“It is important to note and remember that while less mobility is worse, more mobility isn’t the end of injustice. If an elite monopolizes wealth all the time, the fact there is some movement into and out of that elite doesn’t diminish the inequality that rules every moment. Additionally, reforms can also be made to increase class mobility while at the same time make wealth and power disparities greater than they were before the reform and also further strengthen elite rule over their class position.”

Capitalism’s current crisis is not the same as the crisis called capitalism. The former was caused by elite efforts to free themselves from constraints on profit making, which not only worsened material conditions for millions of people, but jeopardized their own wealth. The latter is an institutionalized class war waged by elites on the rest of us and is characterized by extreme disparities in material wealth and decision making power. The two combined could prove a detonator for class conflict in the U.S. and some have already begun to fight back.

Conditions for the bottom 80 percent of the U.S. population continue to worsen. Home foreclosures are forecast to be roughly 2.25 million for this year alone, over double the annual rate before today’s housing crisis. The month of November saw the loss of over half-a-million jobs bringing total losses to almost 2 million since the start of recession in late 2007. Two-thirds of these losses occurred since last September and there are forecasts for more. The auto industry is undergoing almost certain restructuring with hundreds-of-thousands more jobs and connected businesses in jeopardy. Republican opposition to the auto bailout plan demanded a 50 percent wage cut for workers implemented over the next few months. Now Washington is considering tapping into part of the $700 billion bailout plan under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). However, Republican opposition to the auto bailout has further antagonized class relations in an already volatile economic environment and uncertain future.

Among those who have fought back—-and won—-are the 240 workers in the Chicago Republic Windows and Doors factory. They gained international attention on December 5th by occupying their workplace using Depression-era tactics. The detonator to their struggle was also related to class antagonisms in the U.S. Weeks after taking $25 billion in TARP bailout money Bank of America cut off its line of credit to the factory causing the company to halt operations and terminate its workers with only three days notice and without severance. Their struggle and victory earned them a settlement totaling $1.75 million covering eight weeks of pay, two months of continued health coverage, and pay for all accrued and unused vacation. United Electrical Director of Organization Bob Kingsley described the outcome as “a victory for workers everywhere,”...“an historic victory for America’s labor movement,” and “a win for all working men and women who face uncertainty, unfairness and job loss in a troubled economy.” And this is just the beginning of another struggle for the Republic workers who have created a new foundation they have named the “Window of Opportunity Fund,” dedicated to reopening the plant.

read on...

another article on who we’re forgetting in our rush to “save teh middle class”.

Crisis At Home

If you live in affluent neighborhoods you might have conditioned yourself to ignore the significant sector of US society that gets in your face by showing they’re poor, suffering from disease and acute angst - if not worse.

Sure, plenty of tree-lined, suburban streets contain apparently normal, satisfied men and women who work and take children to school. Advertisers understand that underneath the “normal” exterior, these people have anxieties. They prey upon fragile middle class publics by selling them “relief,” from their physical and psychic “pain.”

When a “normal person” confronts a “homeless one,” the “normal” might well say “there but for the grace of God go I.” “I see those people [homeless] and I buy books like on how to increase my financial intelligence quota,” an acquaintance told me. “They scare me.” Yet, Hollywood and television continue to use stereotyped middle class characters to display “The Real America” - the country George Bush sells to the world in his speeches. This made-up America faces “a security threat,” from which “Homeland Security” will protect. Sell that to the homeless!

When mass media chatterers raise abstractions - like is the working class bitter, should candidates wear flag pins or will withdrawal from Iraq mean less security? - desperately poor people shake their heads and laugh. Security means a bed, a roof over it, and a minimal and healthy meal, plus occasional access to medical care.

read on...

holly sklar is always an informative read.  i’m currently annoyed at the constant rhetoric about the “middle class”.  whereas i realize that in a growing disparity between rich and poor, those in the middle are beginning to feel the pain, those at the very bottom of the chain are feeling it even more.  services are cut, charities have fewer donations, food costs are up, housing prices are rising, etc.  yet… the focus seems to continually be on “mr and mrs joe average” and their having to buy a smaller car, rather than the large SUV they really wanted.  they’re having to ~consume less~.  we need to save these people, so they can buy more useless crap they don’t need!!!  all the while, the poor are ~really~ struggling.  but if we refocus the debate and leave the poor out of it completely, then we need feel no guilt over our brand new tvs, our brand new computers, our new cars.  should we feel guilt?  maybe.  as a society, absolutely.  as individuals, perhaps. 

Tax Day Gifts for the Rich

When it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy, President Bush can truly say, “Mission accomplished.”

The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That’s nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China—$493 billion—in the form of Treasury securities.

Do you want our government to mortgage more of our nation’s future to finance tax breaks for the rich?

Tax cuts have already helped the richest 1 percent—whose annual incomes average about $1.5 million—increase their share of the nation’s income to a higher level than any year since 1928 on the eve of the Great Depression.

Wall Street’s five biggest firms paid “a record $39 billion in bonuses for 2007, a year when three of the companies suffered the worst quarterly losses in their history” and are eliminating thousands of jobs as losses mount from the subprime mortgage market collapse, reports Bloomberg.

The International Monetary Fund says the United States is in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, we are borrowing money with interest to finance tax cuts for Wall Street executives.

For Americans below the top 1 percent, the tax cuts have been a giant swindle. The bottom 99 percent of taxpayers were left with a bill of $3.74 in debt for every $1 in federal tax cuts from 2001 to 2006, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. Only the top 1 percent came out ahead.

Meanwhile, the federal budgets for environmental protection and housing for the elderly have been slashed more than 20 percent since 2001, adjusted for inflation, the Community Development Block Grant budget is down 32 percent, and the lack of health insurance is an epidemic.

Most households aren’t even earning as much as they did in 1999, adjusting for inflation. But the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes doubled their incomes between 2002 and 2005.

According to the latest IRS data, which excludes tax-exempt interest income from state and local government bonds, the richest 400 taxpayers reported an average $214 million each on their federal income tax returns in 2005—up from $104 million in 2002.

As the Wall Street Journal observed, “It’s also important to remember that these figures don’t represent wealth or even lifetime earnings—merely income for a single year.”

Thanks to tax cuts, it’s now common for the nation’s richest bosses to pay taxes at a lower rate than workers. The 400 richest taxpayers paid only 18 percent of their income in federal individual income taxes in 2005—- down from 30 percent in 1995.

“The drop in effective tax rates for the top 400 filers,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, “worked out to a tax reduction of $25 million per filer in 2005.” It would take 673 average workers earning $37,149 a year to reach $25 million today.

While tax cuts help the superrich compete over who has the biggest submarine-carrying superyacht, Katrina survivors are being hit with foreclosures, and neglected levees and bridges around the country are a disaster waiting to happen.

Most of the provisions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. President Bush wants to make them permanent.

The richest 1 percent of households would receive nearly $1.2 trillion in tax cuts from 2009 through 2018, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

How much is $1.2 trillion? More than all the debt accumulated in the nearly 200 years from George Washington through Ronald Reagan’s first two years in office. That’s before adding interest payments on the borrowed $1.2 trillion.

Tax cuts for the wealthy fuel rising inequality along with rising debt and neglect. Taxpayers with annual incomes above $1 million in fiscal year 2012, for example, would increase their after-tax income by 7.5 percent thanks to an average tax cut of $162,000. The poorest 20 percent of taxpayers would get an average tax cut of $45—and decaying public services.

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama promise to end the tax breaks for the wealthy. Republican candidate John McCain wants to extend them. What do you want?

Holly Sklar is co-author of “Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All of Us” and “A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future.”

for znet sustainers, the url is Tax Day Gifts for the Rich

there is no equality.  there never was.

it’s an illusion to keep the plebs happy.  our pedestrian tastes.  our pop culture reverence. 

we are the dregs.  they are the elites.

and now?  we fight for them. 

we have the audacity to declare that ~elitism~ is something to be admired.  something to strive for.  ~be the beautiful people~.  nevermind the outcasts, the riffraff.  be above them. 

read on...