Yesterday, in the face of wealth in the U.S. concentrated to the point that the wealthiest 20 percent own 87.7 percent of all private wealth, Obama's deficit commission co-chairs called for reducing social security COLA,increasing Medicare from the current $115/month, and for gradually raising the retirement age. The creation of this commission was not supported by the congress and it had no mandate to include Social Security or Medicare in its deliberations of schemes to cut the growth in the national debt.
I've argued with other members here in the recent past who could not accept that Obama would capitulate on his stance against extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest. On CNN as I write this, reports are that the White House is now open to preventing the sunset of Bush tax cuts, for EVERYONE!
Does Obama have to order a drone attack on your momma before you accept that his agenda is not in your best interests, but it just happens to be consistantly in the best interests of the wealthiest and most powerful? Will the bottom 80 percent sit there like sheep when they own just ten percent of the wealth...or 8 percent? Wiil you?
http://www.levyinstitute.org/...
(bottom of page 32)
"..it is possible to provide a partial update of the wealth figures to July 1, 2009 based on two notable developments....
...Trends in inequality are also interesting.... The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. ..the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent."