[P2P-F] Article : "The Shocking, Graphic Data That Shows Exactly What Motivates the Occupy Movement"

[Dante-Gabryell Monson]

http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152811/the_shocking%2C_graphic_data_that_shows_exactly_what_motivates_the_occupy_movement_/

The Shocking, Graphic Data That Shows Exactly What Motivates the Occupy
Movement
The corporate media may obsess about what Occupy Wall Street is all about,
but these images should make it clear.



*October 23, 2011*  |



What are the Occupy Wall Street protesters angry about? The same things
we’re all angry about. The only difference is the protestors turned their
anger into public action. Occupy Wall Street lit the embers and the sparks
are flying. Whether it turns into a genuine populist prairie fire depends
on all of us.

Now is not the time for wonky policy solutions, as the media meatheads are
calling for. Rather, it’s time to air our grievances as loudly as possible,
which is precisely what Wall Street and its minions fear the most. Here’s a
brief list of why we should be angry and the charts to back it up.

*1. The American Dream is imploding...  *



[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223516_screenshot20111020at11.27.19am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223516_screenshot20111020at11.27.19am.png>



The productivity/wage chart says it all. From 1947 until the mid-1970s real
wages and productivity (economic output per worker hour) danced together.
Both climbed year after year as did our real standard of living. If you’re
old enough, you will remember seeing your parents doing just a bit better
each year, year after year.  Then, our nation embarked on a grand economic
experiment. Taxes were cut especially on the super-rich. Finance was
deregulated and unions were crushed. Lo and behold, the two lines broke
apart. Productivity continued to climb, but wages stalled and declined. So
where did all that productivity money go? To the rich and to the
super-rich, especially to those in finance.

*2. Our wealth is gushing to the top 1 percent...*

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version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223556_screenshot20111020at11.28.24am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223556_screenshot20111020at11.28.24am.png>

Actually the top tenth of one percent. Because of financial deregulation
and tax cuts for the rich, the income gap is soaring. Here’s one of my
favorite indicators that we compiled for *The Looting of America. *In 1970
the top 100 CEOs earned $45 for every $1 earned by the average worker. By
2006, the ratio climbed to an obscene 1,723 to one. (Not a misprint!)

*3. Family income is declining while the top earners flourish...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223531_screenshot20111020at11.27.54am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223531_screenshot20111020at11.27.54am.png>

As women entered the workforce, family income made up for some of the wage
stagnation. But now even family incomes are in trouble. Meanwhile, the
incomes of the richest families continue to rise.

*4. The super-rich are paying lower and lower tax rates...*

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version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223833_screenshot20111020at11.33.12am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223833_screenshot20111020at11.33.12am.png>

To add financial insult to injury, the richest of the rich pay less and
less each year as a percentage of their monstrous incomes. The top 400
taxpayers during the 1950s faced a 90 percent federal tax rate. By 1995
their effective tax rate – what they really paid after all deductions as a
percent of all their income – fell to 30 percent. Now it’s barely 16
percent.

*5. Too much money in the hands of the few combined with financial
deregulation crashed our economy...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223713_screenshot20111020at11.31.19am.png>

(click for larger
version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223713_screenshot20111020at11.31.19am.png>

When the rich become astronomically rich, they gamble with their excess
money. And when Wall Street is deregulated, it creates financial casinos
for the wealthy.  When those casinos inevitably crash, we pay to cover the
losses. The 2008 financial crash caused eight million American workers to
lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. The
last time we had so much money in the hands of so few was 1929!

*6.  We’re turning into a billionaire bailout society...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223577_screenshot20111020at11.28.51am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223577_screenshot20111020at11.28.51am.png>

We bailed out the big Wall Street banks and protected the billionaires from
ruin. Now we are being asked to make good on the debts they caused, while
the super-rich get even richer, some making more than $2 million an HOUR!
It would take over 47 years for the average family to make as much as the
top 10 hedge fund managers make in one hour.

*7. The super-rich still control politics...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223593_screenshot20111020at11.29.13am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223593_screenshot20111020at11.29.13am.png>


Both political parties are occupied by Wall Street. For nearly an entire
generation they have competed with each other to gain campaign
contributions in exchange for tax breaks and regulatory loopholes for the
richest of the rich. Today’s so-called financial reforms are porous, while
the money continues to flow to both parties.

*8. Unemployment is a catastrophe...*

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version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223859_screenshot20111021at11.51.42am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223859_screenshot20111021at11.51.42am.png>

The reckless gambling on Wall Street tore a hole in the economy sending
millions to the unemployment lines. Wall Street caused the enormous spike
in unemployment and no one else – not the government, not home buyers, not
China.

*9. Our prospects for the future are growing dim...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223793_screenshot20111020at11.32.13am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223793_screenshot20111020at11.32.13am.png>

It’s bad enough that unemployment is sky-high. But it’s even worse when you
can’t find a job for months, even years. Right now the number of unemployed
for 26 weeks or more is at record levels. Many of the long-term unemployed
will never work again.

*10. The big banks are getting even bigger...*

[image: Click for larger
version]<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223756_screenshot20111020at11.31.50am.png>

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version)<http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/storyimages_1319223756_screenshot20111020at11.31.50am.png>

Too big to fail is alive and well. Our nation’s biggest banks are growing
larger and larger with no end in sight. Despite what politicians say, the
taxpayer will bail out the big banks again. And the big banks know it.

*Stand up and be counted!*

Americans are a patient people. Mass movements do not form very often. Most
of us hoped that after the crash, the big banks would be broken up, the
casinos would be shut down and the gamblers would be punished. At the very
least, we expected that the elite financiers would pay for the damage they
created – the jobs destroyed, the neighborhoods wrecked, the services cut.
It didn’t happen. Finally something clicked. A small number of kids stood
up and got noticed. And now it’s growing. We see an outlet for our
frustration, our justifiable anger, our disappointment in leaders who sold
out.

We don’t know where it’s all going. But this is the time to stand up and be
counted – literally. The currency of a populist revolt is numbers in the
street. Let’s show our anger where it will be seen. And let us take heart
from the words of Franklin Roosevelt who during his first inaugural address
in 1933, led the first occupation of Wall Street:

Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of
public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of
an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only
the lending of more money.

Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow
their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading
tearfully for restored conditions. They know only the rules of a generation
of self-seekers.

They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled their high seats in the temple of our
civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.

The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social
values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of
achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the
mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they
cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto
but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow-men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success
goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public
office and high political position are to be values only by the standards
of pride of place and personal profit, and there must be an end to a
conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred
trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.

Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public
Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How
Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and
Prosperity—and What We Can Do About
It<http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/the_looting_of_america:paperback>
(Chelsea
Green, 2009).
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