Hat tip to Gottlieb who sent me the link to Business Insider’s “22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America”
You should view the whole slide show. However, I will provide the statistics here, with few enough of the images to give you a taste. Those of you who know me, know I am the Queen of “You say Socialist like its a Bad Thing,” a Commie-Pinko Motherfuckress.
Here is proof fucking POSITIVE of why I am correct, and why I am fighting to wake people against the propaganda that keeps them perpetually supportive of a system whose main goal is to rape them blind and make them like it.
Their data is in bold, my commentary follows in italic, just to be clear about who is saying what.
– 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
So, you fuckwits, do you really still hang on to the dream that you too can be rich if you only get your lucky break in the market? This isn’t “hard-wurkin-merricuns” doing well. These are professional players who created and regulate the system to keep theirs theirs and take more of yours by any trickery they can create.
– 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
Thats almost 2/3 of us. Miss work? Skip a bill or don’t eat. Is this what you signed up for?
– 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
You can never own too many Lamborghinis, I guess. Why pay your worker bees more when you can roll in all the honey yourself? They won’t say shit.
– 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
No fucking shit Seamus. Because living paycheck to paycheck leaves us sooooo much to invest.
– A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
See above comment. I have a sum retirement savings of ZERO. Yeah. ZERO.
– 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Except for the few who were lucky enough to get out before it burst… the majority are going to be in the work-till-you-die demographic… and that’s ok, because your Business Owners have taken out “Dead Peasant Insurance” on you and can cash in when you do.
– Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
– Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
So 95% of us cannot meet the cost of living increases. We owe our souls to the company store. Whodda thunk it? I mean, in 1975 we thought we had a future.
– For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
A man’s home is his Castle. Or THEIR castles, rather – they just let you keep it maintained for them until they rent it to the next tenant-serf.
– In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
Sometimes its worth the investment to pay the Brownshirts to keep the Peasants down…. besides, the idiot Peasants think they can get your job someday. AS IF.
– As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
But, but, but Capitalism is good for us, right? Wake up fucktards. It ain’t the hand that feeds you, its the hand that reams you, and we need to bite it off to the fucking elbow.
– The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
There ain’t no poor in Amurka, unless’n they be lazy gud-fer-nuthins, right? So fully half of us are just LOSERS who deserve to vie for ONE PERCENT of this country’s VAST WEALTH. Least we ain’t no Socialist Commies wanting wealth redistribution! I mean, then we would have 50% of the wealth to share. :::HEAD TILT::
– Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
Why Not? It was a job well done, a heist that surpassed the biggest wet dream the Elites could imagine. The people had no more wealth worth stealing, so lets steal it from their Government, the only place left with a dime…. a dime lent them by us, no less, that we can call in! BRILLIANT!
– In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
I hates me Big Government, but sure am glad I work for them, eh? Or I wish I did!
– The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
Double Down! Double Down! Woooot! Woooot! Why settle for one bazillion when two bazillion is so much shinier?
– In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
Well, fuck me running, thats almost 9 months!!!!! You could get knocked up and birth a peasant before you could get a job to feed it! American Capitalism is Grand!
– More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
Ask any $2.72 an hour waitress… and tips suck because our customers are broke too! But hey, I should be grateful I am employed. I mean, being bitter because I used to rake in 40k+ with great benefits before the jobs all went off shore is so very ingrate of me.
– For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
Now wait. Food stamps? Thats COMMIE shit. Let them eat cake! Or dirt! Or petrol balls off the shores! Its only 43 million useless eaters. Get a job muthafuckahs! Real Capitalists don’t give no handouts.
– This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour
See above! Well, golly – I make 3 times a Chinese prison laborer, and almost 10 times a Cambodian one. I bet their house payments haven’t quadrupled though. Can you say GLOBAL MINIMUM WAGE? I bet you can.
– Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
There is the rub, eh? Now if only those lazy ass 43 million could pull as hard on their bootstraps as the 7.8 million, they would be fine. Bullshit.
– Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest rate in 20 years.
Wow, almost a QUARTER of our kids are poor and hungry in the richest Nation in the World. Lets outlaw abortion – they’ll be so busy trying to feed the nits, the lice won’t have the time or energy to protest! Makes ya proud, ennit?
The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.
And 90% of us vie for the rest – unequally of course. The middle class is going, going, gone, biotches. Stay asleep and let them tea-bag your snoring mouths.
Capitalism is a FAILED system, in which you are the Victim they are trying to kill off.
Have a nice day.
Seriously. How can anyone QUESTION the obvious facts?
Capitalism was redundant the day it was still born. What is amazing is that it has survived so long
I would venture to guess it goes back beyond Plato’s ruling Elites… all the way back to when the first individual claimed he alone owned a piece of land… rather than work it with the rest of his tribe or clan.
Once slefishness topped cooperation, society was doomed.
And selfishness is very much in the ascendency these days
In an evolutionary world, that which survives is that which is best adapted to the environment in which it lives. Now when you have a system that at least to some degree actually creates and controls that environment…by fair means or foul (This is not a “moral” question, at least not in the short term.)…then you have a survivor.
Eventually all environments change. As is this one at present. Will “capitalism” adapt better than the other, competing systems? (As it has so many times over the past few centuries.)
We shall soon see.
My bet?
It will.
Am I happy about that?
No, not particularly. I just don’t see any better answers being offered to the problem of dealing with billions of people.
Islamic fundamentalism?
I don’t think so.
Regressive in any number of ways.
The Tea Party of the Moslem world.
Communism?
Already a dead issue.
So-called “socialism?”
Can’t even be quantified. I guess it depends on how it’s managed. South/Central/Caribbean America may get it to work. We shall see. But it ain’t gonna happen next week. That is an iron-bound guarantee.
So…whatcha gonna do?
Besides of course complain in totally impotent isolation.
Call BossBusters?
Damned if I know.
Have fun though.
Everybody needs a hobby.
AG
As do you… the one saying to BEAT the system by opting out of it.. the one who says if no one watches their commercials and propaganda we can beat the bosses.
You see, the economy is not a thing, not a being that evolves. It is nothing more than a collective agreement, often an agreement made at the business end of a barrel.
Lessee… by your reckoning slavery was good because it lasted so many years.
Communism failed because it was set upon by the whole western world, and it was run by the same plutocrats who ran their previous kleptocracy.
Socialism is working in S.America and needs to be nurtured and planted everywhere.
The only one I see doing useless bitching here is you, AG… you diss everything that comes along.
What I am doing is reporting facts. And trying to opine on them in a way that makes people open up to the unsustainability of the system.
Every empire that becomes this top heavy crumbles….
So what do I want to do about it? Warn people before they are crushed trying to hold it up.
And I do a fine fucking job of it too.
You write:
Yes.
That is precisely what I am saying.
With some extensions.
Once people cease to believe the sky-is-falling big lies…all of them, from “recession” right on through “the disease of the month”, the cure of the month and “this politician will get things done, they will cease to believe in the biggest lie of all…that they are simply no good. Not good enough, anyway. And when that happens? Watch OUT!!!
Everything in the universe evolves, Diane. The universe is a living entity, and as Dr. King (and so many other visionaries, from Christ right on through Gandhi) so clearly stated regarding its overall direction:
Believe it.
He did.
He put his own mortal ass on the line to change things in a positive way. In a way hat did not bring defeat and suffering to millions of Americans of all races.
I see another way, and i am trying to develop it.
i mean…we certainly can have some sort of total collapse along the lines that you so consistently seem to wish for over at your blog.
I do not think it necessary, myself.
Like Dr./ King, i beleieve in working to reform the system. Not in either bringing it down or at the very least waiting for its inevitable collapse. And in my view he keystone of this reform would be reform of the hypnomedia. But the way it is set up one cannot “reform” the media because they are the ones that control all change here.
Catch 22?
The end?
Maybe.
I would like to see otherwise, myself, and if it’s one mind at a time that I reach, so be it. That is all that is within my own reach.
But I do keep trying.
Further…
Not “good”, Diane, any more than so-called “capitalism” is good.
Just inevitable.
Part of the inevitable arc of evolution through which we, the meanest one-celled animals and the greatest galaxies all travel.
Yup.
It was run by the same types that run everything, it just didn’t work as well.
Indeed.
I agree.
Part of the next part of the experiment.
Will it work?
We shall see.
You must realize that the same plutocratic “types” have…and will continue to, I believe…always run every system that has to do with humans. You cannot eliminate hem from the gene pool. You could try…maybe have an ethnic cleansing or cultural revolution of some sort. And after it’s over? Abracadabra…the same types ran the revolution, too.
Always and everywhere.
They are necessary too, i guess.
Inevitable, at the very east.
On the evidence of all of recorded human history.
On the evidence of my own eyes and ears as well.
And more from you:
HA ha ha ha ha ha h ha!!!
I say that everything is alright, that it will all work out, that the universe is perfect in every way. Including my own (and your) eventual possible death at the hands of the system and whatever else happens.
And you turn it…as you do almost everything else that is occurring around you…into a negative.
OK…that’s apparently your job.
But I will keep trying to have this say.
Peace be with you.
HAH ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
The guy pictured below taught this act to me, by the way.
Yup.
Bet on it.
And every empire has its doomsday sayers that call the alarm through centuries. Eventually they are right.
You will be, too.
Just…not yet.
Not on the evidence that I am seeing.
You do your job very well, Diane.
We all do.
The end result of all of the “jobs” being done?
Whatever happens.
So it goes.
AG
P.S. The comment to which you were replying was not a reply to you, by the way. But…you sure are mad at me, ain’tcha?
Enjoy it.
Everyone should enjoy their job.
I certainly do.
Not angry – trying to break on through to the other side.
Sorry, pop reference.
It means “popular.”
And what popularizes?
The media .
Your whole frame of reference has been given to you by the hypnomedia and you do not even recognize that truth.
So that goes as well. WTFU.
S.
W
WTFU
Hahaha.
Jazz was pop at one point.
Pop is a term I only used because you discredit modern poets.
before the hypnomedia gained almost total control of the culture.
The PermaGov (under the auspices of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird) gradually took over the culture after W.W. II. And every time another tentacle of that alien idea took hold in the system, art slipped a little further into relatively harmless, non-threatening oblivion.
The last “pop” star to pose a real threat to the status quo was Bob Dylan.
“Break on through to the other side?”
Jim Morrison?
Please.
Dumb motherfucker. Just another dick-driven, suicidal self-idolizer.
Like John Edwards only sexier. And even more compulsively self-destructive.
Perfect fodder for the pop machine.
He couldn’t tune his own guitar either.
The Grateful Dead only with a bigger dick.
And you fall for them all, eh?
1967.
The year it was recorded.
What was really happening in the world of creative art and thought in 1967?
Lemme see…
But….NOOOOooooo. The PermaGov promoted that Jim Morrison act-and-think-alike Hunter S. Thompson as the newest hottest thing ever. Betcha fell for that shit, too.
1967-The inimitably free-within-the-restraints-of-the-organic-harmonic-series Miles Davis Quintet (The one with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and Ron Carter) released Sorcerer and Nefertiti. We’re still trying to catch up 43 years later.
John Coltrane, having completely conquered harmonic series-based tonality, decide to try to take it to the next level. He was dead a year later? Connected? Some believe so. He had guts, that’s for sure. I personally think that he got a glimpse of God’s face (God’s voice?) and couldn’t handle it. Can any human?
Marshall McLuhan continued to try to get people to realize that the media were the message.
MLK Jr.
And you throw that lame Jim Morrison at me as evidence of…of what, exactly?
Your own hypnosis, seems to me.
Sorry, girl.
Yer livin’ in a dream.
A bad dream.
WTFU.
Please.
AG
P.S. You wanna listen to some singing?
In 1967 I was sitting in The Village Vanguard in rapt attention as Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson sang this blues.
I Had A Dream
James Brown was singing up a STORM.
So were any number of other singers.
Machito, Titio Puente andTito Rodriquez were setting he batr for Afro-Cuban-NYC music, and Eddie Palmieri was jumping over that bar.
Fidel Castro was setting an example that today resonates throughout all of South/Central/Caribbean America.
And all you can come up with is Jim Fucking Morrison!!!???
Lame.
And do you know why you come up with such lame shit?
BECAUSE THAT’S ALL THE MEDIA GAVE YOU.
Just the fuck like John Edwards.
Wake the fuck up.
Please.
AG
Unlistenable. Really. In the first several seconds the little guitar lines that appear over those simplistic electric piano chords are so out of tune that I simply cannot listen to them. The drummer just clomps along and the bass player is…well, you get the message.
Only…you don’t get the message, apparently. This is a sad high-school level band that was sold as “the real thing.” The real countercultural thing.
It ain’t.
Sorry.
You’ve been had.
Over and over and over again.
Promoting crap of this sort is what ended any chance for a real countercultural revolution.
Why in my repeated attempts to convey the “NEWSTRIKE!!!”idea do I include “CULTURESTRIKE!!!” as part of the whole thing?
Same same.
Before the cultural takeover that occurred post-WWII, the best and brightest rose to the top through sheer achievement.
After?
From the execrable Pat Boone right on down through American Idol America, the maistream (Read “white.”) cultural road has been almost entirely lined with shit like this. After the early ’70s breakdown of America’s black working class neighborhoods (broken by the same forces that promoted this kind of shit, I might add), black music followed a similar downward spiral. If the U.S. Hispanic cultures had not been largely non- (or at least semi-) English speaking at the time and thus relatively immune to the main thrust of the hype, the same thing would have happened in that culture. It took longer, but by the ’90s the same effects began to show in those cultures as well.
Why do you think they call it a “culture?” Same as in biology lab…that’s where things grow. The culture is what feeds the people. Emotionally. Grab ’em by he balls and the hearts and minds will follow? Hell…grab ’em by the culture and everything follows!
Bet on it.
Too bad.
Such nice memories.
Such shit.
Step away from those memories.
Step away from the official culture with your brains in the air.
You be bettah off.
Bet on that as well.
Wake the fuck up.
You’ve been had.
AG
Prejection = Reflection
What?
Say something that means something to someone other than yourself or keep quiet.
AG
Your comment defines what I meant.
Projection is when you tend see your own faults in others, even when they aren’t there. We all do a lot of it, especially on this page.
The Projection of your own self-perceived inadequacies onto others simply means you are raging against your own reflection.
Enjoy not changing and making fun/ignoring this.