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Edited on Wed Nov-24-10 08:13 PM by jtuck004
a fair analysis of the situtation. Had each stayed flat that of Congress would still represent those with far more net assets than the median of the population as a whole. Since 77% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck, and a full third, as of a couple of years ago, of retirees left the working world with NOTHING except social security, I am not sure even adjusting for age would make a fair comparison. The chart was intended to show the median net of both populations, not a comparison between one and a piece of the other.
But it's still descriptive - - in 2007 the greater population took a dive. And starting with perhaps 6X greater assets, the congressional side just lit on fire a bit later. They have done far, far better than the people they "represent". Are the successful over-represented on the left side above?
"Successful" has an air of respectability about it that I am not sure is deserved. Starting in about the 80's, despite the danger to the American people, a general trend of policy changes that insured the increase in wealth for the wealthy, and a decrease for everyone else. It would be called a conspiracy in virtually any other setting. Congress has presided over a wholesale removal of regulations which prevented the excess described in those graphs, writing policies that not only benefit a single class to the exclusion of most others but actually harm the rest of our neighbors. The business world, especially the financial sector, has spent tens of millions of dollars to lobby for those changes, and it appears to have paid off in excess of their wildest dreams.
For example - the new Consumer Protection Bureau has barely gotten off the ground, despite a desperate need for an agency that takes the consumers side to promote fairness. Given the "success" of the credit card industry in removing state usury laws so they can screw consumers to the wall, and the large numbers of mortgages over the past few years, originally marketed as legitimate products yet later found to be full of material misstatements unknown to the consumer or with terms that were less favorable based on race (when all other factors were equal), the need is clear for such an agency.
Yet "successful" congresspeople have already started a campaign to smear those setting it up and obstruct the process. Congress was also intimately involved in gutting the Glass-Steagall act which protected the American people for over 70 years, and for allowing tens of trillions of dollars of derivatives to be hidden in off-the-books shadow banking practices, all at the behest of the financial sector, actions that were directly responsible for the pain and tragedy felt by many millions of people as they lose their homes and jobs. The answer, by Congress, was to "loan" the financial sector $23 trillion dollars, of which perhaps $3.3 trillion has no chance, zero, of ever coming back. And the financial sector continues to collect billions of dollars of interest on Treasury bonds which replaced the toxic assets that they created. All this while people on the right side of the charts above lack basic medical care, a living wage, shelter, food. With little to no action by congress.
Maybe if "successful" was modified with words such as thieves, manipulators, or grifters it would be more descriptive.
So perhaps those charts are descriptive as they stand, because the adjustment of a few dollars up or down won't change the facts of who is gathering up more and more of the money, and who is losing it.
just sayin...
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