Economics

• The richest 1 percent now own more than 35 percent of all of the nation’s household wealth, and 38 percent of the nation’s financial assets – including stocks and pension funds. The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together. 6 Walmart heirs have more wealth than bottom 33 million American families combined. So why are we even contemplating cutting programs the middle class and poor depend on, and raising raising their taxes?
• The GOP’s 1 Trillion Dollar Lie
• Is Our Future Going to Be Keeping Rich People Happy in a Servant Economy? 

Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Lydia Howell

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January 24, 2013 | Brace yourself. In coming weeks you’ll hear there’s no serious alternative to cutting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on middle class, and decimating what’s left of the federal government’s discretionary spending on everything from education and job training to highways and basic research.

“We” must make these sacrifices, it will be said, in order to deal with our mushrooming budget deficit and cumulative debt. 

But most of the people who are making this argument are very wealthy or are sponsored by the very wealthy: Wall Street moguls like Pete Peterson and his “Fix the Debt” brigade, the Business Roundtable, well-appointed think tanks and policy centers along the Potomac, members of the Simpson-Bowles commission. 

Full story...

Related:

The GOP’s 1 Trillion Dollar Lie, Joshua Holland, AlterNet / In These Times

• Given that the United States has one of the weakest social safety nets in the world, it's obvious we're not spending more on each family in poverty than the median income, defense, Social Security and Medicare.
• How a right-wing whopper about the cost of welfare was born.

Is Our Future Going to Be Keeping Rich People Happy in a Servant Economy? Sam Pizzigati, AlterNet

• That's where we seem to be headed, as we shed decent American jobs. 
• The Servant Economy:  Where America’s Elite is  Sending the Middle Class
• The "BS" Austerity Plan Nobody Wants ... and We May Get Anyway

• “…it seems that our remedies are instinctively those which aggravate the sickness: the remedies are expressions of the sickness itself“. --Thomas Merton
• 11 New Items including:
  • $521 Billion
  • Matt Taibbi | 'The Bailouts Officially Created A Sucker Class'
  • Frank Rich | America's Real Fiscal Crisis
  • Charles Pierce | The Social Costs of the Austerity Agenda
  • Ensuring Scottish Sovereignty: Exploring the Public Bank Option
  • A Sign That Obama Will Repeat Economic Mistakes
  • Romnesia: The Ability of the Very Rich to Forget the Context in Which They Made Their Money
  • It's Our Economy
  • Five Facts About America's Pathological Wealth Distribution
  • Why is the White House Helping the Republicans?
  • The Job Crisis, the “Unemployable," and the Fiscal Cliff

David Culver, Ed., Evergreene Digest

Jimmy Margulies

$521 Billion, The Progress Report, ThinkProgress

• We don’t need to gut Medicare or slash Social Security to reduce the deficit. Three-quarters of our deficit reduction so far has come from spending cuts, so common sense proposals like limiting extra deductions for the wealthy will help us further reduce the deficit in a more balanced manner.
• Another Option for Balanced Deficit Reduction
• Matt Taibbi | 'The Bailouts Officially Created A Sucker Class'
• Frank Rich | America's Real Fiscal Crisis

Matt Taibbi | 'The Bailouts Officially Created A Sucker Class' Harry Bradford, Huffington Post

• Here's Who's In It
• Secrets and Lies of the Wall Street Bailout

Frank Rich | America's Real Fiscal Crisis, Frank Rich, New York Magazine <http://nymag.com> 

For all the Beltway hysteria about the fiscal cliff, the forgotten Americans in the debate are American workers. 

Frank Rich on the National Circus

Robert Reich | Jobs Deficit Still More Important Than Budget Deficit

http://evergreenedigest.org/frank-rich-americas-real-fiscal-crisis 

Charles Pierce | The Social Costs of the Austerity Agenda, Charles Pierce, Esquire

• It is becoming clear that, among our governing elites, and among the courtier press that serves their interests, it is taken as a given that some sort of austerity agenda ... is going to be dropped on the rest of us.
• Krugman | Fiscal Cliff Deal Is Bad Omen

Ensuring Scottish Sovereignty: Exploring the Public Bank Option, Ellen Brown, Web of Debt 

• [I]n terms of public policy, government banks can do more for less: Almost ten times more if one compares cash used as capital reserves by banks to other policies that require budgetary outflows.
• New State Bank Bills Address Credit and Housing Crises

A Sign That Obama Will Repeat Economic Mistakes, Robert Scheer, Trutthdig 

The very fact that folks (like) Krawcheck remain influential, rather than being the subject of (a) much-needed investigation, gives further evidence of the enduring but ultimately terminal illness of crony capitalism.

Adam Zyglis

Romnesia: The Ability of the Very Rich to Forget the Context in Which They Made Their Money, George Monbiot, Monbiot.com

• A potent myth is being used to justify economic capture by a parasitic class,
• There Is No Stopping Climate Change Unless We Can Mobilize Against Plutocracy

Confronting a global austerity agenda, SocialistWorker.org

• Around the world, a generation of workers is discovering the power of resistance.
• Iceland Did It Right...and Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong

It's Our Economy, Kevin Zeese, It's Our Economy

• The economy becomes OUR economy when people have a say over economic issues and when the economy works for all of us rather than funneling wealth to the top 1%.
• Five Facts About America's Pathological Wealth Distribution

Five Facts About America's Pathological Wealth Distribution, Paul Buchheit, Common Dreams

• Americans are beginning to realize that years of preferential tax treatment for the rich, under the guise of "supply-side job creation" nonsense, have bloated the fortunes of the super-rich to a level that would make Rockefeller and Carnegie envious.
• Iceland Did It Right...and Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong

Why is the White House Helping the Republicans? Robert Reich, RobertReich.org

• (Monday) the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers issued a report today warning that if Congress allows the Bush tax cuts to expire January 1and the Alternative Minimum Tax to kick in, the middle class will face sharply-rising taxes.
• Report Warns "Fix the Debt" a Front for More Corporate Bailouts
• Paul Krugman | Let's Not Make a Deal

The Job Crisis, the “Unemployable," and the Fiscal Cliff, Shamus Cooke, Workers Action

• Ever since the recession government policy has been aimed at benefiting the wealthy and corporations, while working people have only experienced layoffs, lower wages and benefits, and slashed public services. 
• To stop this dynamic of austerity working people must unite and protest in massive numbers, like the working people of Europe.