On the Failings of American and Especially Republican Public Policy

In the last forty years we have developed a huge income and wealth distribution problem in American that is killing the middle and lower classes and destroying and depressing the economy according to the top economists.

The single biggest reason, by far is that in the last 40 years 90 percent of all wealth has become concentrated in the top 20 percent and 10 percent in the bottom 80 percent. Meanwhile, 65 percent of all income has become concentrated in the top 20 percent and 35 percent in the bottom 80 percent. It was not this bad in fact during the era of the Robber Barons. This has largely destroyed America.

What happened is four big developments; First, the rich took America's jobs and shipped them overseas and built huge new factories there, pocketing trillions on saved labor costs and increased return on capital, while many middle and lower class Americans lost first their income source and then their wealth trying to stay even and afloat by borrowing, defaulting and losing their collateral or by paying huge interest charges.

Secondly, this situation is worsening in all regards because the rich are now rapidly displacing more workers in America by ever more sophisticated computers and robots at an accelerating rate. Legal research and other jobs requiring judgment and evaluation are ever more becoming mechanized. Jobs are disappearing quickly. We are becoming an impoverished nation of un and underemployed. Two MIT economists have a new book on the topic.

Thirdly, the rich then use government to get further advantages, income and help. High powered lobbyists win them subsidies, tax loopholes, favors and big income advantages. The CFR is loaded with their benies and advantages. Republicans and the Income Defense Industry also ponied up 300 million this presidential election campaign for nothing. But other contributions hold. Wall Street is still unregulated and playing games and laundering money for the world. Too big to jail as the White House concedes. People above the law. The oligarchs assuming control.

Fourthly, the rich struggle hard in conjunction with the Income Defense Industry to pay even lower federal income taxes. Now, the top 300 families with an average income of over a million a day pay about 15 percent of their income in federal taxes. The top 50 percent pay about 47 percent of all federal income taxes paid and the total paid is not much. Federal tax revenues are the lowest they have been for 60 years as a percentage of GDP. There is almost no progressivity at all. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, 25 percent of millionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than 10 million Americans who earn less than $100,000. This includes 4,000 "ultramillionaires" (those making more than $5 million a year) who pay a lower federal tax rate than average Americans. According to the IRS, there were 1,470 households with more than $1 million in "adjusted gross income" who managed to pay no federal income taxes at all in 2009. In the 1970s, the rich paid an average effective tax rate of about 55 percent, which was almost 80 percent of the top published rate. By 2007, the top 400 income earners in America paid an effective tax rate of 16.5 percent, which was barely 50 percent of the top published rate which has been massively reduced since the 1970's. Taxes and revenues are in the basement.

Terrible public policy has let and is letting all this happen and it has also destroyed the antitrust laws, which was the undoing of the Robber Barons. Their trusts were broken up. And now Republicans want to cut taxes further on the rich, destroy the social safety net, make it every man for himself, and further press the disadvantaged. Republicans are of two kinds: The first, savvy, evil and controlling the machinery. The second, duped by lies, ideology and too seriously dumb to figure these things out and know where their and America's real advantage and future lies, so they are followers of their leadership and the income defense industry.

We are a sorry, pathetic nation.