Related Articles

Over the past thirty years, economic inequality in our nation has reached unacceptable levels. This growing divide between the have’s and have not’s has been widely chronicled throughout the nation’s media. Unfortunately, while our media and leaders have aware of the problem, and use appropriate rhetoric, our middle class remains on the verge of collapse.

The failure of the American Dream for all but a few, as documented here, is why we have been forced to take matters into our own hands.

Links to Selected Articles on America’s Plutocracy

• Simon Johnston, The Quiet Coup, The Atlantic (May 2009)
• Ailing, Banks Field Strong Lobby at Capitol, The New York Times (June 4, 2009)
• Banks Would Rather Keep Their Bad Loans for Now, The New York Times,(Dealbook, June 4, 2009)
• Senate Rejects Limit on Credit Card Interest, The New York Times (The Caucus, May 13, 2009)
• Senate Defeats Measure to Allow Bankruptcy Judges to Change Mortgage Terms, The Washington Post (April 30, 2009)
• Durbin presses Geithner on foreclosures, The Hill (June 9, 2009)
• Congress Unlikely to Reform Root Cause of Economic Crisis: Momentum to Halt Abusive Lending, Overhaul Mortgage Industry Stalls, The Washington Independent, (June 9, 2009)

Links to Selected Articles on America’s Extreme Economic Inequality

• Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow, The Wall Street Journal (July 23, 2008)
  

  “In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation’s adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

  Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years…”

• There’s Rich, and There’s the ‘Fortunate 400′, The Wall Street Journal, (March 5, 2008)
• David Brooks, The Formerly Middle Class, Op-Ed, The New York Times (Nov. 17, 2008)
  

  “This recession will probably have its own social profile. In particular, it’s likely to produce a new social group: the formerly middle class. These are people who achieved middle-class status at the tail end of the long boom, and then lost it. To them, the gap between where they are and where they used to be will seem wide and daunting.”

• George Stiglitz (Nobel Laureate), The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush, Vanity Fair (Dec. 2007)
  

  “A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.”

• David Leonhardt, The Return of Larry Summers, The New York Times (Nov. 25, 2008)
  

  “…His favorite argument today is one that instead drives some conservatives nuts.

  It goes like this: To undo the rise in income inequality since the late ’70s, every household in the top 1 percent of the distribution, which makes $1.7 million on average, would need to write a check for $800,000. This money could then be pooled and used to send out a $10,000 check to every household in the bottom 80 percent of the distribution, those making less than $120,000. Only then would the country be as economically equal as it was three decades ago.

  The lack of middle-class income growth during that span is “the defining issue of our time,” Mr. Summers has said…”

• David Leonhardt, For Many, A Boom That Wasn’t, The New York Times (April 19, 2008)
  

  “…the modern American economy distributes the fruits of its growth to a relatively narrow slice of the population. We don’t need another decade of evidence to feel confident about that conclusion.”