Fault Lines - The Top 1% - Video

"The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it's been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' 14.3 trillion dollar debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above 9%, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programs that are the backbone of the US's social safety net, and whether to raise taxes — or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the United States has never seemed so divided — both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top 1% impacting the other 99% of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest.

This episode of Fault Lines first aired on Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2011 at 0930 GMT."

Watch everyone come in to this thread and fall all over themselves groveling over the rich and how wonderful they are, and how they deserve it all.

The preferred mode on ATS seems to be libertarian ("freeee-ddduuuummmm") versus neocon ("they deserve it because they are godly"). So we can expect that line of argument.

For the record I despise the liberals and leftists too, they are weak and cowardly, playing effete parlor-games with race, gender, and homosexuality while the economy and society go up in flames.

where was the earthquake this time
was it in japan again lol

reply to post by DROKKR


Nice vid the only thing that saddens me about it is that it should have been aired in america 10 times a day for a week or even a year so that Us poor people can see the atitude that the spoiled brats whos parents can afford to pay for them to go to these schools have toward us.

You're getting there America.

A quarter of the entire population of Victorian Britain was living in poverty. 40% of the country’s wealth was owned by 5% of the population.

www.census-helper.co.uk/victorian-life/

First, the profits squeeze that helped to define the 1970s has been replaced by a sustained wage squeeze in which average earnings have been rising more slowly than productivity. In addition, the share of national wealth going to wages has been in sharp decline – peaking at 65 per cent in 1973 but running at 53 per cent today. • Secondly, this new squeeze has been compounded in its impact by another long-term economic trend: the increasing concentration of the earnings pool at the top. • Thirdly, alongside Britain’s increasingly low wage, unequal economy, there lies another important and increasingly entrenched trend – a decline in the employment opportunities open to those on middle and lower earnings.

www.tuc.org.uk/extras/unfairtomiddling.pdf

The only question now is who is going to be your first Monarch.
Oh! and welcome back to the European fold, it's like you've never been away. We just need to sort this thing about keeping religion away from government and you'll be fine. All those lives lost and the tittle tattle about individual rights, we'll have none of that freedom talk anymore and you can come down from your room for supper.

The part I can't quite reconcile is the first figures come from when Britain had a growing Middle Class. If the plans are the same it would indicate that you're already designed for role and that it's already moved on for they actually need a strong middle class at such times whereas they seem to be destroying the American Middle Class.

reply to post by jonco6


I don't think most people can even begin to grasp the size of the gulf between the have and have nots