The economy is in the toilet? The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment is at this year’s low. Today, jobless claims are up sharply. The question is why we are in this non-ending cycle. The answer is simple; POLICY.
Bill Moyer in the video below speaks about the American Plutocracy that Citigroup in its internal memos coined with the new term “Plutonomy”. “Plutonomy” is defined as an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. The video is a must see.
When I wrote my book “As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom” I took a lot of flak for the less than civil name. For this name, there is no apology. After describing the ills, hypocrisy, and systemic anti-middle class policies I specifically stated there needs to be a balance between the individual, the government, and the corporation biased by the individual. The lack of this balance is specifically why we cannot get out of our economic rut. The concentration of income and wealth to a privileged few means the many; the middle class has much less resources to spend. Given that spending is the lifeblood of an economy, it will not grow until this is mitigated.
Jared Bernstein’s published an important article yesterday (Getting Straight on Small Business Job Creation: Firms vs. Establishments) that will likely go unnoticed. It shows that large corporations inasmuch as politicians erroneously state otherwise are responsible for 65% of job growth even though they account for only 45% of total employment. Companies with less than 500 employees account for 55% of the country’s employment. Companies with less than 50 employees account for 29% of employment. This is an aberration. This is an imbalance that keeps our employment picture at risk because we are at the behest of a relatively small number of large corporations. Any mistakes or missteps made by a few have large economic consequences.
The only advantage to having the above imbalance is that a privileged few get to monopolize on the services and innovation of the many. This continues the transfer wealth from the middle class to the ever wealthier wealthy. This imbalance is caused by the corrupting influence of money in politics provided by the privilege few who now own our politicians.
Only an informed electorate that elects politicians willing to change policies beneficial to the many, the middle class, will we be able to make a change. We must then answer the most important question. Is electing the kingpin of our plutocracy, one of the persons who engineered this imbalance (leverage buyouts, corporate raiding, consolidations, tax avoidance, etc) the answer to our economic woes? Having Mitt Romney in the presidency means we no longer need to have the corrupting influence of money in politics because after all the new president would be the head of the Plutocracy.
AMERICA, stay informed and do not allow your vote to be bought with false sound bites. Your family, the middle class, and your country are at stake. Please like my Facebook page and follow my tweets for postings I do not put on our Coffee Party site for editorial reasons.
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