Jodie Evans

Comment
Class Warfare, Anyone?
If you live in Washington, D.C., for any time at all,
the rigged nature of our system becomes blatantly
obvious. So dominant is the power of money, so
subservient are politicians to the corporations and the
wealthy that finance them, so unresponsive is the
supposedly democratic system to the needs of the
people that there can be no denying the class bias of
our government.
For decades now, with one policy after another,
“our” government has been systematically redistributing
income and wealth to a tiny elite at the top. Yet
the mere mention by President Obama of making the
millionaires and billionaires pay a little more in taxes
elicits screams of “class warfare” from Republicans.
They and their wealthy backers have been waging
class warfare mercilessly over the last four decades,
and they’ve been taking no prisoners.
During this period, the top 0.1 percent of the
country—those 152,000 people who make more
than $5.6 million a year—have seen their income
level jump up an astonishing 385 percent, according
to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, those in the bottom
90 percent of earners have seen their incomes fall
over the same period.
“The wealthiest in this country have never had it
so good,” said Senator Bernie Sanders at Fighting
Bob Fest in Madison, Wisconsin, on September 17.
“They want more and more and more and more, and
they don’t care how many children they step on to
get it.”
In the last ten years, the median household income
fell 7.1 percent, and African Americans’ household
income fell by more than twice that amount. Incomes
for most Americans continue to fall. Last year, median
household income dropped 2 percent to $49,445.
These statistics demonstrate that the middle class
is under siege.
Meanwhile, the lower class is under water.
Last year, a record number of Americans—fortysix
million people—were living below the official
poverty line, which is set at just over $11,000 for
individuals and just over $22,000 for a family of four.
Twenty million Americans were actually living at
least 50 percent below the poverty line, if you can
imagine that.
And—get this—more than one out of every five
children in America is living in poverty.
The rise of poverty in America represents a moral
indictment of our economy and our priorities.
Politicians talk all day about helping the middle
class, and yes, the middle class does need help—lots
of help, especially today. But so, too,
do the poor.
Republicans don’t talk about the
poor much, except to say they can be
saved by capitalism. In one of the
Republican Presidential debates, Rick
Santorum bragged about eliminating
welfare, saying it created a “culture of
“Class warfare is
being waged in
America, and the
wrong side is winning.”
—Bernie Sanders
The Progressive u 7
DAVID G KLEIN