This is the graph Ezra used last night to explain why the Occupy Wall Street/99% protests aren't simply a case of sour grapes and bitterness.
You have to ask yourself -- how is it that the one percent is doing so great? They haven't been playing more by the rules. Or getting more educated. And -- here's the really important part if you want to understand why the other 99 percent are out protesting and why they're calling their movement Occupy Wall Street -- how come they haven't brought anyone else along with them.
Look at the relationship between the one percent -- they're the red line here. And everyone else -- they're the blue line. If you look at what everyone was making in 1945, there was a while when we were all pretty near each other -- there was a while when we rose and we fell together.
And then we didn't. Starting in about the 80s that just stopped. That's around the same time median wages for most of us just stopped moving -- they just stopped rising. Look at what happens starting in the 80s -- the top one percent goes WAY up. And everyone else stays flat. If the other 99 had kept rising, we wouldn't be talking about Occupy Wall Street right now.
Americans don't resent people's success -- the 99 percent don't resent the fact that there is a top one percent, they resent the fact that the system stopped working for them.
They resent that the top one percent now inhabits a different economy than the rest of us -- an economy with different rules -- rules that they get to make up.
When you look at these numbers, at this trend -- when you see how this looks and feels to people you can't imagine that this is sustainable in the long-run, that this is the way the country can keep going.
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Thanks, Will! Now on to argue with conservatives using another nifty graph! Me <3 the TRMS folks. Thanks for helping me make factual assertions.
These protests are an inevitable reaction from a nation and a people pushed to the brink by the corporate elite and by political gridlock. Americans are fed up with the special treatment lavished on Wall Street by our elected lawmakers while the hard-working folks of this country are called names, insulted, and forced to take the brunt of "deficit reduction." Wall Street gets government bailouts and record profits while real Americans are laid off and have the government benefits long promised to them ripped away. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
If this is what the protests are about, why aren't they protesting for fiscal responsibility with the T-Party? Oh, because your guy is in office. N'uff said, I get it.
The TPer's don't want fical resposibility the way it needs to be done. The want the middle and lower income, the disabled, elderly and poor to pay as they want lower corporate tax, top 2% lower tax, tax subsidies for major corporations. Disagree? Check out the legislative proposals by the TPer's in the house. It's very easy to see where they want "fiscal" responsibility to come from.
Last time I checked they were asking for fiscal responsibility. They just don't agree on what constitutes as "fiscally responsible." They want to end the wars overseas, cut the defense budget, and cut subsidies. That is a form of fiscal responsibility because it cuts several trillion dollars out of national deficit. They just don't want to touch social security and medicare.
There's no units on the y axis, it makes the math teacher in me cry. (and it also renders the graph meaningless)
I took that to mean percent growth each year. Perhaps I am wrong?
Does it matter if the units are in percent or apples? Point is the rich got more apples than everyone else since RayGun took office.
According to Ezra in the video, the Y axis measures income for each variable (median and top 1%) as a percent of their 1945 value. He doesn't state it, but it is adjusted for inflation. Otherwise, the scale would have to go to at least 20. He also doesn't state whether this includes capital gains, as this could be especially significant for the top 1%.
The 1945 median and top 1% income were both about $2400; in 2007 dollars, that translates to about $24,000. Looking at the graph, the median income in 2001 (in 2007 dollars) is $24,000 x 2.5 ~ $60,000. The top 1% income in 2001 (in 2007 dollars) is $24,000 x 3.2 ~ $76,800.
Remember back when we paid cents for a gallon o gas? When banks offered freebies for banking with them? When housing was affordable and so was food? When the want ads were full of jobs? Remember? Now think hard what was in place back when? REGULATIONS. Every company had to follow regulations that prevented them from gauging the public. What have the Republicans worked hard for since Nixon ....DEREGULATION!!!!! What happened to the american dream? Republican lies, laws and undoing every law that protected/provided for the middle class and poor.
Interesting thought considering there was little to no regulation in this country for more than 150 years and we became an economic powerhouse. I wonder how that happened.
Remember back when we paid cents for a gallon o gas? When banks offered freebies for banking with them? When housing was affordable and so was food? When the want ads were full of jobs? Remember? Now think hard what was in place back when? REGULATIONS. Every company had to follow regulations that prevented them from gauging the public. What have the Republicans worked hard for since Nixon ....DEREGULATION!!!!! What happened to the american dream? Republican lies, laws and undoing every law that protected/provided for the middle class and poor.
Thom Hartmann used to say that a rising tide raises all ships as an argument for improving taxes across the board and increase fairness for us in the lower percentile.
The right have been happy for Global Warming because a rising tide aids them far better. A rising tide raises the level and only those who can afford long anchor chains can hope to rise with it and remain in position while others are anchored too solidly to what once was a foundation and it now a dream burial plot. They can cut anchor and be forced to drift without direction or empowerment, their course directed by the winds of fate or barriers placed to protect those who can still float freely and afford anchor chains or energy to use engines, stockpile supplies and hire those with the knowledge needed to survive the self made storm. We poor can either rely on chance and drift or stick it out and risk being flooded or swamped and possibly go down with the ship.
A rising tide means destruction and the only ones who truly benefit from such will be the sharks who can now venture farther inland to where was once safe such as Social Security and Welfare BENEFITS (not entitlements) and safety nets designed to protect the majority. The sharks venture at will in the knowledge that they will be saved each time, the rich will harbor them or force us to dig into our pitiful pockets to bail out or dig a trench to form a new safe area for sharks to survive in our midst should the waters fall again.
The coming months will be heart breaking for many if the waters are caused to drop and the wrecks of many are uncovered once more but with will and observation we can see the holes in those dreams where they were torpedoed purposefully by those worse than sharks, submarines built for one reason and that is to sink as low as possible and ruin all that their masters command them to.
The American is the largest consumer in the world and the large corporations are killing the middle class. Does this make sense? When the lower classes do good, then then richer classes do great! Why do the corporations not get it?
Because they no longer need the Amer middle class. They have found much bigger consumer markets, i.e., China, India.
What are the units on the y-axis? It's not labeled.
Please don't use obfuscation techniques to present data. People who don't understand what the label means won't notice, but the rest of us will respect your data a whole lot more if it's properly labeled and sourced. That will make it much more credible and more difficult to argue against.
(C'mon Rachel - you and Ezra KNOW this!!!!)
We have since learned that the truer saying is "A rising tide lifts all yachts." We have also learned that, in this economy, most of our ships are not seaworthy.
Proof that as parasites, the rich will go down with their hosts.
Will,
I feel sorry for you guys sometimes. No matter how much physical evidence you produce they don't care. What we are witnessing is ideology vs. facts. And the facts don't matter to the right. You can sit down, one on one, with a righty and show them that chart. They will say, "BUT THAT OBAMA IS A KENYAN SOCIALIST".
They will cut their nose off to spite their two faces. One face is the one that carries guns to political rallies claiming the government is too big. The other face is the one that lines up to get government assistance after a disaster. Governors/States do it all the time. They rail against the government until they need the government. Just like children do with their parents. Spoiled little brats!
People say I get too stressed over politics. I must agree. I do! Because I have to deal with idiots who refuse to see the facts.
Well said Trotsky. Exactly right. For preservation of my sanity, I have learned not to even argue with those Stupids - they hear you not.
Because the Tea Party would be destructive than constructive. They have no true agenda except to support corporate america cutting off their futures. You notice how at Wall Street, there are no insulting signs, no soundbites slogans, no shouting at officials and no threats towards people who think otherwise.
They are nothing more than tin foil hat wearing lunatics. Everything the government does is some kind of UFO conspiracy theory to them. They'd rather trust Rick Perry (government politician) than trust independent economist.
They don't want government in their business but ever 2, 4 and 6 years they ask the government to elect another lunatic to run the government for them.
This has NOTHING to do with the government! This has everything to do with getting that Kenyan out of office.
Good job race baiting Trotsky. Standard Liberal tactic when you've lost the argument. Thanks for keeping the tradition alive.
Oh by the way, I'm waiting for some outrage over how racist MSDNC was to Herman Cain in the O'Donnell interview.
I won't hold my breath. Libs only care about minorities that agree with them.
The Y axis is in the title of the graph: "Income Gains". The only meaningful way to compare those gains is to use percentages, so anybody with half a brain could conclude that the y-axis label should read something like "Income gains in %"...
That's what I concluded (and haven't been corrected on). I have more than half a brain though.
I meant "anybody with *more* than half a brain" of course... :-)
Francois, even though I clearly have less than half a brain, by your accounting, I WAS able to deduce a likely label. But that's not the point.
The point is that not labeling an axis is a very common technique for using statistics to deceive, at worst, and poor scholarship and/or sloppy reporting, at best.
The tide lifts the yachts in the bay sooner and higher than it lifts the leaky row boats stranded on the beach.
I was more impressed by the article that was linked during the segment.
That was the concluding question of the first paragraph. That was written almost exactly a year ago. And now we have people marching in the streets with 99% signs. The Prophet Spoke:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2010/09/theoretical_egalitarians.html
I'm happy that the conversation is starting about the real problem in this country. This conversation began with a man in Tunisia setting himself on fire.
As conservatives and the media fail to understand, this isn't about bringing the 1% down. It is about bringing the median up.
All the tax cuts and bonuses are invested in Asia. The economies of Europe and North America are being drained, China is growing by leaps and bounds. Look up the 20 best skylines in China on YouTube. We've all been told that China is a Communist country. When I saw the video, I asked myself: "Did Communism produce this? If not, what did?" I have a theory, but I want to hear your thoughts.
China manages a modified form of Capitalism. They are chasing the American Dream. They are using capitalism to exploit their resources. One of those is cheap labor.
In this country we are having protests because so many have lost faith in the American Dream. In our current winner take all system only 1% get to realize the American Dream. The winners used their money and power to pull up the ladder of opportunity after themselves.
Went down to Occupy Wall street today. WOW. Not a motley crew at all. met a 70 year old woman who came all the way from LA by bus to demonstrate. Met a steelworker who's been out of work for a year and ended up helping give out food. Amazing people. VERY organized. Don't let anyone tell you this is a ragtag mish mosh of liberal knee jerk progressives. A ton of middle class people, really hurting, business people who just got off work and came to protest, academics. AMAZING experience. if you live in NYC you MUST go to these protests. That is a MUST GO. i was deeply moved by the people I met and how organized they were.
Great reporting from the front lines!
Thanks.
Go99%
Rick
Thank you for the report. Although I have to ask you did mean academics were there as well and not business people who just came off work to protest academic. What do academics to do with Wall St. shenanigans? ;-)
When you get a grass roots movement for "economic justice" condemned by both faux and cnn then you know the "top 1%" are getting a bit nervous.....and that is a good thing, since the folks who own everything and have turned the rest of us into serfs really need to think about the consequences of their obscene greed these past 30 years. You can't keep grabbing more and more of the pie and leaving crumbs for the masses, how do you think revolutions start? The rich need to realize that if they want to placate the masses with bread and circusses, then they might want to consider improving the bread and doing a better job of distributing it, since we have enough circusses. The super rich might also want to consider which of their numbers they want to sacrifice for their sins. MLK once said that "The arc of history always tilts toward justice." Let's hope that applies in this case.
Those Wall Street champagne drinkers surely seemed to be enjoying themselves up on those high balconies. Wonder why they didn't venture down to the streets and mingle with the people? Are they afraid of us? We do seem to outnumber them, a bit.
Greetings! Rachel
I support Occupy Wall street and what they are attempting to do which is to pressure political leaders to enact policies that would level the playing field that all Americans can successfully achieve a better life for themselves and their families
Peace be unto you!
Marquest Burton
This is interesting....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtGykVrosHk&feature=player_embedded#!
It would be interesting to see the stats for US poverty, a subject that has been ignored for years.
We need to get money out of politics, so our elected representatives can follow the dictates of their conscience - not their campaign donors. Here's some historical perspective.
http://trailersfromhell.com/blog/2011/10/04/from-brians-desk-beware-the-ides-of-march/
What I did 'back in the day," when I was in my 20s (1970s): I was able to travel from city to city, state to state, without worry, knowing that if I applied for work on Monday I would have a job by Friday. Those days are LONG gone. Maybe embracing government of, for and by corporations wasn't a real good idea, ya think?