Monday, December 2, 2013

The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 9

Endangered species: working class family
This series points out the hidden-in-plain-sight metamorphosis which the once American Middle Class Consumer Economy is going through.

A metamorphosis into a Plutocracy with a plutonomy.

The photo to the left is about a TV Series 'Dinosaurs' which seems to have been prescient in some ways.

At least in the sense of the morph from an economy into a plutonomy, together with the dire political implications of such a morph.

The very bad news is that this morph renders the American Middle Class Working Family into just another endangered species which many of them never cared enough about.

That TV comedy series followed the exploits of the Sinclairs — a family of working class dinosaurs, but it would not be so funny any more:
Here's a fact that will make any liberal cringe.

Seven of the 12 richest people in the world have names ending in Koch, Walton or Adelson, according to a new calculation by Bloomberg Markets magazine.
Why we missed real decline?

Of course, extreme wealth gives you a lot of political power.
...
The massive and growing gulf between rich and poor is one of the direst challenges facing the U.S. economy.

Highlighting this gap, more than half of U.S. wage earners made less than $30,000 last year, according to an analysis released by the Social Security Administration on Tuesday. That's not far above the $27,010 that marked the federal poverty line for a family of five in 2012.

We've created this infographic to help visualize the skewed income distribution in the country.

Where do you stack up?

-If you make more than $10,000, you earn more than 24.2% of Americans, or 37 million people.

-If you make more than $15,000 (roughly the annual salary of a minimum-wage employee working 40 hours per week), you earn more than 32.2% of Americans.

-If you make more than $30,000, you earn more than 53.2% of Americans.

-If you make more than $50,000, you earn more than 73.4% of Americans.

-If you make more than $100,000, you earn more than 92.6% of Americans.

-You are officially in the top 1% of American wage earners if you earn more than $250,000.

-The 894 people that earn more than $20 million make more than 99.99989% of Americans, and are compensated a cumulative $37,009,979,568 per year.
(A Decline Of The American Republic - 3). Everyone is talking about it in terms of a middle-class consumer economy that cannot recover.

I suggest that we talk about it in the sense of American Feudalism, because what is happening makes more sense in that plutocratic plutonomy context than in a middle-class consumer economy which is going extinct.

The previous post in this series is here.

1 comment:

  1. "The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don't Let Them!" - Bill Moyers

    (link)

    ReplyDelete