The National Consensus to End Wealth Inequality Builds

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http://www.alternet.org/activism/national-consensus-end-wealth-inequality-builds



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The Extent of Inequality

The Economic Policy Institute published a report on inequality last month which Jon Queally of Common Dreams summarized, writing:

“From 1979 to 2011, the average income of the bottom 99 percent of U.S. taxpayers grew by 18.9 percent, while the average income of the top 1 percent grew over 10 times as much—by 200.5 percent. Over the last three decades the wealth of the nation’s very richest 1% has grown ten times that of the average worker and over that time period that same tiny elite has captured more than half of the entire income increases, leaving the bottom 99% to divide the remaining gains.

“This is all based on a new state-level study, The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, which looks at how inequality has seized hold of the national economy both in the generation leading up to the great recession of 2008 and in the several years following where a so-called ‘recovery’ was experienced by the financial elite while the majority of U.S. population continues to claw its way back.”

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Actions Build Alternatives to the Corrupt Economy and Wealth Divide

This weekend, #FedUp, which focuses on a root cause of the problem in the economy – who controls the creation of money – is meeting in Washington, DC. #FedUp activists want to end the dominance of a “cartel of bankers” who control the Federal Reserve which creates the money supply. They want the power to create money returned to a publicly- accountable arm of the federal government so that money can be created in a transparent way for the purpose of building an economy for the people, not for the benefit of the big Wall Street banks.

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New Solutions Building with the National Consensus

As a national consensus develops about the unfair economy created by big finance capitalism centered on Wall Street, people are also pushing forward with alternatives to Wall Street banking. In Vermont, 18 cities and towns voted in favor of the creation of public banks. And, when the state Senate Finance Committee did not invite any representatives from those towns to testify, instead seeking testimony from representatives of the big banks, they showed up anyway and insisted that their voices be heard. The people told the committee that they did not want banks that took Vermont money out of state, but “a Vermont State Bank would be in business to serve the citizens of Vermont.”

And, people are also talking about the need for a guaranteed national income. The realities of technology replacing jobs, jobs being shipped overseas and the downward spiral of income require us to find new ways to provide income. A guaranteed national income would be one way to provide an economic foundation for every resident and make sure that we all benefitted from the growth in the economy. How to fund such a program? Many ways have been suggested, but one that should be considered is treating government funding of businesses as taxpayer investment so that taxpayers benefit as the GDP expands. The hundreds of billions in federal dollars and trillions of Federal Reserve dollars that have been given to the big banks should be seen as taxpayer investment, not corporate welfare and we should all profit, not just the 1/10 th of 1 percent who receives those dollars.