Over at the New York Times, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has an excellent article on the current state of the middle class. The points he makes are all worthwhile, but the truly killer element of his column is the accompanying chart. I've written about this topic a number of times - most recently in Punishing Worker Success Doesn't Count - but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and Mr. Reich's all-encompassing chart starkly illustrate the damage wrought by Reaganomics and its adherents.
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| Click on chart to view at full size. |
2 comments:
The thing that is so startling about all these graphs is that if you look at the amount of money corralled by the richest 1% in real terms, they actually do better when everyone is doing better. It kind of seems counterintuitive when the graph is so lopsided - they are getting massively rich and everyone else is stagnant - but there it is. I wish that there was more of an emphasis on this fact. The rich do better when everyone does better. Maybe they would wake up and realize that screwing everyone actually means screwing themselves in the process as well.
Nah! Too blind to see the obvious - they think it's a zero-sum game when it obviously is not.
PS - I gotta new post up!
I've thought the same thing. I can't tell if it's oversight, ignorance, or a preference for lower revenues as long they don't feel like they are being "taken advantage of" by the government!
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