Replies to Post #210571 onTornado Alley (PROG)

Replies to #210571 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

DesertDrifter

09/25/13 11:46 AM

#210572 RE: F6 #210571

PegnVA

09/25/13 12:21 PM

#210573 RE: F6 #210571

Ted Cruz talked direct to his fellow-teabaggers from an empty Senate chamber last night - he read to them Dr. Seuss' GREEN EGGS AND HAM.

StephanieVanbryce

09/25/13 4:21 PM

#210579 RE: F6 #210571

every time you create a Texas wacko bird post..I have to go into the bathroom and dry
my eyes all over again . .PLUS the other day (week) BARFFFFFFING was in!!!!! . .

oh .........he's just sooooooo depressing!

F6

09/25/13 7:16 PM

#210589 RE: F6 #210571

CruZuess

09/25/2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shan-wells/cruzuess_b_3985770.html [with comments]

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and further to "Sen. Ted Cruz Compares Conservative #DefundObamacare Skeptics to Nazi Appeasers Because Why Not?", the twelfth item in the post to which this is a reply, see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83641599 and preceding and following

fuagf

09/26/13 4:09 AM

#210610 RE: F6 #210571

Nick Hanauer (repeat) has to be here in support of Henry Blodget's view of Harry Binswanger's position ..

The 99% Owe “A Debt of Gratitude” to the 1%: Harry Binswanger .. one bit ..

The former college professor and board member of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an incendiary column this month in Forbes [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/ ], arguing that “the community should give back to the wealth-creators” and the world should be indebted to the rich and powerful for “their enormous contributions to our standard of living.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/99-owe-debt-gratitude-1-harry-binswanger-153327379.html

.. that's just over half down in yours .. beneath it one other ..

Ayn Rand Disciple Says CEOs Deserve All the Credit – Henry Blodget Disagrees
By Henry Blodget | Daily Ticker – September 24, 2013 .. bits ..

This argument is the logical extension of an argument that many American entrepreneurs and investors make, which is that they are the country's "job creators" and therefore deserve almost all of the country's income and wealth.

It's no surprise why this argument is popular among entrepreneurs and investors:

[...]

What actually "creates jobs" in an economy is a healthy economic ecosystem, one comprised of entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and, critically, customers.

Successful entrepreneurs do play a valuable and important role in this ecosystem: They start companies that develop products and services that people want, and they guide the companies that produce them.

Successful investors also play a valuable and important role: They provide the capital necessary for companies to invest in new products and services.

But without talented employees who make a company's products and services, and--just as important--without financially healthy customers who buy them, entrepreneurs and investors can't create any sustainable jobs.

So to suggest that entrepreneurs and investors deserve all the credit or compensation in the economy is absurd.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/ayn-rand-disciple-says-ceos-deserve-credit-henry-164112682.html [with comments]

.. as Nick Hanauer is one of the successful multimillionaire entrepreneurs who by any margin exhibits more insight and understanding than Harry Binswanger about how an economy works, and who agrees with Henry Blodget's position that Harry Binswanger's position is absurd .. you first introduced Nick in this one .. the bottom article ..

Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality .. bit of ..

There’s one idea, though, that TED’s organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”

“We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years,” he said. “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an ecosystemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.”
http://www.nationaljournal.com/features/restoration-calls/too-hot-for-ted-income-inequality-20120516 [with comments]
.. from again a biggie.. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=75720075

and again here in Super-Rich Irony .. roughly halfway down ..

“If you are a job creator, your fifteen-per-cent tax rate is righteous. If you aren’t, it is a con job,” Hanauer told me. “The idea that the rich deserve to be rich is a very comforting idea if you are rich.” Referring to Obama’s “You didn’t build that” remark, at a rally in Virginia in July, which became a flashpoint with the right, Hanauer said that “the notion that you built it yourself is what you need to believe to feel comfortable with yourself and your desire not to pay too much in taxes.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_freeland [ http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_freeland?currentPage=all ] [Cooperman's letter to Obama embedded at
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/a-rich-mans-grievance-with-obama/ (with comments)]
.. another meaty one .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=80116189

As you know i've linked Hanauer a number of times .. one will do here ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83623185

oh .. h/t to Tom Palome .. about halfway down in the one this post replies to,
just above Binswanker .. sorry Harry, but that position of yours deserves the tag ..

ps: out of interest i met a lady today who is a carer in Sydney, having a relax between jobs .. ooi, i asked her how much she was paid .. she said just over $20/h, and was horrified when i told her in the US, as far as i knew, she would be lucky to get $10 ..

F6

09/26/13 11:24 AM

#210614 RE: F6 #210571

John McCain Rips Ted Cruz's Anti-Obamacare Speech, Criticizes Nazi Comparison
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/john-mccain-ted-cruz_n_3989887.html [with embedded video, and (over 14,000) comments]

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Experts: Seuss would be ‘offended’

By LUCY MCCALMONT | 9/25/13 2:46 PM EDT Updated: 9/25/13 5:22 PM EDT

Dr. Seuss wouldn’t have had much of an appetite for Sen. Ted Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor, experts on the author said Wednesday.

“Not only would he be offended at the misuse of ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ but he’d be offended at almost everything that Ted Cruz stands for, which is to remove the safety net from poor people, poor and vulnerable people, he’s clearly more power hungry than he is compassionate and he’s a bully,” said Dr. Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College.

“Without a doubt, if Dr. Seuss were still around today, he would be poking fun at and criticizing Ted Cruz,” Dreier told POLITICO.

Dreier included Dr. Seuss — whose real name is Theodor Geisel — in his book, “The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame” and said Geisel would be “offended” at Cruz using the famous children’s book in his argument against Obamacare.

“‘Green Eggs and Ham’ is about trying new things and giving it a chance and being open to change, right? And here’s Ted Cruz trying to stop Obamacare, really before it gets going,” Dreier said.

Cruz’s office did not immediately responded to request for comment.

Dreier added that most people considered Geisel to be a progressive and before he was a children’s book author, was an editorial cartoonist at a left-wing paper.

Another Seuss scholar says that Dr. Seuss wouldn’t have “much patience” with Cruz.

“I mean in some ways Ted Cruz is a Dr. Seuss character…he is this kind of cartoon character who sort of parodies his own behavior. You could imagine him as being in a Dr. Seuss book without really changing much about him, he’s so outlandish,” said Phil Nel, a Seuss scholar and professor of children’s literature at Kansas State University.

“Seuss was a liberal Democrat and he would not have much patience for people like Mr. Cruz,” Nel said.

Nel added that throughout political history, Seuss has been misappropriated by both the left and right, but conservatives tend to misuse his work more often.

“I think there’s definitely misappropriations from both sides, but because of Seuss’ own politics, it tends to be more from the right that interprets him in ways that he would not approve and did not intend,” Nel said.

“We interpret [literature] according to our needs, so it’s not sort of uniquely a function of being right-wing that you read and work in a way that’s different from how the author intends, but in the case of Seuss, yeah, it’s definitely true that there’s been more misappropriations form the right than the left,” Nel said.

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Related

10 facts about 'Green Eggs and Ham'
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/ted-cruz-10-facts-about-green-eggs-and-ham-97332.html

Politicians bookmark use for Seuss
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/dr-seuss-ted-cruz-politicians-97347.html

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© 2013 POLITICO LLC

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/dr-seuss-ted-cruz-97350.html [with embedded video, and comments]

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Claire McCaskill: Ted Cruz scrambled his ‘Eggs’
9/25/13
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/claire-mccaskill-ted-cruz-green-eggs-and-ham-97336.html [with embedded video, and comments]

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Ted Cruz Tells Dick Durbin He Isn't On Senate Health Care Plan: Here's Why

By Ryan Grim
Posted: 09/25/2013 10:11 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- Toward the end of Ted Cruz's more than 20-hour occupation of the Senate floor Tuesday and Wednesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) tried to pin the GOP senator down.

“Will the senator from Texas for the record tell us now -- and those who watched this debate -- whether he is protected and his family’s protected?” Durbin asked Wednesday morning, repeating a question he'd been trying to get Cruz to answer.

“I’m happy to tell you now I am eligible for it and I am not currently covered under it,” Cruz responded, diverting the conversation to an uninsured diabetic woman that Durbin had mentioned earlier.

Cruz and Durbin debated where the woman would fit in in a health care metaphor Durbin had concocted, with Durbin arguing that while Obamacare might not give her first-class coverage at its lowest level, at least she was on the plane. Cruz put forward that she was stuffed into the baggage compartment.

Daniel Webster vs. Henry Clay it was not, but it did leave the question of Cruz' health care coverage dangling.

"Senator, you and I are blessed to have the best health insurance in America as members of the United States Senate," Durbin said.

Durbin doesn't get out enough. Members of Congress are afforded top-notch, well subsidized health plans, but they're nothing compared with those provided to the people who make the real decisions in the U.S.

Top Wall Street executives get some of the best health coverage on the planet. Cruz's wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, is a regional head of a Goldman Sachs division.

According to a 2009 New York Times report [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/health/policy/27insure.html ], top executive officers and managing directors at the bank participate in a health care program that costs Goldman more than $40,000 in premiums for each particpant’s family annually.

A Cruz representative wasn't immediately available to comment.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/ted-cruz-dick-durbin_n_3992395.html [with embedded video, and comments]

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Ted Cruz Criticizes 'Defeatist Attitude' Of Senate GOP In Rush Limbaugh Interview

By Sam Stein
Posted: 09/25/2013 2:22 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- Shortly after leaving the Senate floor following a 21-hour gab-fest in opposition to the president's health care law, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took some sharp jabs at his fellow Republicans for abandoning him in the fight.

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the Texas Republican accused his fellow GOPers of being "beaten down" by past legislative battles and of secretly being fine with allowing Obamacare to remain the law of the land.

"The single biggest surprise about arriving to the Senate is the defeatist attitude here," Cruz said. Losing the battle to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he added, was "honestly the outcome that more than a few of [the Republicans] desire."

Intra-party criticisms are not new for Cruz, who has ticked off colleagues within his own party since arriving to Congress. His most recent attempt to defund Obamacare through a continuing resolution to fund the federal government is the most recent incident to draw the ire of members of his own party.

Cruz had just finished carrying out a faux filibuster to stop the CR when he called into Limbaugh's show. Between the end of his speech and that interview, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had gone to the Senate floor to admonish Cruz for comparing those who didn't want to have that particular fight to Nazi appeasers [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/john-mccain-ted-cruz_n_3989887.html ].

Limbaugh didn't ask Cruz to respond to McCain's remarks, but did ask him to comment on revelations from Fox News host Chris Wallace that Republicans had sent him unsolicited opposition research when word got out that Cruz would appear on his show. The senator told Limbaugh that he was the target of an alliance between Democrats "and many of the Republicans who are scared of this fight."

"They are scared it won't work and Republicans will get blamed," Cruz said. "They have been here for a long time and they are beaten down and they don't believe it can happen."

Though exhausted, Cruz stayed through two commercial breaks to talk to Limbaugh before saying that he was going to take a nap.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/ted-cruz-rush-limbaugh_n_3990141.html [with embedded video report, and comments]

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Rush Limbaugh Tears Into Fox News For Ted Cruz Criticism

Posted: 09/25/2013 2:48 pm EDT | Updated: 09/25/2013 3:31 pm EDT

Rush Limbaugh hammered Fox News on Wednesday for what he called the network's "trashing" of Sen. Ted Cruz.

On Monday, Brit Hume said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/brit-hume-conservative-radio_n_3981916.html ] that Cruz and other Republicans were being pressured by misguided members of the conservative media into pursuing a defunding of Obamacare and a potential government shutdown. Limbaugh was not pleased. He said [ http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/09/25/fox_news_republicans_are_afraid_of_me ] he had expected to hear such talk from MSNBC or Politico, adding:

"Of all places Fox News trashing all over this, and Fox News essentially blaming me and other conservative media for making Ted Cruz what he is! Brit Hume, of all people, essentially said that Ted Cruz is who he is because he's being pressured by people like me. And left to his own devices, Cruz might not be doing this, is the implication. He didn't actually say that. I was literally stunned watching this. The fact that, even after 21 hours, even at the beginning of it, they cannot at least admit that this is who the man is. He doesn't need any advisers here. He doesn't need any pressure. The man is not a coward. Ted Cruz isn't afraid of anybody. The real question is, what is the Republican establishment afraid of? What are some of these conservative media types at Fox News afraid of? What is the Washington establishment on the Republican side afraid of? Government shutdown, losing elections, what do you guys think you've been doing?"

(via Media Matters [ http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/09/25/limbaugh-attacks-fox-news-gop-establishment-for/196079 ])

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/rush-limbaugh-fox-news-ted-cruz_n_3990639.html [with embedded Limbaugh audio, and comments]

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Lamar Alexander: Ted Cruz's Strategy Might Have Been Dreamed Up By Democrats
09/25/2013
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Cruz's strategy of forcing a shutdown of the federal government is so ill-conceived that it will not only fail, but also could backfire and hurt Republicans so badly it might have been dreamed up by Democrats, Sen. Lamar Alexander argued Wednesday.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/lamar-alexander-ted-cruz_n_3991486.html [with embedded video, and comments]

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Women Senators Slam Ted Cruz, Vow To Protect Obamacare

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) joined other women Democratic senators on Wednesday at a press conference to decry Ted Cruz and the efforts to defund Obamacare.
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/women-senators-obamacare_n_3989920.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]

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Rand Paul: Republicans Won't Defund Obamacare In Government Shutdown Fight

09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/rand-paul-defund-obamacare_n_3990944.html [with (over 7,000) comments]

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Surprise! Obamacare foe Cruz votes with Democrats on spending plan
Video [embedded]

Cruz ends 21-hr speech, votes with Dems
September 25, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/politics/shutdown-showdown/ [with additional embedded videos, and (over 31,000) comments]

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Ted Cruz Talkathon Ends, Senate Votes As Shutdown Looms
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/ted-cruz-speech_n_3989032.html [with embedded video report, and (nearly 9,000) comments]

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Government Shutdown 2013: House GOP Considers Options

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Posted: 09/26/2013 8:58 am EDT

WASHINGTON — Pressure is building on fractious House Republicans over legislation to prevent a partial government shutdown, as the Democratic-led Senate is expected to strip a tea party-backed plan to defund Obamacare from the bill.

As the Senate telegraphed its moves, House Republicans deliberated an array of imperfect options on both a temporary spending bill required to avert a shutdown and a separate measure to permit the government to borrow almost $1 trillion to keep paying its bills.

Lawmakers face a midnight Monday deadline to complete a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown that would keep hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job, close national parks and generate damaging headlines for whichever side the public holds responsible.

The timeline is daunting since House GOP leaders appear all but certain to reject the Senate's attempt at a simple, straightforward stopgap spending bill like those routinely passed since the 1995-96 government shutdowns that bruised Republicans and strengthened President Bill Clinton.

A 21-hour talkathon by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whipped up the GOP's tea party wing even as it complicated efforts by House GOP leaders to assemble rank-and-file support for a temporary spending measure.

Cruz wants to derail the spending bill to deny Democrats the ability to strip out the anti-Obamacare provision, a strategy that has put him at odds with other Republicans who say the move won't work and fear it would spark a shutdown.

Many GOP senators, including the Senate's top two Republicans, have said they'll vote to advance the measure rather than filibuster it to death, a vote that promises to give Democrats controlling the chamber a procedural edge in a subsequent vote to kill the tea party's effort to use the must-pass bill to derail Obamacare.

Wednesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., unveiled his version of the stopgap spending bill, which would keep the government running through Nov. 15. It also contains, for now, the anti-Obamacare provision sought by Republicans. He set in motion a key vote on Friday that promises to expose the divide between Cruz and more pragmatic Republicans. Senate passage of the spending bill – stripped of the Obamacare provision – was expected no later than Saturday.

"Any senator who votes with Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democrats ... has made the decision to allow Obamacare to be funded," Cruz told reporters after his marathon speech ended Wednesday at noon. Cruz himself has predicted that is exactly what the Senate will do, and he's already called on House Republicans to reject the bill when it comes back to them.

The simplest thing for Republicans to do would be to accept the Senate bill and send it to the White House for Obama's signature, a prospect that's unappealing to Republicans because it would make them look like they're surrendering. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, originally preferred a plan to deliver to Obama a stopgap funding bill without the Obamacare provisions.

Now, GOP leaders are exploring adding face-saving options – like the repeal of a tax on medical devices, which many Democrats also oppose – to the stopgap spending bill. There's also sentiment to take away the health insurance subsidy awarded lawmakers now that they'll be required to purchase health care on Obamacare exchanges.

The House is expected to approve a measure this week allowing the Treasury to borrow freely for another year, although that legislation, too, would include a provision to carry out the Republican campaign against Obamacare. While no final decisions have been made, party officials said a one-year delay was likely to be added, rather than the full-fledged defunding that is part of the spending bill awaiting action in the Senate.

The GOP's demands on the debt limit involves far less dramatic spending cuts than Republicans demanded from Obama in a debt showdown two years. Then, Republicans extracted $2.1 trillion in cuts over a decade for a similar increase in the borrowing cap. Now, GOP leaders are mulling a 14-month borrowing increase that would increase the debt ceiling by almost $1 trillion but are considering only modest cuts, like an increase in the contribution federal workers make to their pensions.

Shutdown-averting stopgap spending bills traditionally have been steered clear of these kinds of battles for fear of a politically damaging shutdown. But with the new health care law poised to enroll millions of people into Obamacare starting Oct. 1, there's a new urgency among opponents to pull out all the stops to try to derail it.

Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters this week that consumers will have an average of 53 plans to choose from, and her department estimated the average monthly individual premium for a benchmark policy known as the "second-lowest cost silver plan" would range from a low of $192 in Minnesota to a high of $516 in Wyoming. Tax credits will bring down the cost for many.

Republicans counter that the legislation is causing employers to defer hiring new workers, lay off existing ones and reduce the hours of others to hold down costs as they try to ease the impact of the bill's taxes and other requirements.

"Obamacare is destroying jobs," Cruz said. "It is driving up health care costs. It is killing health benefits. It is shattering the economy."

© 2013 Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/government-shutdown-2013_n_3995145.html [with embedded video report, and comments]

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Ted Cruz’s Fake Fight Against Obamacare Is Making Millions

Video [embedded]
Twitter erupted with praise, criticism, and comedy as Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor Tuesday. #DisappoinTed?

Ted Cruz’s war against Obamacare is a racket to raise his profile and millions of dollars. Patricia Murphy says even his Republican colleagues loathe him.

by Patricia Murphy
Sep 25, 2013 7:16 AM EDT

When Sen. Ted Cruz went to the Senate floor Tuesday to block a bill that would fund the federal government for the next two months, he said to the C-SPAN cameras, "We don't need fake fights. We don't need fake votes. What we need is real change."

But at that moment, Cruz was leading a fake fight over a fake vote that nearly all in Washington agree would never actually defund Obamacare the way Cruz said it would.

As for the “real change” Ted Cruz said he was looking for, that change has arrived in Washington, and the change is Ted Cruz himself. Almost single-handedly, the freshman Tea Party apostle has upended the clubby U.S. Senate, roiled the tradition-bound GOP, and revolutionized the business of power in the nation’s capital, all thanks to the health-care bill that Cruz, former senator Jim DeMint, and a small army of conservative operatives have essentially made a living out of hating.

"These guys aren't stupid. They can read the votes,” says a veteran Republican operative. “That's why Republicans are so infuriated. Folks know exactly why they're doing this. They are using this issue and misleading conservatives in order to expand their own influence and raise money for themselves."

The biggest actors so far in Defund, Inc. have been Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, the leadership PAC that Jim DeMint launched as a senator and handed off to his former staff members to run as a conservative super PAC. While Cruz led the defund fight in the Senate this summer, the SCF led a huge parallel fight on the outside, setting up a website [ http://www.dontfundobamacare.com/ ], running radio and television ads [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1Zf_xi-A0 (next below)],

robocalls and a direct mail campaign, all designed to raise money from still-hot conservative activists and urge them to sign a petition to tell Congress not to fund the health-care bill when they greenlight funding for the rest of the government.

Starring in the ads, the robocalls, and the direct-mail campaign were Cruz and Lee, two former Supreme Court clerks turned underdog Senate candidates turned conservative Senate firebrands. As Cruz and Lee staged a filibuster-like marathon speech session Tuesday into Wednesday, the SCF streamed them on its website. But while Lee’s brand of fire is like a light you’d offer a friend looking for a smoke, Cruz’s heat has been pure napalm, much of it focused at his own Republican colleagues in the Senate. It’s made Cruz easily the most hated man in the Senate, but a figure quite beloved by Tea Party purists who want nothing more than to support a senator who is willing to mix it up in a scrum, even—or maybe especially—with his fellow Republicans.

It was that willingness to not only break, but assault, Ronald Reagan’s 11th Amendment not to speak ill of a fellow party member, that got Cruz noticed in his 2012 primary race in the first place. Cruz was running against David Dewhurst, Rick Perry’s almost blindly loyal lieutenant governor in Texas and a trusted member of the Lone Star State Establishment. But Tea Partiers in Texas and DeMint conservatives in Washington wanted someone fresh and feisty and in short order, they got Ted Cruz. Cruz quickly became the marquee candidate for the Senate Conservatives Fund and later Senate Conservatives Action. The Club for Growth’s PAC joined in, as did Dick Armey’s group, FreedomWorks.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the conservative pro-Cruz outside interest groups plowed millions into the primary, outspending the pro-Dewhurst super PACS and giving Cruz enough lift to win. The top two super PACs supporting Cruz were Club for Growth Action, which spent more than $5.5 million to help elect Cruz, and the Senate Conservatives Fund and Senate Conservatives Action, which spent $1.3 million and gave Cruz more than any other candidate [ http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/recips.php?cmte=C00487470&cycle=2012 ] that cycle. Members of the Club for Growth and the SCF were also the top two sources for Cruz’s individual donors, with more than $1 million combined.

Fast forward one year and Cruz has become a superstar for the conservative movement that the Senate Conservatives Fund is looking to harness. Thanks to Cruz’s star power, they’re doing it. As Cruz and Lee’s multimedia campaign blanketed the country, the month of August, typically a snooze for D.C.-based fundraisers, yielded the SCF’s largest nonelection year fundraising month to date, at $1.5 million.

Most importantly, the SCF now has in its possession a massive email list of potential like-minded donors, thanks to the 1.5 million people who signed the defund petition on the Don’tFundObamaCare website. While "a list" may just be a roster in some circles, in the parlance of power and politics, a list is nothing less than a warchest-in-waiting for the SCF to use on behalf of its allies and against its enemies in the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 presidential race. It also makes the SCF the most relevant, and possibly the most powerful, conservative group in the country, including the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks.

If anyone is still confused after the Obamacare funding fight (faux filibuster and all), Ted Cruz is now a 2016 contender and the SCF’s biggest ally. Its enemies are many of the men and women he shares a cloakroom with—any Republican senator who did not join in.

That’s the part that has Cruz’s fellow Republicans fuming. Although the Fund has run just one ad against a Democrat (Sen. Mark Pryor) this cycle, it has taken the unprecedented step of running ads attacking seven GOP senators, including Mitch McConnell, Jeff Flake, and Lindsey Graham, for not opposing Obamacare enough, even though they all voted against the bill and said they would vote to defund it. Last week, the SCF announced it would also run ads against House Republicans if they fail to embrace the right defund strategy.

"In the summer of 2009, the Tea Party energy was appropriately focused on President Obama and his agenda," said Brian Walsh, the former communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2010 and 2012 elections. "It's unfortunate that a couple of groups are shifting that energy against Republicans for their own benefit. In 2009, they were having town halls bashing Democrats. In 2013, they're having town halls bashing Republicans."

Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and chairman of the RNC, has similar complaints, singling out the Senate Conservatives Fund for attacking Republicans instead of Democrats in an interview with The Washington Post. "The House of Representatives has voted to repeal Obamacare in one form or another something like 40 times since it went into effect, yet some of these groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund or the Club for Growth attack the same Republicans who voted against OC, but they attack them over tactics,” Barbour said. “There is just no excuse.”

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Related

11 Crazy Moments From Cruz's Quasi-Filibuster
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/25/highlight-reel-11-craziest-moments-from-ted-cruz-s-quasi-filibuster.html

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© 2013 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/25/ted-cruz-s-fake-fight-against-obamacare-is-making-millions.html [with comments]

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How Conservatives Cooked A Blue Meth GOP

By Howard Fineman
Posted: 09/25/2013 4:17 pm EDT | Updated: 09/25/2013 5:12 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Republican Party used to be dull and relatively reasonable. It stood for spending restraint, free markets (for big companies) and gentle regulation of business. But it also stood for, or accepted, federal public works and scientific research, a foreign policy that was neither isolationist nor war-mongering, the use of federal power in the name of racial justice, progressive taxation, and a public piety of the most anodyne, “In God We Trust” kind.

The party of Dwight Eisenhower -- of Scotch and soda and sotto voce -- is all but extinct.

What’s left of it is barricaded in the U.S. Senate, under fire in a deadly turf war with Blue Meth Republicanism, a movement at times so angry, reductionist, apocalyptic, God-invoking, fear-mongering and obsessed with purity that it seems to have been concocted in the sub-basement of "Breaking Bad."

One of its younger, more aggressive leaders, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, just delivered a grandstanding faux filibuster against Obamacare. Insiders and “mainstream” media weren’t impressed, but then they weren't his audience. The Blue Meth Crew was, and they will be back.

So where did this potent and, to its critics, self-destructive new formula come from?

Just as Walter White needed to know his chemistry, you need to know your history. Here’s a HuffPost Historama -- a brief look at how, over the decades, the Grand Old Party of grandfatherly Ike cooked itself into the anti-government Party of the Temper Tantrum.

[...]

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/blue-meth-gop_n_3989595.html [with several embedded videos, and comments]

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Jon Stewart Blasts Republicans: 'Obamacare Is Your 'Springtime For Hitler'
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/jon-stewart-blasts-republicans-obamacare_n_3987884.html [with the (preceding) Stewart segment ( http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-24-2013/fifty-shades-of-no-way ) embedded (the {following} Stewart segment with the 'Springtime for Hitler' comment at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-24-2013/fifty-shades-of-no-way---obamacare---government-shutdown ), and comments]

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Don Lemon: Republicans 'Lied' About Obamacare

By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 09/25/2013 7:59 am EDT | Updated: 09/25/2013 8:22 am EDT

Don Lemon tore into Republicans on Monday for what he called their "lies" about Obamacare.

Speaking [ http://blackamericaweb.com/168655/check-your-facts-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-affordable-care-act/ ] on his regular slot on the Tom Joyner Morning show, the CNN host said that "some" Republicans had "lied themselves into a corner and threatened to shut down the government unless Obamacare is no longer funded."

"Talk about selfish," he added.

Lemon proceeded to debunk what he called the three biggest "whoppers" Republicans were telling about Obamacare, ending with another shot at the leaders of the push to defund the law and shut down the government.

"If they were really, if they really wanted to do the right thing they would tell the American people the truth," he said. "They would tell the American people that it's not a job stealer, but it's easier for them to give rhetoric and try to save their own hide than to tell the American people the truth."

(h/t Newsbusters [ http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2013/09/24/cnn-anchor-says-obamacare-defunders-lied-are-holding-american-people-hos ])

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/don-lemon-republicans-lied-obamacare_n_3987747.html [with comments]

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Obamacare Premiums Report Shows Low Prices For Uninsured With Wide Variation
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/obamacare-premiums_n_3984979.html [with embedded video report, and (over 40,000) comments]

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What Will You Pay For Obamacare? Depends On Where You Live

09/25/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/obamacare-map-_n_3990491.html [with comments]

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Health Insurance 101: A Starter Course on the Affordable Care Act
09/25/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/veer-gidwaney/affordable-care-act_b_3964250.html [with comments]

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House GOP Debt Ceiling Offer To Include Pro-Wall Street Provisions, Health Care Cuts

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., left, and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, right, the leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, stand together at a news conference following a GOP caucus on Capitol Hill, Sept. 10, 2013.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By Zach Carter and Luke Johnson
Posted: 09/25/2013 11:21 am EDT

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans plan to demand major perks for coal companies and Wall Street banks, alongside healthcare and social service cuts and a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling until the end of 2014, according to a source close to the House GOP leadership.

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have repeatedly stated that they will not negotiate over raising the debt limit, saying they will not make a political football of the U.S. government's creditworthiness.

The Republican plan, which would also constitute a significant overhaul of the environmental and financial regulatory system, would cut pensions for Federal employees and raise taxes on immigrant families with parents who do not have a Social Security number. The document claims $7 billion in savings from restricting the child tax credit to immigrants who do have a number, and up to $84 billion from "reform" to the Federal Employee Retirement System.

The plan would increase Medicare means testing, and would eliminate social service block grants and a fund for preventative healthcare in the Affordable Care Act that conservatives have characterized as a "slush fund." Block grants are a capped entitlement program given to states to help fund services like daycare, transportation and home-delivered meals. The Prevention and Public Health Fund has included funds for training primary care doctors and supporting healthy corner stores [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/19/the-incredible-shrinking-prevention-fund/ ].

Coal and oil companies would benefit from provisions to expand offshore drilling and drilling on federal lands. The proposal blocks the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and coal ash, and would give Congress the power to veto any "major" regulation issued by a federal agency (because an affirmative vote would be required, Congress could void new rules simply through inaction).

In addition, the document claims $23 billion in budget savings from a provision to "Eliminate Dodd-Frank Bailout Fund." The money, however, is not legally permitted to support collapsing banks. Dodd-Frank established the fund to allow regulators to pay some creditors of large banks when they fail, in order to prevent a domino of failures akin to what occurred in 2008 when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Absent the fund, the government would have no effective way of limiting the economic damage from a bank's failure, increasing the likelihood that a bailout would be necessary.

A total of 91 Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and current Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), voted for the 2008 bank bailout.

Wall Street banks would benefit from an item that gives Congress the authority to slash funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/168954/cfpb-demonstrates-why-banks-fought-its-creation-tooth-and-nail ] -- a signature achievement of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The CFPB is funded through the Federal Reserve, which currently prevents Congress from weighing in on its budget requests. The document claims $5 billion in "budget savings" from a CFPB overhaul; and because the CFPB's annual budget is currently about $450 million, to achieve that figure, the agency would have to be entirely defunded.

Regulators at other banking agencies have complained that GOP budget cuts have limited their ability to police financial excess. In recent years, banks have been repeatedly fined for abuses against consumers, including illegal foreclosures on active-duty military families [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/business/12military.html ]. Earlier this month, the CFPB required JPMorgan Chase to refund $309 million to 2.1 million customers [ http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-orders-chase-and-jpmorgan-chase-to-pay-309-million-refund-for-illegal-credit-card-practices/ ] over illegal credit card practices.

Despite the Wall Street-friendly provisions, markets are likely to react negatively if the debt ceiling is not raised, or negotiations are protracted. Stocks have have already fallen in recent days [ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-mostly-down-amid-fed-talk-2013-09-23 ] despite a favorable Federal Reserve announcement on monetary policy made in part to allay worries over the debt ceiling.

Former Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle, a Republican, said on CNBC [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/jim-nussle-debt-ceiling_n_3981639.html ] Tuesday, "There'll be repercussions that our economy right now doesn't need, doesn't deserve at a time when it's just trying to get back on its feet."

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote in a letter [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/jack-lew-debt-limit_n_3988025.html ] to Boehner that the debt ceiling would be reached on Oct. 17, and that the Treasury Department would have less cash on hand than expected to meet existing obligations.

The planned legislation will raise the debt ceiling through Dec. 31, 2014. The legislation is also expected to include language backing the Keystone XL pipeline, principles for tax reform and a one-year delay to the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

A Boehner spokesman declined to comment on the proposal.

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/house-gop-debt-ceiling_n_3988783.html [with comments]

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You Really Ought to Be More Terrified of the Debt Ceiling

REUTERS

The truly scary thing about blowing through the debt limit isn't what we think will happen. It's that we actually have no idea what will happen.

Derek Thompson
Sep 25 2013, 2:20 PM ET

Sen. Ted Cruz's 21-hour soliloquy was rightly criticized (or, characterized) as theater, but at least it classified as comedy. The debt ceiling fight is the less exciting, but more tragic, drama in repertoire in Washington, D.C. After all, we're dealing with two different beasts here: government shutdown and government default. The U.S. government has shut down before, in 1996. It was inconvenient. It was silly. But life carried on, and the ploy eventually backfired on Republicans

[ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/87/Nydailynews_newt.jpg ] intent on embarrassing the White House. But there is no historical precedent for a rich country choosing to default on its debt. None.

The truly scary thing about going over the debt cliff isn't what we think will happen—a scramble to prioritize payments, delayed checks to groups like veterans and senior citizens, and angry, confused investors.

The truly scary thing is that we actually have no idea what will happen. We don't know if it's even possible for the government to prioritize payments to millions of different clients. Households, businesses, and investors don't know how long they'll have to wait for their money, whether it's a defense contract deal, a doctor's reimbursement, or a Social Security check. And nobody will know how long the nightmare will go on. Our international economic reputation—reflected in our low interest rates, the safe haven status of Treasuries (when everything goes haywire, investors clamor for U.S. debt), and our status as global reserve currency—rests on the assumption that Washington isn't completely insane.

That assumption will be proved wrong if we make it past October 17 without increasing the debt limit. That was the drop-dead date announced this morning, when Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent House Speaker John Boehner a note detailing the dangers of breaking through the debt ceiling.

Here's the end of the letter:

Besides Denmark, no other country I know of asks legislators to vote to pay for something they've already voted to pay for. The debt ceiling should not exist. But now that it does exist, it must be said again and again that it does not create new laws. It just affirms that we will pay for old laws. It's not a smart scalpel for shaving the deficit, it's a guillotine hanging over the head of the head of the country.

Even when the blade doesn't fall, it can still have consequences. The Summer 2011 showdown that nearly resulted in default cost taxpayers $19 billion this decade in elevated interest rates as investor panic began to build. That's the price of playing with the full faith and credit of the United States.

Just imagine what the "largest self-imposed financial disaster in history [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/our-debt-to-society.html?pagewanted=all ]" would cost us.

Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group (emphasis in original)

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/you-really-ought-to-be-more-terrified-of-the-debt-ceiling/279993/ [with comments]

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Nancy Pelosi Resurrects 14th Amendment Option In Debt Ceiling Fight

By Jennifer Bendery
Posted: 09/25/2013 5:36 pm EDT | Updated: 09/25/2013 5:45 pm EDT

WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is breathing new life into a previously floated idea for resolving risky congressional fights over raising the government's borrowing limit: the 14th Amendment.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Pelosi said President Barack Obama may not like the idea, but she thinks it's within his constitutional authority to raise the debt ceiling himself, in the event Congress fails to do so. Her pitch comes as House Republicans seem to be preparing for a fight over the matter in the coming days.

"I think the 14th Amendment covers it," said Pelosi. "The president and I have a disagreement in that regard, I guess. I guess!"

She added, "I would never have taken that off the table."

The federal government is on track to run out of money on Oct. 17. Instead of putting forward a clean bill to raise its borrowing limit, House Republicans are signaling they plan [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/house-gop-debt-ceiling_n_3988783.html (item second above)] to load up their bill with unrelated measures that Democrats oppose -- including delaying the implementation of health care reform. The debt limit, or the total amount of money the government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing obligations, currently stands at $16.7 trillion.

If Congress fails to reach a deal in time, the government will default on its debt obligations to other countries. Such a default could trigger another financial crisis in the U.S., with likely repercussions abroad.

In past fights over raising the debt ceiling -- when things got to the 11th hour -- Pelosi and other Democrats urged Obama [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/house-democratic-leaders-urge-obama-to-use-14th-amendment_n_910878.html ] to bypass Congress and raise the limit on his own. They point to Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Essentially, Democrats are arguing that since the "public debt" cannot be questioned, then the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional.

Obama routinely brushes off the idea [ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/14/president-obama-backs-away-from-invoking-14th-amendment-on-debt-ceiling/ ] and says it's up to Congress to address the matter. Asked for a response to Pelosi's latest call, a White House aide pointed HuffPost to comments made earlier this year by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterating that the president wouldn't take that route.

"Our position on the 14th Amendment has not changed," Carney said in January. "And let's be very clear -- Congress has the responsibility and the sole authority to raise the debt ceiling. And Congress must do its job."

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/nancy-pelosi-14th-amendment-debt_n_3991148.html [with comments]

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Robert Reich To Bill O'Reilly: 'Be A Man, Have The Courage, Let's Debate'

Posted: 09/25/2013 3:42 pm EDT | Updated: 09/25/2013 4:01 pm EDT

Robert Reich challenged Bill O'Reilly on Wednesday to a debate on HuffPost Live, telling the Fox News host, "Be a man, have the courage, let's debate."

It was the latest shot lobbed in the conflict unfolding between the two. Reich, an economist and the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, was responding to O'Reilly's criticism of Reich's recent op-ed in the New York Times [ http://video.foxnews.com/v/2687098541001/robert-reich-attacking-the-factor/ ]. In it, Reich said that O'Reilly has called him a communist [ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/american-bile/ (the fourteenth item in the post to which this is a reply)].

Reich renewed his call to debate O'Reilly [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/bill-oreilly-debate_b_3982014.html ] in a piece for The Huffington Post on Tuesday, and during his HuffPost Live on Wednesday.

"I have said to Bill O'Reilly repeatedly, 'Will you please have me on your show so we can debate this... Let's have a civil discussion," Reich said. "He will not do that." He later challenged O'Reilly to a "civil debate."

Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/bill-oreilly-robert-reich-debate_n_3990762.html [with embedded video, and comments]

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Kyle Abraham, MacArthur Fellow, On Government Help: 'You Don't Want To Need It'

fuagf

12/13/13 12:09 AM

#215005 RE: F6 #210571

Wealth, Income, and Power

by G. William Domhoff [ sorry, neat charts inside .. i roughly fiddled a couple of easy ones for here ]

This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators.

Some of the information may come as a surprise to many people. In fact, I know it will be a surprise and then some, because of a recent study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) showing that most Americans (high income or low income, female or male, young or old, Republican or Democrat) have no idea just how concentrated the wealth distribution actually is. More on that a bit later.

As far as the income distribution, the most striking numbers on income inequality will come last, showing the dramatic change in the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory worker over the past 40 years.

First, though, some definitions. Generally speaking, wealth is the value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts. However, for purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (see Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person's net worth. In addition, economists use the concept of financial wealth -- also referred to in this document as "non-home wealth" -- which is defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing. As Wolff (2004, p. 5) explains, "Financial wealth is a more 'liquid' concept than marketable wealth, since one's home is difficult to convert into cash in the short term. It thus reflects the resources that may be immediately available for consumption or various forms of investments."

We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income is what people earn from work, but also from dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income. (But it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)

This document focuses on the "Top 1%" as a whole because that's been the traditional cut-off point for "the top" in academic studies, and because it's easy for us to keep in mind that we are talking about one in a hundred. But it is also important to realize that the lower half of that top 1% has far less than those in the top half; in fact, both wealth and income are super-concentrated in the top 0.1%, which is just one in a thousand. (To get an idea of the differences, take a look at an insider account by a long-time investment manager .. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_manager.html .. who works for the well-to-do and very rich. It nicely explains what the different levels have -- and how they got it. Also, David Cay Johnston (2011) has written a column about the differences among the top 1% .. http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/ , based on 2009 IRS information.)

As you read through the facts and figures that follow, please keep in mind that they are usually two or three years out of date because it takes time for one set of experts to collect the basic information and make sure it is accurate, and then still more time for another set of experts to analyze it and write their reports. It's also the case that the infamous housing bubble of the first eight years of the 21st century inflated some of the wealth numbers.

There's also some general information available on median income and percentage of people below the poverty line in 2010. As might be expected, most of the new information shows declines; in fact, a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (2011) concludes that the decade from 2000 to 2010 was a "lost decade .. http://www.cepr.net/data-bytes/poverty-bytes/new-census-numbers-make-it-official-2000-2010-was-lost-economic-decade " for most Americans.

[color=red] [yeah, the GW BUSH legacy ] [/color]]

One final general point before turning to the specifics. People who have looked at this document in the past often asked whether progressive taxation reduces some of the income inequality that exists before taxes are paid. The answer: not by much, if we count all of the taxes that people pay, from sales taxes to property taxes to payroll taxes (in other words, not just income taxes). And the top 1% of income earners actually pay a smaller percentage of their incomes to taxes than the 9% just below them. These findings are discussed in detail near the end of this document.

Exactly how rich are the Top 1%?

People often wonder exactly how much income and/or wealth someone needs to have to be included in the Top 1% or the Top 20%; Table 1 below lists some absolute dollar amounts associated with various income and wealth classes, but the important point to keep in mind is that for the most part, it's the relative positions of wealth holders and income earners that we are trying to comprehend in this document.

Table 1: .. inside ..

The Wealth Distribution

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%. Table 2 and Figure 1 present further details, drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2012).

Table 2: .. inside ..

Figure 1: Net worth and financial wealth distribution in the U.S. in 2010

In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 35% of all privately held stock, 64.4% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top ten percent have 81% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America; see Table 3 and Figure 2 for the details.

Table 3: .. inside

Figure 2a: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2010: investment assets

Figure 2b: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2010: other assets

Inheritance and estate taxes

Figures on inheritance tell much the same story. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000). Thus, the attempt by ultra-conservatives to eliminate inheritance taxes -- which they always call "death taxes" for P.R. reasons -- would take a huge bite out of government revenues (an estimated $253 billion between 2012 and 2022) for the benefit of the heirs of the mere 0.6% of Americans whose death would lead to the payment of any estate taxes whatsoever (Citizens for Tax Justice, 2010b).

It is noteworthy that some of the richest people in the country oppose this ultra-conservative initiative, suggesting that this effort is driven by anti-government ideology. In other words, few of the ultra-conservative and libertarian activists behind the effort will benefit from it in any material way. However, a study (Kenny et al., 2006) of the financial support for eliminating inheritance taxes discovered that 18 super-rich families (mostly Republican financial donors, but a few who support Democrats) provide the anti-government activists with most of the money for this effort. (For more infomation, including the names of the major donors, download the article .. http://www.faireconomy.org/files/pdf/millions_billions.pdf .. from United For a Fair Economy's Web site.)

Actually, ultra-conservatives and their wealthy financial backers may not have to bother to eliminate what remains of inheritance taxes at the federal level. The rich already have a new way to avoid inheritance taxes forever -- for generations and generations -- thanks to bankers. After Congress passed a reform in 1986 making it impossible for a "trust" to skip a generation before paying inheritance taxes, bankers convinced legislatures in many states to eliminate their "rules against perpetuities," which means that trust funds set up in those states can exist in perpetuity, thereby allowing the trust funds to own new businesses, houses, and much else for descendants of rich people, and even to allow the beneficiaries to avoid payments to creditors when in personal debt or sued for causing accidents and injuries. About $100 billion in trust funds has flowed into those states so far. You can read the details on these "dynasty trusts" (which could be the basis for an even more solidified "American aristocracy") in a New York Times opinion piece published in July 2010 by Boston College law professor Ray Madoff, who also has a book on this and other new tricks: Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead (Yale University Press, 2010 .. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/opinion/12madoff.html ).

Home ownership & wealth

For the vast majority of Americans, their homes are by far the most significant wealth they possess. Figure 3 comes from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (via Wolff, 2012) and compares the median income, total wealth (net worth, which is marketable assets minus debt), and non-home wealth (which earlier we called financial wealth) of White, Black, and Hispanic households in the U.S.

Figure 3: Income and wealth by race in the U.S.

From Wolff (2012). All figures adjusted to 2010 US dollars.

Besides illustrating the significance of home ownership as a source of wealth, the graph also shows that Black and Latino households are faring significantly worse overall, whether we are talking about income or net worth. In 2010, the average white household had almost 20 times as much total wealth as the average African-American household, and more than 70 times as much wealth as the average Latino household. If we exclude home equity from the calculations and consider only financial wealth, the ratios are more than 100:1. Extrapolating from these figures, we see that 71% of white families' wealth is in the form of their principal residence; for Blacks and Hispanics, the figures are close to 100%.

And for all Americans, things have gotten worse: comparing the 2006/2007 numbers to the 2009/2010 numbers, we can see that the last few years ("The Great Recession") have seen a huge loss in wealth -- both housing and financial -- for most families, making the gap between the rich and the rest of America even greater, and increasing the number of households with no marketable assets from 18.6% to 22.5% (Wolff, 2012).

Do Americans know their country's wealth distribution?

A remarkable study (Norton & Ariely, 2010) reveals that Americans have no idea that the wealth distribution (defined for them in terms of "net worth") is as concentrated as it is. When shown three pie charts representing possible wealth distributions, 90% or more of the 5,522 respondents -- whatever their gender, age, income level, or party affiliation -- thought that the American wealth distribution most resembled one in which the top 20% has about 60% of the wealth. In fact, of course, the top 20% control about 85% of the wealth (refer back to Table 2 and Figure 1 in this document for a more detailed breakdown of the numbers).

Even more striking, they did not come close on the amount of wealth held by the bottom 40% of the population. It's a number I haven't even mentioned so far, and it's shocking: the lowest two quintiles hold just 0.3% of the wealth in the United States. Most people in the survey guessed the figure to be between 8% and 10%, and two dozen academic economists got it wrong too, by guessing about 2% -- seven times too high. Those surveyed did have it about right for what the 20% in the middle have; it's at the top and the bottom that they don't have any idea of what's going on.

Americans from all walks of life were also united in their vision of what the "ideal" wealth distribution would be, which may come as an even bigger surprise than their shared misinformation on the actual wealth distribution. They said that the ideal wealth distribution would be one in which the top 20% owned between 30 and 40 percent of the privately held wealth, which is a far cry from the 85 percent that the top 20% actually own. They also said that the bottom 40% -- that's 120 million Americans -- should have between 25% and 30%, not the mere 8% to 10% they thought this group had, and far above the 0.3% they actually had. In fact, there's no country in the world that has a wealth distribution close to what Americans think is ideal when it comes to fairness. So maybe Americans are much more egalitarian than most of them realize about each other, at least in principle and before the rat race begins.

Figure 4, reproduced with permission from Norton & Ariely's article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, shows the actual wealth distribution, along with the survey respondents' estimated and ideal distributions, in graphic form.

Figure 4: The actual United States wealth distribution plotted against the estimated and ideal distributions.

NOTE: In the "Actual" line, the bottom two quintiles are not visible because the lowest quintile owns just 0.1% of all wealth, and the second-lowest quintile owns 0.2%.

Source: Norton & Ariely (2010).

David Cay Johnston, a retired tax reporter for the New York Times, published an excellent summary of Norton & Ariely's findings (Johnston, 2010b; you can download the article .. http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/129tn0251.pdf .. from Johnston's Web site).

Historical context

Numerous studies show that the wealth distribution has been concentrated throughout American history, with the top 1% already owning 40-50% in large port cities like Boston, New York, and Charleston in the 1800s. (But it wasn't as bad in the 18th and 19th centuries as it is now, as summarized in a 2012 article in The Atlantic .. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/us-income-inequality-its-worse-today-than-it-was-in-1774/262537/ .) The wealth distribution was fairly stable over the course of the 20th century, although there were small declines in the aftermath of the New Deal and World II, when most people were working and could save a little money. There were progressive income tax rates, too, which took some money from the rich to help with government services.

Then there was a further decline, or flattening, in the 1970s, but this time in good part due to a fall in stock prices, meaning that the rich lost some of the value in their stocks. By the late 1980s, however, the wealth distribution was almost as concentrated as it had been in 1929, when the top 1% had 44.2% of all wealth. It has continued to edge up since that time, with a slight decline from 1998 to 2001, before the economy crashed in the late 2000s and little people got pushed down again. Table 4 and Figure 5 present the details from 1922 through 2010.

Table 4: .. inside ..

Figure 5: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2010.

Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

The rest of the world

Thanks to a 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research -- using statistics for the year 2000 -- we now have information on the wealth distribution for the world as a whole, which can be compared to the United States and other well-off countries. The authors of the report admit that the quality of the information available on many countries is very spotty and probably off by several percentage points, but they compensate for this problem with very sophisticated statistical methods and the use of different sets of data. With those caveats in mind, we can still safely say that the top 10% of the world's adults control about 85% of global household wealth -- defined very broadly as all assets (not just financial assets), minus debts. That compares with a figure of 69.8% for the top 10% for the United States. The only industrialized democracy with a higher concentration of wealth in the top 10% than the United States is Switzerland at 71.3%. For the figures for several other Northern European countries and Canada, all of which are based on high-quality data, see Table 5.

Table 5: [.. an easy one so here ..] Percentage of wealth held in 2000 by the Top 10% of the adult population in various Western countries

.............. wealth ownedby top 10%

Switzerland ....... 71.3%
United States ..... 69.8%
Denmark .............. 65.0%
France .............. 61.0%
Sweden .............. 58.6%
UK .................. 56.0%
Canada .............. 53.0%
Norway .............. 50.5%
Germany .............. 44.4%
Finland .............. 42.3%

The Relationship Between Wealth and Power

What's the relationship between wealth and power? To avoid confusion, let's be sure we understand they are two different issues. Wealth, as I've said, refers to the value of everything people own, minus what they owe, but the focus is on "marketable assets" for purposes of economic and power studies. Power, as explained elsewhere on this site .. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/studying_power.html , has to do with the ability (or call it capacity) to realize wishes, or reach goals, which amounts to the same thing, even in the face of opposition (Russell, 1938; Wrong, 1995). Some definitions refine this point to say that power involves Person A or Group A affecting Person B or Group B "in a manner contrary to B's interests," which then necessitates a discussion of "interests," and quickly leads into the realm of philosophy (Lukes, 2005, p. 30). Leaving those discussions for the philosophers, at least for now, how do the concepts of wealth and power relate?

First, wealth can be seen as a "resource" that is very useful in exercising power. That's obvious when we think of donations to political parties, payments to lobbyists, and grants to experts who are employed to think up new policies beneficial to the wealthy. Wealth also can be useful in shaping the general social environment to the benefit of the wealthy, whether through hiring public relations firms or donating money for universities, museums, music halls, and art galleries.

Second, certain kinds of wealth, such as stock ownership, can be used to control corporations, which of course have a major impact on how the society functions. Tables 6a and 6b show what the distribution of stock ownership looks like. Note how the top one percent's share of stock equity increased (and the bottom 80 percent's share decreased) between 2001 and 2010.

-----
Table 6a: .. inside ..

Third, just as wealth can lead to power, so too can power lead to wealth. Those who control a government can use their position to feather their own nests, whether that means a favorable land deal for relatives at the local level or a huge federal government contract for a new corporation run by friends who will hire you when you leave government. If we take a larger historical sweep and look cross-nationally, we are well aware that the leaders of conquering armies often grab enormous wealth, and that some religious leaders use their positions to acquire wealth.

There's a fourth way that wealth and power relate. For research purposes, the wealth distribution can be seen as the main "value distribution" within the general power indicator I call "who benefits." What follows in the next three paragraphs is a little long-winded, I realize, but it needs to be said because some social scientists -- primarily pluralists -- argue that who wins and who loses in a variety of policy conflicts is the only valid power indicator (Dahl, 1957, 1958; Polsby, 1980). And philosophical discussions don't even mention wealth or other power indicators (Lukes, 2005). (If you have heard it all before, or can do without it, feel free to skip ahead to the last paragraph of this section)

Here's the argument: if we assume that most people would like to have as great a share as possible of the things that are valued in the society, then we can infer that those who have the most goodies are the most powerful. Although some value distributions may be unintended outcomes that do not really reflect power, as pluralists are quick to tell us, the general distribution of valued experiences and objects within a society still can be viewed as the most publicly visible and stable outcome of the operation of power.

In American society, for example, wealth and well-being are highly valued. People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives. All of these "values" are unequally distributed, and all may be utilized as power indicators. However, the primary focus with this type of power indicator is on the wealth distribution sketched out in the previous section.

The argument for using the wealth distribution as a power indicator is strengthened by studies showing that such distributions vary historically and from country to country, depending upon the relative strength of rival political parties and trade unions, with the United States having the most highly concentrated wealth distribution of any Western democracy except Switzerland. For example, in a study based on 18 Western democracies, strong trade unions and successful social democratic parties correlated with greater equality in the income distribution and a higher level of welfare spending (Stephens, 1979).

And now we have arrived at the point I want to make. If the top 1% of households have 30-35% of the wealth, that's 30 to 35 times what they would have if wealth were equally distributed, and so we infer that they must be powerful. And then we set out to see if the same set of households scores high on other power indicators (it does). Next we study how that power operates, which is what most articles on this site are about. Furthermore, if the top 20% have 84% of the wealth (and recall that 10% have 85% to 90% of the stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity), that means that the United States is a power pyramid. It's tough for the bottom 80% -- maybe even the bottom 90% -- to get organized and exercise much power.

Income and Power

The income distribution also can be used as a power indicator. As Table 7 shows, it is not as concentrated as the wealth distribution, but the top 1% of income earners did receive 17.2% of all income in 2009. That's up from 12.8% for the top 1% in 1982, which is quite a jump, and it parallels what is happening with the wealth distribution. This is further support for the inference that the power of the corporate community and the upper class have been increasing in recent decades.

Table 7: .. inside ..

The rising concentration of income can be seen in a special New York Times analysis by David Cay Johnston of an Internal Revenue Service report on income in 2004. Although overall income had grown by 27% since 1979, 33% of the gains went to the top 1%. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% were making less: about 95 cents for each dollar they made in 1979. The next 20% - those between the 60th and 80th rungs of the income ladder -- made $1.02 for each dollar they earned in 1979. Furthermore, Johnston concludes that only the top 5% made significant gains ($1.53 for each 1979 dollar). Most amazing of all, the top 0.1% -- that's one-tenth of one percent -- had more combined pre-tax income than the poorest 120 million people (Johnston, 2006).

But the increase in what is going to the few at the top did not level off, even with all that. As of 2007, income inequality in the United States was at an all-time high for the past 95 years, with the top 0.01% -- that's one-hundredth of one percent -- receiving 6% of all U.S. wages, which is double what it was for that tiny slice in 2000; the top 10% received 49.7%, the highest since 1917 (Saez, 2009). However, in an analysis of 2008 tax returns for the top 0.2% -- that is, those whose income tax returns reported $1,000,000 or more in income (mostly from individuals, but nearly a third from couples) -- it was found that they received 13% of all income, down slightly from 16.1% in 2007 due to the decline in payoffs from financial assets (Norris, 2010).

And the rate of increase is even higher for the very richest of the rich: the top 400 income earners in the United States. According to another analysis by Johnston (2010a), the average income of the top 400 tripled during the Clinton Administration and doubled during the first seven years of the Bush Administration. So by 2007, the top 400 averaged $344.8 million per person, up 31% from an average of $263.3 million just one year earlier. (For another recent revealing study by Johnston, read "Is Our Tax System Helping Us Create Wealth? .. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/is_our_tax_system_helping_us_create_wealth.pdf ").

How are these huge gains possible for the top 400? It's due to cuts in the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, which were down to a mere 15% in 2007 thanks to the tax cuts proposed by the Bush Administration and passed by Congress in 2003. Since almost 75% of the income for the top 400 comes from capital gains and dividends, it's not hard to see why tax cuts on income sources available to only a tiny percent of Americans mattered greatly for the high-earning few. Overall, the effective tax rate on high incomes fell by 7% during the Clinton presidency and 6% in the Bush era, so the top 400 had a tax rate of 20% or less in 2007, far lower than the marginal tax rate of 35% that the highest income earners (over $372,650) supposedly pay. It's also worth noting that only the first $106,800 of a person's income is taxed for Social Security purposes (as of 2010), so it would clearly be a boon to the Social Security Fund if everyone -- not just those making less than $106,800 -- paid the Social Security tax on their full incomes.

Do Taxes Redistribute Income?

It is widely believed that taxes are highly progressive and, furthermore, that the top several percent of income earners pay most of the taxes received by the federal government. Both ideas are wrong because they focus on official, rather than "effective" tax rates and ignore payroll taxes, which are mostly paid by those with incomes below $100,000 per year.

But what matters in terms of a power analysis is what percentage of their income people at different income levels pay to all levels of government (federal, state, and local) in taxes. If the less-well-off majority is somehow able to wield power, we would expect that the high earners would pay a bigger percentage of their income in taxes, because the majority figures the well-to-do would still have plenty left after taxes to make new investments and lead the good life. If the high earners have the most power, we'd expect them to pay about the same as everybody else, or less.

Citizens for Tax Justice, a research group that's been studying tax issues from its offices in Washington since 1979, provides the information we need. When all taxes (not just income taxes) are taken into account, the lowest 20% of earners (who average about $12,400 per year), paid 16.0% of their income to taxes in 2009; and the next 20% (about $25,000/year), paid 20.5% in taxes. So if we only examine these first two steps, the tax system looks like it is going to be progressive.

And it keeps looking progressive as we move further up the ladder: the middle 20% (about $33,400/year) give 25.3% of their income to various forms of taxation, and the next 20% (about $66,000/year) pay 28.5%. So taxes are progressive for the bottom 80%. But if we break the top 20% down into smaller chunks, we find that progressivity starts to slow down, then it stops, and then it slips backwards for the top 1%.

Specifically, the next 10% (about $100,000/year) pay 30.2% of their income as taxes; the next 5% ($141,000/year) dole out 31.2% of their earnings for taxes; and the next 4% ($245,000/year) pay 31.6% to taxes. You'll note that the progressivity is slowing down. As for the top 1% -- those who take in $1.3 million per year on average -- they pay 30.8% of their income to taxes, which is a little less than what the 9% just below them pay, and only a tiny bit more than what the segment between the 80th and 90th percentile pays.

What I've just explained with words can be seen more clearly in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Share of income paid as tax, including local and state tax

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice (2010a).

We also can look at this information on income and taxes in another way by asking what percentage of all taxes various income levels pay. (This is not the same as the previous question, which asked what percentage of their incomes went to taxes for people at various income levels.) And the answer to this new question can be found in Figure 7. For example, the top 20% receives 59.1% of all income and pays 64.3% of all the taxes, so they aren't carrying a huge extra burden. At the other end, the bottom 20%, which receives 3.5% of all income, pays 1.9% of all taxes.

Figure 7: Share of all income earned and all taxes paid, by quintile

Source: Citizens for Tax Justice (2010a).

So the best estimates that can be put together from official government numbers show a little bit of progressivity. But the details on those who earn millions of dollars each year are very hard to come by, because they can stash a large part of their wealth in off-shore tax havens in the Caribbean and little countries in Europe, starting with Switzerland. And there are many loopholes and gimmicks they can use, as summarized with striking examples in Free Lunch and Perfectly Legal, the books by Johnston that were mentioned earlier. For example, Johnston explains the ways in which high earners can hide their money and delay on paying taxes, and then invest for a profit what normally would be paid in taxes.

Income inequality in other countries

The degree of income inequality in the United States can be compared to that in other countries on the basis of the Gini coefficient, a mathematical ratio that allows economists to put all countries on a scale with values that range (hypothetically) from zero (everyone in the country has the same income) to 100 (one person in the country has all the income). On this widely used measure, the United States ends up 95th out of the 134 countries that have been studied -- that is, only 39 of the 134 countries have worse income inequality. The U.S. has a Gini index of 45.0; Sweden is the lowest with 23.0, and South Africa is near the top with 65.0.

[ INSERT: pair to add .. The widening gap .. the 2nd one ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=89686850 ]

The table that follows displays the scores for 22 major countries, along with their ranking in the longer list of 134 countries that were studied (most of the other countries are very small and/or very poor). In examining this table, remember that it does not measure the same thing as Table 5 earlier in this document, which was about the wealth distribution. Here we are looking at the income distribution, so the two tables won't match up as far as rankings. That's because a country can have a highly concentrated wealth distribution and still have a more equal distribution of income due to high taxes on top income earners and/or high minimum wages -- both Switzerland and Sweden follow this pattern. So one thing that's distinctive about the U.S. compared to other industrialized democracies is that both its wealth and income distributions are highly concentrated.

Table 8: Income equality in selected countries

Country/Overall Rank .. Gini Coefficient
1. Sweden ............. 23.0
2. Norway ............. 25.0
8. Austria ............. 26.0
10. Germany ............. 27.0
17. Denmark ............. 29.0
25. Australia ........... 30.5
34. Italy ............. 32.0
35. Canada ............. 32.1
37. France ............. 32.7
42. Switzerland ........ 33.7
43. United Kingdom ... 34.0
45. Egypt ............. 34.4
56. India ............. 36.8
61. Japan ............. 38.1
68. Israel ............. 39.2
81. China ............. 41.5
82. Russia ............. 42.3
90. Iran ............. 44.5
93. United States .... 45.0
107. Mexico ............. 48.2
125. Brazil ............. 56.7
133. South Africa ............. 65.0

Note: These figures reflect family/household income, not individual income.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency (2010).

The differences in income inequality between countries also can be illustrated by looking at the share of income earned by the now-familiar Top 1% versus the Bottom 99%. One of the most striking contrasts is between Sweden and the United States from 1950 to 2009, as seen in Figure 8; and note that the differences between the two countries narrowed in the 1950s and 1960s, but after that went their separate ways, in rather dramatic fashion.

Figure 8: Top income shares in the U.S. and Sweden, 1950-2009

Source: Alvaredo et al. (2012), World Top Incomes Database
.. http://g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/topincomes/.

The impact of "transfer payments"

As we've seen, taxes don't have much impact on the income distribution, especially when we look at the top 1% or top 0.1%. Nor do various kinds of tax breaks and loopholes have much impact on the income distribution overall. That's because the tax deductions that help those with lower incomes -- such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), tax forgiveness for low-income earners on Social Security, and tax deductions for dependent children -- are offset by the breaks for high-income earners (for example: dividends and capital gains are only taxed at a rate of 15%; there's no tax on the interest earned from state and municipal bonds; and 20% of the tax deductions taken for dependent children actually go to people earning over $100,000 a year).

But it is sometimes said that income inequality is reduced significantly by government programs that matter very much in the lives of low-income Americans. These programs provide "transfer payments," which are a form of income for those in need. They include unemployment compensation, cash payments to the elderly who don't have enough to live on from Social Security, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (welfare), food stamps, and Medicaid.

Thomas Hungerford (2009), a tax expert who works for the federal government's Congressional Research Service, carried out a study for Congress that tells us about the real-world impact of transfer payments on reducing income inequality. Hungerford's study is based on 2004 income data from an ongoing study of a representative sample of families at the University of Michigan, and it includes the effects of both taxes and four types of transfer payments (Social Security, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, food stamps, and Medicaid). The table that follows shows the income inequality index (that is, the Gini coefficient) at three points along the way: (1.) before taxes or transfers; (2) after taxes are taken into account; and (3) after both taxes and transfer payments are included in the equation. (The Citizens for Tax Justice study of income and taxes for 2009, discussed earlier, included transfer payments as income, so that study and Hungerford's have similar starting points. But they can't be directly compared, because they use different years.)

Table 9: Redistributive effect of taxes and transfer payments

Income definition ...................... Gini index
Before taxes and transfers ....... 0.5116
After taxes, before transfers ...... 0.4774
After taxes and transfers ....... 0.4284

Source: Congressional Research Service, adapted from Hungerford (2009).

As can be seen, Hungerford's findings first support what we had learned earlier from the Citizens for Tax Justice study: taxes don't do much to reduce inequality. They secondly reveal that transfer payments have a slightly larger impact on inequality than taxes, but not much. Third, his findings tell us that taxes and transfer payments together reduce the inequality index from .52 to .43, which is very close to the CIA's estimate of .45 for 2008.

In short, for those who ask if progressive taxes and transfer payments even things out to a significant degree, the answer is that while they have some effect, they don't do nearly as much as in Canada, major European countries, or Japan.

Income Ratios and Power: Executives vs. Average Workers

Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that has been done for many years by Business Week and, later, the Associated Press. The ratio of CEO pay to factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000, at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big stock options. It was at 411:1 in 2005 and 344:1 in 2007, according to research by United for a Fair Economy. By way of comparison, the same ratio is about 25:1 in Europe. The changes in the American ratio from 1960 to 2007 are displayed in Figure 9, which is based on data from several hundred of the largest corporations.

Figure 9: CEOs' pay as a multiple of the average worker's pay, 1960-2007

Source: Executive Excess 2008, the 15th Annual CEO Compensation Survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account. These startling results are illustrated in Figure 10.

Figure 10: CEOs' average pay, production workers' average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (all figures adjusted for inflation)

Source: Executive Excess 2006, the 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

Although some of the information I've relied upon to create this section on executives' vs. workers' pay is a few years old now, the AFL/CIO provides up-to-date information on CEO salaries at their Web site .. http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ . There, you can learn that the median compensation for CEO's in all industries as of early 2010 is $3.9 million; it's $10.6 million for the companies listed in Standard and Poor's 500, and $19.8 million for the companies listed in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. Since the median worker's pay is about $36,000, then you can quickly calculate that CEOs in general make 100 times as much as the workers, that CEO's of S&P 500 firms make almost 300 times as much, and that CEOs at the Dow-Jones companies make 550 times as much. (For a more recent update on CEOs' pay, see "The Drought Is Over (At Least for CEOs .. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10comp.html )" at NYTimes.com; the article reports that the median compensation for CEOs at 200 major companies was $9.6 million in 2010 -- up by about 12% over 2009 and generally equal to or surpassing pre-recession levels. For specific information about some of the top CEOs, see http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation .. http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation .

If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called "compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.

The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont, Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their services in the executive labor market is "bull." As to the claim that CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times (Morgenson, 2005).

Here's how it works, according to Woolard:

-----
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
-----

The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.

As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise. They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times article entitled "America's Corporate Pay Pal .. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/corporate_americas_pay_pal.html ", which supports everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)

If hiring a consulting firm doesn't do the trick as far as raising CEO pay, then it may be possible for the CEO to have the board change the way in which the success of the company is determined. For example, Walmart Stores, Inc. used to link the CEO's salary to sales figures at established stores. But when declining sales no longer led to big pay raises, the board simply changed the magic formula to use total companywide sales instead. By that measure, the CEO could still receive a pay hike (Morgenson, 2011).

There's a much deeper power story that underlies the self-dealing and mutual back-scratching by CEOs now carried out through interlocking directorates and seemingly independent outside consultants. It probably involves several factors. At the least, on the workers' side, it reflects their loss of power following the all-out attack on unions in the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail in an excellent book by James Gross (1995), a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right (Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren't allowed to compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage foreign-born workers are.

(You also can read a quick version of my explanation for the "right turn" that led to changes in the wealth and income distributions in an article on this site .. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/theory/mills_address.html#right_turn , where it is presented in the context of criticizing the explanations put forward by other theorists.)

On the other side of the class divide, the rise in CEO pay may reflect the increasing power of chief executives as compared to major owners and stockholders in general, not just their increasing power over workers. CEOs may now be the center of gravity in the corporate community and the power elite, displacing the leaders in wealthy owning families (e.g., the second and third generations of the Walton family, the owners of Wal-Mart). True enough, the CEOs are sometimes ousted by their generally go-along boards of directors, but they are able to make hay and throw their weight around during the time they are king of the mountain.

The claims made in the previous paragraph need much further investigation. But they demonstrate the ideas and research directions that are suggested by looking at the wealth and income distributions as indicators of power.

Further Information [sources]

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

.. i'm posting to your mention bolded below (about 5 inches down in yours)

America's Ruling Class Hall of Shame

By Peter Dreier
Posted: 09/22/2013 8:26 pm

Out of 300 million Americans, a few thousand wield disproportionate economic and political influence because of their positions at the pinnacle of America's corporate and media establishments or their roles as political allies (or puppets) of the corporate ruling class. C. Wright Mills described this group in his 1956 book, The Power Elite [ http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Elite-Wright-Mills/dp/0195133544 ], G. William Domhoff has updated this analysis in his book, Who Rules America? [ http://www.amazon.com/Rules-America-Triumph-Corporate-Rich/dp/0078026717 ] (now in its 7th edition), and Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have described how the power elite wields its influence in Winner-Take-All Politics [ http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Politics-Washington-Richer-Turned/dp/1416588701 ].
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/americas-hall-of-shame_b_3972642.html [with comments]

See also:

A Socialist Wins in Seattle
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94851977

Fleeing to Next Town, Bosses May Find Minimum Wage Is Rising There, Too
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94753905

rooster, you lie, you misrepresent, and you enable a weaker economy when
you deny good evidence that gross inequality is bad for the economy ..
you lie in misrepresentation when you say liberals whine about inequality ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94138987

hey you teabaggers who always say "i gladly give to people that actually need it, i don't fund lazy people"...
get out your fucking wallets, hypocrites.... oh that's right, facts don't register with teabaggers.

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=94351244

Some notes on the season

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=94794513

.. since research shows too much inequality is bad for the ecosystem of any economy it's easy to see where a virus lies ..

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