A true measure of economic vitality is measured by wealth. We can look at incomesor other measures of productivity but real wealth is measured by net worth. Who controls wealth in the U.S.? According to a study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies the top 25% of U.S. households control 87% of all wealth in the country. That number comes out to a nice hefty sum of $54.2 trillion. If we look even closer at income distribution, we will find that the top 1 percent in our country control 42 percentof all financial wealth. By all measures being able to acquire a piece of financial wealth was the hallmark of the middle class of previous years.
Today we have a society largely in debt to credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and immense mortgage debt. Net worth is measured by looking at assets minus liabilities and many Americans are lucky to break even while many have a negative net worth.
Even after the current wealth destruction of the recession, our country has grown wealthier and wealthier over time and the trend is clear:
Source: Wikipedia
Yet more and more of this added wealth is filtering its way to a smaller group and not necessarily the most productive in our country. In the first quarter of 2010 some of the biggest banks in this country made continuous profits without really adding any benefit to our economy or society:
Source: ABC News
In fact, many of these banks simply made money by hoarding money and actually lending it back to the U.S. government (who actually bailed them out to begin with). These weren’t successful companies that produced a solid product. These are the companies that failed but had politically bought out the right connections.
Hmmmm I don't believe in this whole May 24th thing but I do see a time when the SUPER rich will have to hide behind guards while the rich become middle class, the middle class becomes poor, the poor become a huge mass of hungry, angry people.
ReplyDeleteSay like Brazil/Argentina/Mexico...Tough times make tough people...But "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Good times...Good times.
Has anyone else had trouble getting to this blog since yesterday? It kept redirecting me to adds, even the Daily Middle was out of reach.
ReplyDeleteI say we take back what is rightfully ours. Now's as good a time as any. Let's start with Hayward and Suttles from BP. After we are done confiscating the wealth they have stolen, they can bath in the oil plume in the middle of the gulf and wash up with some of that lovely Corexit dispersant of which they're so fond.
ReplyDeleteLet's Roll!!!!!
Run to the hills !
ReplyDeleteRun for your lives !
It's May the 24th !
The earth is burning !
We are on fire !
It's may 24th !
I have one more to add to the list.
ReplyDeleteAVERAGE AMERICAN -($1,000,000)
What is even more amazing than this is that Republican middle and lower middle classers are still being sucked into the belief that the rich have nothing, but their best interest at heart. Rush Limbaugh has successfully pulled that off. I have and will likely always vote Republican or Independent due to my anti-abortion stance. However, it seems to me that the Lobbying system is the great corrupter and destroyer of our country. Both parties will sell out their mother for a dime. They are liars and cheats and I hold little hope for any party solving our economic crisis.
ReplyDeleteThis is how revolutions come about - when the privileged class not only ceases to act with any degree of noblesse oblige, but instead goes whole hog the other way, using all of their power and influence (including blackmail) to take as much as they can for themselves.
ReplyDeleteLouis XIV said, "After me, the deluge" and he was right - Louis XVI and his haughty wife reaped the whirlwind. I'm sure that they thought that the French Army and their guards would put down any revolt...but it didn't work out quite that way. Ditto for the Russian Czar (and that one I know a lot more about, since 2 of my grandparents fled Revolutionary Russia). Things move a lot faster these days, so the deluge won't take decades to come about.
The current upper classes will end up DEAD, or exiled with little or none of their wealth and prestige, if they don't stop this nonsense. I am in no way in favor of wealth redistribution of any kind - but there simply isn't a level playing field any more (if there even has been for decades). The key to stopping a revolution is a large middle class, not hired mercenaries wearing whatever uniform or badge of authority...but the upper classes here apparently never learned the lesson and are busy rapaciously and arrogantly destroying the middle class.
This cannot end well - for anyone. I shudder to think that my kids may someday live in a nation that will undergo the brutal and wrenching changes of a revolutionary France or Russia - but it will come someday (and before most of us would ever anticipate it) if things aren't changed. People will only put up with so much, and many of them have scoped rifles that can accurately reach a deer-sized target at 500 yards. I threaten no one, nor do I advise anyone to commit any act of violence...instead, I warn: such violence will necessarily come about if things don't change, and fast.
Noblesse Oblige, not "get yours while you can," you rich assholes.
LOL its may 24th and nothing happened!
ReplyDelete5:30 I do not know what is suppose to happen on the 24th (today), but the day ain't over yet bucko. So give it a little more time. Tomorrow would be a better time to start to make fun of the May 24th prophet if they are wrong.
ReplyDelete9:12 You will be among the first to try to cause physical pain on your neighbor because you will steal or participate in some other act to cause harm. You believe that nothing bad can happen in this country... it only happens in the foreign countries... RIGHT. You are an idiot. You remind me of a few religious people who still believe that the dinosaurs are not real. It was all made up to discredit Christianity. Again, you are an idiot. Making fun of the person who continually placed remarks on this blog that something was going to happen on May 24th, well, I will give you that. But trying to discredit news stories that may depict statistical information can only mean one of two things. You are either Rush Limbaugh or David Letterman.
ReplyDelete9:15 Go back to putting people to sleep with your weak scriptural sermons. Save them for your church.
ReplyDeleteSo Todd Beamer
ReplyDeleteHow do you plan to take back what is ours?
We as citizens are required to end the madness.
*********************************************
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...
*********************************************
We won't be doing anything unconstitutional by physically (if need be) removing every member of this corrupt Congress and putting them in PEMA (People's Emergency Management Agency) camp.
Never forget ours is a "Government of the People, by the People and for the People", not the corporations, not the lobbies, not the special interests, not the Federal Reserve not the banksters, not Mexico, not the NWO, not the Trilateral Commission, not the Council on Foreign Relations, a government for the People!
Did you laugh at the Minute Man Project when they camped out at the border? They stopped talking started doing something to stop the illegal alien invasion. Did you drop by with some food and drinks for them, or did you throw insults and rocks at them? The MSM made them look like toothless, redneck fools with big guns and small brains. Can't really fault the MSM, after all spreading lies and propaganda are their jobs.
You bastards that slam the "sheeple" all day long, sheep need a Shepard, without one, they would die. Sheeple need a Shepard too. It's not about American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, it's about a lack of the true leadership needed to do what the Declaration of Independence requires us to do when government becomes out of control as our government currently is.
Don't look to me. I am not a John Connor type. I hate those books that say anyone can be a salesman, anyone can be a leader. Leaders and Salesmen are part of ones DNA and if you don't have it, don't bother trying. If you are a leader type, why are you not doing something to get this reconstruction of our government under way?
9:29 Agreed.
ReplyDelete9:29 - that's the same argument every who posts here uses, and, everyone who posts on the Internet uses.
ReplyDelete"My role is to inform, yours is to act!"
9:37 Food prices are going up at record paces. The value of the dollar is holding and rising only because it is being jacked up by the Feds. It will eventually take a dive. I do not know when.
ReplyDeleteAs far as articles about gold going through the roof tomorrow... that reminds me of all the Stock advisors on tv telling everyone not to sell when the market crashed. They of course did sell their investments. I am always skeptic of any Gold pusher telling me that tomorrow gold will go sky high. I believe he is well inserted into the market of PM. So, I try to use a little wisdom when reading the articles.
Hey EA, you gulf oil 'spill' tracker is way off kilter.
ReplyDeleteI adjusted it to the max flow rate and got 146,660,000 gallons of oil in the gulf now.
Yeah, One Exxon Valdex holds 54 million gallons of which 10 million spilled in Alaska.
So you're trying to tell me only 3 exxon valdex's have leaked into the Gulf
Well I can assure you the flow rate from that well is probably on the order of 100,000 BARRELS a day, that's 4.2 Million gallons a day
which as exxon valdex every 12 days.
However, with what we now know about that particular hi pressure oil feild down there, the flow rate is probably closer to a million barrels a day.
That's an Exxon valdez every 3 days, so right now the gulf has over 10 entire exxon valdez tankers worth in it.
Well the sheeple did actually stand up and say NO to the bankster bailouts by a very large margin - over 90% - even with their scare tactics being deployed 24/7.
ReplyDeleteIt was actually refreshing to see the sheeple turn away from their TVs long enough to say NO!
Of course, that 'NO' meant nothing because WE THE PEOPLE are powerless drone minions. The bought and paid for politicians went ahead and gave the banksters everything they wanted. Just like the phony legislation being passed right now.
We are economic slaves and have NO SAY. Your vote mean nothing. GOP vs DEMs means nothing. Just there so you can rant one way or the other.
The Euro Oligarch banker families decide. The lemming US populace and our puppet leadership decide nothing.
The USA is nothing more than a corporation under the control of the Bank of England.
Anyone who celebrates Independence Day on July 4th is a moron. We NEVER won real Independence. They left their banks, courts, religion, and masonic mumbo jumbo right here to insure their control would never waiver.
may 24 stock market down Morons
ReplyDelete...The USA is nothing more than a corporation under the control of the Bank of England...
ReplyDeleteThen I guess we will have to finish the job our founding fathers failed to do, is that right?
Our vote may mean nothing, but bullets can be quite persuasive.
Indeed, 90% of us "Citizens of the USA", not sheeple, said NO to Obamacare. I wrote my Congress Woman Loretta Sanchez and mad it very clear that I opposed it and I did not know a single person who thought it would be a good idea and what happened? The bastards voted in favor of it anyway!
We of the South West understand perfectly that the immigration laws are NOT broken. They do not need to be fixed, they need to be enforced! Barry is going to waste the next 1.5 years drafting an amnesty package to turn all the illegals into Democrats. Once he's done that, the next task will be the formation of the North American Union and the Amero adopted and the dollar killed off.
Barry won't listen. Congress won't listen. The Supreme Court will not defend the Constitution.
I really hate to say it. There is no more time for debate, no time for protest, no time for polite discussion. THEY WILL NOT LISTEN TO US!
We have only one choice left and you all know what Thomas Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty.
Just like there will never be a real Federal Reserve or Fort Knox audit. Never, ever. Sheeple have no say.
ReplyDeleteAmerica doesn't have an economic problem. It has a spiritual problem.
ReplyDeleteMorality, in the absolute sense, is out the door.
In a moral nation, a group of Khazarian gypsies could never, ever have a chance in Hell to do what they have done to America, the U.S. dollar and around the world via the U.S. military.
The American people have disqualified themselves to be the leaders.
None of these statements are written with bad intentions. It's simply the truth. Sad, frustrating truth.
- Glass-Steagal re-instatement would stop all assaults on commercial banking. Where are all the accountants in this picture?
- Electric vehciles, powered by solar energy (battery recharging), would render environmental assaults, like the gulf oil spill, impossible. Where are all the engineers in this picture?
- Mass protest, at gunpoint, would make job outsourcing impossible. Where are all the highly paid clergy in this?
I could go on and on.
Get it strait. These GOD DAMNED Gypsies don't give a rat's ass about you Christians out there. they are at war with you, particularly the nations that are historically the strongest supporters of such faith, like America. And you are paying a very dear price, Mr. America! They are LAUGHING AT YOU!!
The Great Life System will not let you get away with this forever, and with impunity.
Very soon a powerful, united European super state, controlled by these very gypsies, will replace you. They in turn, will pull the plug on you through their henchmen already deployed in your backyard. Your key politicians are all bought and paid for by them. Are your daily cares really that important? The continued existence of your nation lies in the balance.
Again. America does not have an economic problem. It has a spiritual (morality) problem. Everything else is secondary.
May 24th.
ReplyDeleteYou'll see.
@9:54
ReplyDelete1) Learn English.
2) It's May 24th, and nothing happened.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete9:29 - that's the same argument every who posts here uses, and, everyone who posts on the Internet uses.
"My role is to inform, yours is to act!"
I guess he's suggesting we are all talk and no action.
My first thought is the best leaders, military, political, corporate, all must have every scrap of information possible to complete the task at hand.
I order to "take back this country" we need a small, dedicated group of leaders, supported by a large group of information gatherers and analysts.
We need experts in the Constitution and how we might go about ending this current, out of control government. Never forget:
...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...
Oath Keepers is making a difference with the military.
I have said many times that we in the border states should simply round up those we know to be 110% illegal aliens, put them in a 12 passenger van and drive them back to their side of the border, back to Mexico. We would be enforcing current US Immigration Law, not engaging in kidnapping. Naturally our corrupt illegal alien loving state and federal government would likely lean on the kidnapping side of the coin, but why? We are doing something they refuse to do. Didn't Bush blast his flap trap all day long about how the illegals are doing work we citizens won't do. I emailed Bush many times and asked him for that "list". He never answered.
We know the Constitution says that only Congress can impeach the President. What happens when We the People insist on impeachment and Congress refuses to even consider it? What is our next recourse? Do we even have a second option, outside of assassination?
We know the Fed is a private bank. We know they are fucking up this country full time. Congress seems to have no desire to audit or eliminate the Fed. We must have other choices? The Constitution authorizes Congress to mint our money supply and they "farmed it out" to a bunch of thieves and thugs and criminals. We must have an option to take back control of the money supply if Congress refuses.
These are the issues (and many more) that leaders need answers too.
It's not a bad thing to be an expert "History Detective" or a "book worm", someone who hates the spotlight and would rather do the research and let someone else tell "We the People" what we can do to take back our country.
You've heard it said
ReplyDeleteIn song und rhyme
"Not with water but with bankers next time!"