I've been visiting often the past few days and, except for a tiny mention on the front page, haven't seen this get much play here. Mother Jones -- and I can't give them enough kudos for putting this together -- recently published a series of charts, gleaned from CBO and other reputable data sources, that completely and utterly pierces the capitalist wealth-maximization (trickle-down) conservative economic myth that has dominated economic legislation over the past thirty years. While we have been told over and over again that we are all going to benefit from those policy enactments, this data proves the lie. It shows just how far conservative economic policy dominance -- and, sad to say, Democratic Party capitulation -- has pushed us back to the days before the American worker had any pro-worker regulations to defend. Of course, given what's happening in Wisconsin and elsewhere this month, this data couldn't be more timely.
The data, some commentary, and a fun little trouncing-of-an-ideological-capitalist made so much easier by these charts... below the fold.
First up is disparity by average income per family:
To me, the big point here is that 90% of American households earn on average a little above $31,000 in 2008. Think about that. Ninety percent... of families... earning an average of just $31,000... in 2008. It's almost certainly gotten worse in this "jobless recovery."
Second, we can see the trends since 1979, just before Big Business finally got its big ally in the White House:
On the left side, we can see that the bottom 80% haven't seen any raw dollar wage increases since 1979. Obviously, that doesn't track with inflation. So real wages are going down big time for just about all of us. And where's that economic value going? To the top 20% but really, to the top 1%.
On the right side, well... it's what we should expect given the left side. But, interestingly, we can see that changes in direction on the trend lines seem to track with shifts in political power. In 1980, Ronald Reagan is elected, and disparity increases. In 1988, George H.W. Bush takes over, and while imperfect from our point of view, he takes some measures that conservatives don't like either. And it seems disparity actually decreased during his tenure. Then we have two years of Clinton and a Democratic Congress, where disparity flatlines. Then the Republican Revolution happens in 1994, and since we enjoyed no period where Republicans did not either control Congress or the White House up until 2007, where the chart ends, the overall trend is up, up, and away. (Before you start saying that Democrats had some power at some of these disparity-increasing moments and therefore it's not clear that liberal policies aren't also to blame, I humbly request you to name any relevant and genuinely liberal economic policies enacted by Democrats over the past thirty years.)
Next we have a chart that shows Americans' perception of wealth disparity right now:
This is extremely telling. Conservatives have engineered a gilded age on the back of a relentlessly propagandized misperception (represented in the 2nd bar) about how their economic policies actually distribute wealth (represented in the first bar). Meanwhile, liberals, at least policy-wise, are on point with where the vast majority of Americans say they want things to be (the third bar). Why can't we convince them? Maybe this chart, and this analysis, will help.
Finally, historical data regarding corporate tax rates and personal and corporate tax contributions as a share of overall tax revenues:
Putting the top and bottom together, this is really horrific stuff. On the top we can see that millionaires since 1950, who have so much more to give without sacrificing any security and/or necessities whatsoever, have been paying less and less to run the country that provides the education, opportunity, infrastructure, and human resources necessary to earn their wealth. That's bad enough. But on the bottom, we can see that, during that same period, individual citizens are still increasingly footing the bill. How is that happening, if millionaires are paying less and less? Obviously, those who are much less able to carry the burden are being made to do so. Meanwhile, it's just a nice extra slap on the face that corporations aren't paying anywhere near their fair share.
That's it, folks. Please share these charts, which are really readable and informative, and which do more to support our policy demands than any long-winded, data-less argument can...
Speaking of which, if you'll indulge me further, I had this exchange with a well educated, self-identifying capitalist friend earlier today on Facebook, after posting the 3rd chart to my FB stream. Perhaps it will give you a template to draw from as you speak with others who are inclined to resist the above data.
Conservative friend: There's a difference between wealth distribution and wealth maximization, though. Fiscal conservatives and capitalists advocate the latter without regard to the former. The oft-maligned "trickle down" economics will result (and has resulted) in increases in real wealth even as it exacerbates income disparities, making America the Land of the Obese Poor. But if real wealth is increased by a political ideology, is there much reason other than envy to complain about the fact that some have more (even a LOT more) than others? While the charts you cite unequivocally establish the truth of increasing income disparity, they do not rebut the truth of increasing real wealth over the same time period.
Me: This data doesn't just show increasing income disparity -- it shows an increasing disparity regarding the wealth output from work input for those who are not at the very top. In other words, real wages have dipped, even plummeted, for most, while a few have reaped increasingly outrageous benefits from others' work. (For example, the minimum wage should be roughly $10.25 now based on inflation, but is saddled at $7.50.) Of course, most of us are working harder than ever before, so most of us aren't just getting less wealth; we're getting less wealth for more work.
Yes, there's likely more total wealth kicking around bank accounts (mostly Swiss) these days. That's politically irrelevant and has never been the argument that "conservatives and capitalists" make to convince others to go along with the charade. Instead, they say that relaxing regulation from environmental protection to workers' rights & benefits to conflict-of-interest rules will somehow benefit all of us as individuals and the commons. This is a canard and ignores the very principles of human behavior which supposedly found the extreme capitalist ideology -- that people are primarily motivated by their own self-interest.
Whether or not that's genuinely a principle of human nature (i.e. true for everyone), I have no doubt it holds for self-identifying capitalists. The fallacy that capitalists make (of course, although capitalists never seem to consider this possibility) is to take their own primarily selfish nature and assume it must define all others. What's worse about the practical implications of capitalism is that that selfish kind of person tends to win executive roles at the most powerful corporations. After all, they're probably the ones who make a habit of directing as much wealth to their own peculiar corner of the earth as possible. Left unchecked by meaningful legal regulation, a capitalist by nature will commit actions which, as you say, maximize wealth. But what you leave out is that that maximization is highly plotted in its course -- back to big ol' #1.
A capitalist like T. Boone Pickens can rape the earth for decades via industrial oil production -- propagandizing, smearing, and fighting alternative energy legislation all the way -- and then advocate for renewable resources once he's out of the oil game and sees a profit in alt energy. You, the capitalist, see that as an example of how capitalism can bring righteous ends. But to anyone who dares to think and care about the larger picture -- who can escape the short-term mindset and constant losing prisoner's dilemmas that dominate capitalist thinking and practice -- it's obvious that this is just an epic, decades-long failure to do the right thing. A failure that has been deliberately engineered via lies, distortions, and ruined lives -- whatever it takes -- to keep shifting the world's distribution of wealth to the hands of a few. Most of us have lost gravely as a few million industrial oil employees worldwide, and a ver few executives to an obscenely greater degree, have reaped financial windfalls. The rest of us pay on the way in and out, from our pockets, our political power, and our environment. The oil industry's parting gift -- all thanks to capitalism and its ideological adherents -- is a climate-changed world offering massive catastrophic consequences for billions of people (not to mention other animals). Sure, you can say that oil production bettered a lot of people's lives along the way. But you can only say that with a caveat: for now. And you'll have a hard time claiming that a bettered American life is worth a worsened Iraqi life, or Ecuadoran life, or Iranian life.
Look, the oil industry case is just an example of capitalism's endemic failures to maximize real-world benefits. Juxtaposed against T. Boone Pickens, we have people like Ralph Nader, who advocated for an alt energy evolution all along because he simply wanted to see the most moral outcome. He saw something worth saving, not taking, and that was enough for him to see the wisdom of developing more efficient and renewable technologies. Ralph Nader is a selfless paragon; T. Boone Pickens is a selfish asshole. Ralph Nader does not fit the ideological capitalist idea of what a man is. He doesn't need to slip morality in as the appeasing afterthought of a dollar-driven worldview. If only Ralph Nader had had his way. If only capitalism hadn't been allowed to dominate. But instead, the rest of us, who have worked harder and harder for less and less, are forced to suffer through this great ideological disaster experiment called capitalism.
Conservative friend: [crickets]