The Associated Press is reporting a new milestone in the ever-growing disparity between the wealthiest and the weariest as described in John Edward's mission to bring the "Two America's" together for a sustainable, strong future. For the first time in history, the planet is now home to 10 million millionaires, with the fastest growing segment of the newly rich emerging in places like India, China and Brazil. It's no accident those just happen to be the places that American millionaires, like George Bush, Dick Cheney and my opponent Robin Hayes, sent the jobs of the shrinking American middle class in their globalized race to the bottom.
Millionaires account for less than one-fifth of one percent of the world's 6.7 billion people, yet the supperrich, with at least $30 million in assets (Robin Hayes has more than that just invested in defense firms making money off the Iraq War), are getting richer even faster off the Bush-Hayes economic policies of the last near decade while the entire world suffers global crises of poverty, energy, health, food and environmental insecurity.
Before becoming a High School teacher, I worked in a textile mill here in my hometown for 27 years. When that mill shut down, the looms we worked on were packed up and shipped along with our jobs to Honduras. It wasn't too long though before those looms were packed up again and shipped with those Honduran jobs to Pakistan. It shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone in North Carolina's 8th District, where we've lost more than 60,000 jobs since Robin Hayes took office, should those looms and jobs end up in China next. Robin Hayes, after all, cast the deciding vote on Fast Track Authority for Bush and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
As of the year 2000, the richest two percent owned half the world's $125 trillion wealth, while the bottom 50 percent owned less than one percent. Now less than half of one percent of the world's richest are projected to reach almost $60 trillion by 2012.
These newly superrich in developing countries did not win their wealth on a game show, by scratching the winning lottery ticket or by the good old concept of hard work that is the dream of every working class American. Exploitation that began with our own Washington politicians and continues today on the backs of folks doing cheap labor in some of the worst working conditions on earth is the source of this wealth consolidation and misery.
Not my planet. John Edwards was right. We need to be exporting American made goods, not American jobs, and certainly not continuing the Bush-Hayes economic policies proven so detrimental to our own middle class and the world at large.
Join my fight for the American middle class, and working folks the world over. We don't need the most money in the world to make our case, just enough. The end of the quarter is in just 5 days. Please do all you can to help retire Robin Hayes.
Cross posted at BlueNC!