Third World America

UPDATE: "Ordinary American families no longer have the purchasing power to build a strong recovery and keep it going. . . There was plenty of growth, but the economic benefits went overwhelmingly — and unfairly — to those already at the top. Mr. Reich cites the work of analysts who have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income." Read The New York Times, A Recovery’s Long Odds.

But thank God we saved the Banksters!

That is the title of a new book that describes "How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream."

The book argues that "we should not think of the last financial crisis in isolation, but rather as the outcome of a longer-run pattern of behavior.

Excessive consumer debt is an outcome of prolonged inequality – in trying to remain middle class, too many people borrowed too much, while unscrupulous lenders were only too willing to take advantage of such people."

Some are even suggesting that "what we are seeing play out today" is a crisis created "to press for reduction in government by creating binding constraints."