Bob Somerby has been a voice howling in the internet wilderness longer than there has been a blogosphere. The Obots hate him which is a good enough reason to read him in my book. Yesterday:
Ignoring a revolution: By far, the most striking passage we read all week came from the pen of Bob Herbert.
Herbert cited data from Robert Reich’s new book, Aftershock. In this passage, he is discussing your country’s economic growth over the past thirty years:
HERBERT (9/14/10): There was plenty of growth, but the economic benefits went overwhelmingly—and unfairly—to those already at the top. Mr. Reich cites the work of analysts who have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.
Those data describe a social revolution. In the 1970s, the top one percent received eight percent of national income. By 2007, their share had tripled, to 23 percent. Herbert went on to state a concomitant point: “A male worker earning the median wage in 2007 earned less than the median wage, adjusted for inflation, of a male worker 30 years earlier.”
The rich have gotten a great deal richer. Everyone else has stood still.
[…]
In the face of that staggering social revolution, are you aware of any politics or political messaging on the left which has tried to encompass this revolution? Have liberal entities even tried to make the public aware of this change? Have liberal entities tried to build political frameworks in which average people of the left, the center and the right can see their obvious common interest in confronting this revolution?
Actually, no—you have not. And by the way: Average people of the left and the right are the joint victims on this vast grab of wealth at the top. Progressives will never be able to address this revolution as long as average people are split into two warring camps, with big dumb nuts like Ed Schultz and Sean Hannity encouraging the two rival tribes to despise one another.
There was ONE period in the last 30 years where the poor got richer and the gap between rich and poor SHRANK. Can you guess when that was?
A) 1981 to 1992
B) 1993 to 2000
C) 2001 to 2010
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