Except the Republicans and the pundits have it ass-backwards. For thirty years now the "Greed is Good" class have been waging warfare on the rest of us. And they've been winning big time.
Since 1980 the average real wage of the top 1% has gone up about 400%, while the average real wage of the bottom 80% has not increased, and in these last few years, actually decreased.
You can look at chart after chart and they all report the same phenomenon: the increased wealth this country has continued to generate has been sucked upwards into the tax-sheltered accounts of the wealthiest while most people have not benefited a wit financially from our increasing bounty.
Not only did wealth beget wealth, but wealth begat favorable tax provisions, otherwise known as loopholes, along with massive reductions in capital gains rates and the uppermost tax bracket.
Not only did wealth beget wealth, but wealth begat laws. So much so that ultimately, the law came to stipulate that the rich could pour limitless resources into campaigns to defeat anyone who dared to raise their voice against them.
Not only did wealth beget wealth, but wealth begat power; so much power that when the wealthiest were in danger of becoming less wealthy as a consequence of their desire to wager not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars on high risk bets, they were bailed out and then restored to their exalted positions by a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy, while the rest of us watched our jobs go away while the cost of day-to-day living and health care rose.
So yes, it is class warfare. Political, legal and financial. And for good measure, psychological: an ingenious and cleverly implemented psychological war designed to convince the rest of us that the one percent are not only deserving of their wealth and power, but that
If you don't have a job and aren't rich, blame yourself!
It's been succeeding amazingly well for over thirty years. There's just one potential problem with the scheme: if the 99% ever wake up to what the 1% have done, there just might be hell, or at a bare minimum a lot of taxes, to pay. There are, after all, ninety nine of us for every one of them.
What might wake people up?
If people read the New York Times, and if people understood economics, this might wake then up:
... inflation-adjusted median household income fell 3.2% during the formal recession period, between December 2007 and June 2009, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. And ... it's fallen another 6.7% during the first two years of our so-called "recovery," through June 2011.
If people understood what Glass-Steigal was, and why it was important, or why Citizens' United screwed them over in such a big way, or why 'regulation' is not a four-letter word, this might wake them up:
But it takes more than graphs, statistics and viral videos to wake the people up. To have the bulb that says
Wait a minute! I'm getting screwed!
go off in the heads of the 99 percent
requires a mass movement. And that leads us to
OccupyWallStreet
Will it be enough to wake the 99%?