Monday, October 27, 2008

GRAPHIC: Who is redistributing wealth?

The latest right wing talking point is that Barack Obama wants to redistribute wealth.

You would think the right would want to steer away from that issue since for the last thirty years at least, they have done everything possible to redistribute wealth UPWARD.

While worker productivity and corporate profits have gone up, and CEO salaries have gone up exponentially, wages for most of us have remained flat or even declined.

Conservatives try to squirm away from a basic economic truth: it's not just capital that creates wealth, but labor does too. And one of the ways a business makes a profit is paying you less for your labor than it is worth (if they paid you exactly what it was worth, they would break even).

It seems like basic fairness that wages would at least keep pace with productivity and profits.

As it says in the Bible,

For it is written in the Law of Moses: "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest.
I guess this is a part of the Bible "God's Own Party" missed.



click to see full-sized:


From The New York Times based on Federal Reserve data:




In 1984, George Orwell had a creepy explanation for why this income inequality persists.



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