Cause and Effect: Why the income gap will continue to widen

Mitchell’s laws:
●The more budgets are cut and taxes increased, the weaker an economy becomes.
●Austerity is the government’s method for widening the gap between rich and poor, which leads to civil disorder.
●Until the 99% understand the need for federal deficits, the upper 1% will rule.
●To survive long term, a monetarily non-sovereign government must have a positive balance of payments.
●Those, who do not understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, do not understand economics.
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The gap between the upper 1% income group and the lower 99% continues to widen. Here is the cause:

Washington Post
Influence Industry
Dan Eggen & T.W. Farnam
GOP plank in 2012 platform wants to leave campaign spending alone
By Bill Turque, Published: August 29

The Republican Party’s 2008 platform contained not a mention of campaign finance reform in its 68 pages. “We oppose any restrictions or conditions that would discourage Americans from exercising their constitutional right to enter the political fray or limit their commitment to their ideals,” it declares on page 12.

The platform calls for repeal of what remains of McCain-Feingold — mainly the ban on “soft” money contributions to parties — and either raising or abolishing donation limits.

It also opposes passage of any law that would weaken the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which did away with prohibitions against corporate or union spending on elections.

The platform specifically mentioned the Democrat-supported DISCLOSE Act, which would require independent groups to list the names of those donating more than $10,000. The bill died in the Senate this year.

The plank also calls for no regulation of political speech on the Internet.

Republican National Committee member James Bopp Jr. said, “I’m just glad we can reflect what the grass-roots of the party believe. They support the First Amendment and they support no campaign finance restrictions.”

Actually, the average person sympathizes with the idea that wealthy people should not be able to buy votes. When Bopp says “grass roots” he’s talking about the wealthy supporters of the Tea/Republican party. For Bopp and the Tea/Republicans, grass is green and money is green, and the root of political money is the upper 1% income earners.

Like other portions of the platform, the campaign finance plank reflects the party’s steepening conservative tilt. In 1992, the GOP called for elimination of corporate and union political action committees. Four years later, it endorsed “full and immediate disclosure of all contributions” and a crackdown on soft money.

That was then, and this is now. Today’s Tea/Republicans are a completely different breed from the Republican party you may have favored ten years ago.

By 2004, the conservative trend emerged. The party firmly established campaign funding as a First Amendment issue with no government restrictions on individual political expression.

Though the Republicans and the right wing tell you money doesn’t buy elections, you know better. Anyway, you’ve seen the cause; now view the effect:

Census: Middle class shrinks to an all-time low
by Kristen Wyatt/AP – 9/12/12

Income inequality increased by 1.6 percent, the Census Bureau said in its annual report on poverty, income and health insurance. This was the biggest one-year increase in almost two decades.

Median household income declined $777, to $50,054 before taxes. But fewer Americans were without health insurance, largely because of a provision in the 2010 health-care law allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies.

The biggest gains went to the top 5 percent, who earn more than $186,000; their share of income jumped almost 5 percent in a single year.

“It explains the disconnect between the numbers saying there’s slow improvement and job growth, and the way people feel, because they haven’t recovered,” said Sarah Burd-Sharps, co-director of Measure of America at the Social Science Research Council. “It’s partly because the recovery has mostly been felt at the top.”

Tim Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said the working class, whose pay tops out about $62,000, are bearing the brunt of the income squeeze.

“Their pay rate has gone down, the number of hours that everyone in the house works has gone down, their homes have lost value,” he said. “These are the people really ravaged by the recession.”

The White House quickly offered a blog post urging Congress to extend middle-class tax cuts and pass the administration’s job-creation proposals. Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation scholar who specializes in poverty issues, faulted the White House for the falling income and high poverty rates.

“We still have a very high poverty rate, because Obama has been unable to generate jobs,” Rector said.

Aside from filibustering or threatening to filibuster every economic stimulus plan offered by the Democrats, it’s difficult to think of anything the Tea/Republicans (the infamous party of “Hell, no”) has done or even offered, that would have increased jobs.

“Said Jane Waldfogel, a professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work who studies poverty and inequality, “What’s disconcerting is that inequality is going up post-recession, and it’s happening because the top is starting to pull away again,” she said.

The increase in income inequality reflects the recovery’s unevenness, said Richard Burkhauser, an economist at Cornell University. “It rose not so much because the top 10 percent saw a rise in income, but because virtually everyone below the 90th percentile is still falling.”

While the Democrats sometimes are servants to the 1%, the Tea/Republicans are abject slaves, whose sole political and financial ambition has been to unseat President Obama — and causing a bad economy is part of that plan.

The populace has been sold the Big Lie that the deficit and debt are too big. The only way to reduce a deficit is to cut federal spending or increase taxes. The Tea/Republicans are dead set against tax increases, so we are left with spending cuts.

The Tea/Republican’s spending-reduction platform demands cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending, which absolutely, positively will increase the gap between rich and the rest of us.

Additionally, Federal employment (which includes military personnel) already has been cut, and more cuts are in the wind, thus exacerbating unemployment.

In summary: The Big Lie, that the federal deficit and debt should be reduced, is the 1%’s method for widening the gap. As part of the plan, the 1% want to be allowed unlimited spending to disseminate the Big Lie. Thus, the right-wing Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case.

We’re in a downward helix. As the 1% and the right wing become more powerful, they grow more and more able to control the levers of power: Congress, the Supreme Court and the media, who then convince the populace to accept an ever widening gap.

Given the Presidency, there will be no limit to the power of the wealthy over America.

Who are you, and what’s your vote?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty

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Nine Steps to Prosperity:
1. Eliminate FICA (Click here)
2. Medicare — parts A, B & D — for everyone
3. Send every American citizen an annual check for $5,000 or give every state $5,000 per capita (Click here)
4. Long-term nursing care for everyone
5. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
6. Salary for attending school (Click here)
7. Eliminate corporate taxes
8. Increase the standard income tax deduction annually
9. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99%

No nation can tax itself into prosperity, nor grow without money growth. Monetary Sovereignty: Cutting federal deficits to grow the economy is like applying leeches to cure anemia. Two key equations in economics:
Federal Deficits – Net Imports = Net Private Savings
Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Private Investment and Consumption – Net Imports

#MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY