer said in a Wall Street Journal article that the best way to stimulate the economy is to eliminate all federal taxes. He said:

No income tax, no corporate profits tax, no capital gains tax, no estate tax, no payroll tax (FICA) either employee or employer, no Medicare or Medicaid taxes, no federal excise taxes, no tariffs, no federal taxes at all, which would have reduced federal revenues by $2.4 trillion annually. Can you imagine where employment would be today? How does a 2.5% unemployment rate sound?

Amazing! How does he think the federal government is going to fund the military (and the two unending wars we are fighting), social security, Medicare, education, small business and housing loans, government salaries, food stamps, and myriad other federal programs. Does he want to do away with the federal government altogether? We tried a version of that under the Articles of Confederation and it didn't work at all. Without the federal government we don't have a country -- regardless of what many right-wingers think.

The truth is that we must have a federal government and it must be able to finance itself -- and the only way to logically do that is through a fair system of taxation. Conservatives in Congress are already complaining about this country's deficit. They have refused to extend unemployment benefits or fund a new stimulus program to create new jobs because they claim it would increase the deficit. But Laffer's idea would increase the nation's debt by many trillions of dollars, instead of the few billion a badly-needed stimulus program would cost.

And it would not create any new jobs. Laffer's idea that eliminating all federal taxes would create an unemployment rate of 2% is laughable at best. Lowering taxes (or eliminating them) does not create jobs. If Laffer had ever run a business he would know that there is only one thing that causes an employer to hire one or more new workers -- need.

An employer will only hire a worker if he needs that worker to either increase production of goods or deliverance of services that the business needs to meet customer demand. Hiring fewer workers than needed will hurt production of goods and delivery of services, and cost the company customers (who will go to a company that can't meet its needs). Hiring more workers than are needed will just needlessly cut into company profits (something no business wants).

A business will hire the number of workers it needs to meet demand, regardless of whether taxes are high or low. If taxes get too high the business will raise prices. If taxes get lowered the business will put the extra profit in the bank. But taxes will not cause the business to hire either more or less workers than needed to meet demand.

Laffer is simply an idiot, especially considering the big deal most other conservatives are making over the federal deficit. Most of them seem to believe that cutting the deficit is the way out of the recession. But cutting government spending in the midst of a serious recession will do nothing but deepen and extend the recession. The deficit is not nearly as important as job creation in the midst of this recession (which has cost the country between 12 and 15 million jobs).

The American people seem to understand this even if the conservatives do not. A new Gallup Poll shows that at least 60% of Americans approve of more government spending to stimulate the economy and create new jobs. They know that the only real way to cut the deficit without hurting the country is to create new jobs. When enough new jobs are created with those new workers paying more in taxes, the deficit will be reduced.

Americans also disagree with other aspects of conservative economic policy. Around 55% would like to see the government expand regulation of major financial institutions (to prevent another financial meltdown that hurts Main Street more than Wall Street). And 56% believe the government should regulate energy output from private companies to reduce global warming (a move that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says would save $19 billion).

Conservatives may believe that the way to a healthier economy is to make rich people richer, but the American people aren't buying it any more. They know from painful experience that money doesn't "trickle down" in our capitalist economy -- it flows upward. When workers are doing well everyone does well. That's just the way it is.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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