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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (66136)	9/17/2010 1:31:21 PM
From: koan	2 Recommendations Respond to of 217709

Dreadful, and the income disparity started about 30 years ago with both the outsourcing of jobs and the busting of unions. In 1980 35% of jobs were unionized, today it is about 12%, I think. And taxes. Since Eisenhower (91% top tax rate) the rich's taxes have been systematically lowered (now th elowest in almost a century) and the middle class's taxes raised. And the people have been complacent, voting more (and often single issue) about personal issues like race, abortion, religion, guns, gay marriage and senseless wars and of course the huge tax cuts for the rich that Bush did three times (2 through reconciliation-51 votes on one). The debt went from 5 to 10 trillion between 2,000 and 2008. Imagine if that 5 trillion had been used for rebuilding our infrastructure, small business, and education assistance and to help the middle class. <<According to Internal Revenue Service data, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004, while the bottom 50% of wage earners earned 12.8% that year, down from 13.4% a year earlier.