The Rich Get Richer, Don't Ask About Everyone Else
by Rabbi David Eidensohn
"Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans," according to a New York Times front page article on January 29, 2006. The article says:
1) The trend for the richest to get richer "grew significantly in 2003," part of "a trend that began in 1991."
2) From 1991 until 2003, the top one percent of households went from owning 38.7 percent of corporate wealth, to owning 57.5 percent of corporate wealth.
3) The income of the top one percent of American households "ranged from $237,000 to several billion dollars."
4) Bush tax cuts, beginning in 1991, have benefited the very wealthy.
What about everybody else?
The U.S. Census Bureau in a August 30, 2005 press release, said that:
1) Between 2003 and 2004 real median household income remained unchanged. This is untrue, because inflation eats up the value of the dollar every year. Thus, people who have the same income one year to the next actually have about four percent less money. So real median household income is declining.
2) "The nation's official poverty rate rose from 12.5 in 2003 to 12.7 percent in 2004." So, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
3) Those without health insurance remained stable at 15.7 percent, or 45.8 million, from 2003-2004. What do those people do when they need medical service? Going for a test can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Are they supposed to rob a bank or just drop dead? Or do they run to the hospital emergency room when they are far gone and make the taxpayer participate in the final agony?
4) From 2003 to 2004, when the top one percent was raking it in as above, 1.1 million Americans went into poverty.
5) The percentage of poor among blacks and Hispanics remained stable, but the number of poor whites increased from 2003 to 2004.
6) "Real median earnings of men age 15 and older who worked full-time, year-round declined 2.3 percent between 2003 and 2004, to $40,798. Women with similar work experience saw their earnings decline by 1.0 percent, to $31,223." (Census Bureau Press Release) This is great news for the global billionaires who own the companies where these people work, because paying them less makes the billionaires even richer.
If you have the energy to hear more phooey news, here it is (from the US Census Bureau 2002 Economic Census on Manufacturing released 10/31/2005)):
1) From 1992 to 2002, the years of the Bush administration, the number of manufacturing establishments dropped in America from 370,912 to 350,828; over twenty thousand manufacturing sites disappeared. But don't worry, they are doing fine, they just moved to China, where the American one percent of millionaires are doing just fine. So are the Chinese with their ten percent economic growth per annum doing fine. Americans? Well, why don't they just go to China? Of course, Chinese get slave wages, but if the American money is going there, and the jobs are there, why don't the American people follow?
2) From 1992 to 2002, manufacturers employing 20+ employees dropped from 118,967 to 108,728, a loss of over ten thousand large manufacturing plants. But don't worry about their owners. These global billionaires know what to do with their business. Get it out of America to the slave-labor climes of China, make cheap merchandise, and sell it in America!
3) From 1992 to 2002, the number of employees working in manufacturing in America dropped from 16,948,900 to 14,699,536, a loss of over two million people. But don't worry, their jobs are doing fine, they are just in other countries.
A word to the one percent millionaires and billionaires. I know you don't care about the rest of us, but when America loses its manufacturing base to your Chinese investments, and when China calls in its billions of dollars of loans to America, where will you live? Oh, in China. Well, good luck.