We have endured financial oppression for long enough. In a time of national crisis and shared sacrifice, the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population cannot continue on their merry way, living in obscene wealth and detached from reality, while the majority of the population desperately struggles to make ends meet. We are under attack, and it’s time to fight back.
I work over 60 hours a week and still barely make ends meet. Increased costs of living and thousands of dollars in medical bills have made me and my family move three times in the past three years to downsize and cut living expenses. I’m certainly not alone in this dire economic situation, tens of millions of Americans are fighting this daily war to keep their family fed and healthy with a roof over their head.In fact, as long as I can keep up this intensive work schedule at my current income level, I’m actually better off than many Americans. Over 46 million Americans are currently relying on food stamps to feed their family, over 50 millioncan’t afford health care, 62 million have zero or negative net worth and 64% of Americans have less than $1000 saved. As the economic downturn begins to accelerate once again, the majority of the population, which has been struggling for over three years now, is going to be pushed to a breaking point.
Meanwhile, in this time of national crisis, as we keep hearing calls for “shared sacrifice,” tens of trillions of dollars are consolidated within the hands of the economic top one-tenth of one percent of the population. This unprecedented consolidation of wealth continues unabated, as we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in American history. US millionaire households now have over $46 trillion in wealth, yet only one-tenth of one percent of the population makes over $1 million per year.
Let me be clear, I don’t fault a person for being rich. If you are great at what you do and work hard, you should be financially better off than people who slack off, are bad at what they do and don’t work hard. Almost all Americans agree with that. However, the problem we currently have is that people who are extremely bad at what they do are now all too often the people who have the most money. For example, the very people who caused this economic crisis have profited off of it and are now among the richest people in the world.
The reality of our current crisis is that we now have an aristocracy in this country that lives beyond the rule of law. They have used their wealth to rig the government and the economy. Through campaign finance, lobbying and the revolving door between Washington and the most powerful global corporations, the world’s richest people have now effectively rigged the system against hardworking Americans. This economic crisis is the result of a deliberate systemic looting engineered by the global financial elite. To attempt to dismiss this reality as some unproven conspiracy theory is to display a stunning level of ignorance.
Just look at the bailout of Wall Street: trillions of dollars in national wealth were given to the people who engaged in fraudulent activity and crashed the economy. They then used the public’s wealth to give themselves all-time record-breaking bonuses. And now, while the rich people who caused this crisis have never been richer, the government is giving them tax breaks and cutting vital programs that we need to keep our society functioning. To say that America has descended into a neo-feudal banana republic is not using bombastic rhetoric or hyperbole, it is a technical fact to anyone who spends time analyzing our current economic and socio-political condition.
As our society is incrementally and steadily deteriorating, millions of people are growing more desperate by the day. American families can no longer remain passive when under such a prolonged and ongoing economic attack. We literally can’t afford to. Clearly, this is a highly unsustainable and dangerous situation that cannot continue for much longer. A small fraction of society has systemically robbed the country and destroyed the economic future of the majority of the population. As more people realize this, and as desperate times continue, the mega-wealthy will eventually reap what they have sown.
To understand our future prospects, we just need to look at the civil unrest that is currently spreading throughout the world. The same people who robbed America have also robbed many other countries. People worldwide who have been pushed into severe poverty are rebelling because they have no other choice. It’s either fight back or let your family die a slow death. The massive protests and riots that have swept from Cairo to London are just the first wave of a tsunami of rebellion and unrest that, if the present course is not urgently and significantly changed, is sure to hit America soon.
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