The Graphs of Wrath - 3

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has been doing a series of posts that take a look at graphs which tell a quick and dirty story.

That story is about the polls which show that Americans think our country is going in the wrong direction, and that the wrong direction has been our national direction for a decade now.

The first episode displayed a graph of certain military spending compared to non-military spending, beginning circa 2000, showing a steep rise in the one, but a steep dive in the other.

That post then compared that steep increase and steep decrease with a suspiciously matching income disparity growth and decline between the 1% and the 99%.

In the second post of this series we expressed no "surprise, surprise" that these graphs show that as wars increase the 1% rich get richer while the 99% majority of us get poorer.

This graphic portrayal was underscored in the Dredd Blog post The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, in the sense that the 1%, who control the military, plan to use it against the 99% if need be.

Then came Occupy Wall Street which has spread to many locations, is ongoing, and is finally getting some media attention of various and sundry sorts.

Today's graph of wrath is shown at the top of this post, and it tells the same quick and dirty story.

It tracks, with the red line, median household decrease in income over the past decade of the wrong direction, while the black line tracks unemployment during that same period of misguided leadership.

The 1%, who engineered this wrong direction, do not like our founding fathers who predicted this kind of thing exactly and quite succinctly:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(Toxins of Power, quoting James Madison). Just as amazingly, the 99% in large measure still have the spirit and heart of the founding fathers.

Which means that the plutocrats may indeed have us by the neck economically, but we have their number.

The previous post in this series is here, the next post in this series is here.

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