AND
NOW . . . ITS PITCHFORK TIME!
By Servando Gonzalez
August 1, 2015
My administration is the only thing standing between you and
the pitchforks.
—Barack Obama talking to Wall Street bankers, April 3, 2009.
According to “conservative” millionaire disinformer
Rush Limbaugh,[1] the growing chasm between the mega rich and
the hyper poor is nothing but a figment of the imagination of
Marxists, communist and the Left encouraged by Obama — Limbaugh
blames Obama for everything that is wrong in this country. Nevertheless,
he has never explained how it is possible that an impostor with
a third rate intellect who spends most of his time playing golf
and have never written anything worth reading, can conceive things
like Obamacare and Obamatrade to screw Americans.
Unfortunately, despite claims on the contrary, there is a widening
economic gap between the 1 percent of Americans who are doing
extremely well and the 99 percent who are barely surviving paycheck
to paycheck and have lost their hope on the American dream.[2]
In a previous article,[3] I mentioned French economist David Picketty’s
book, Capital in the Twenty First Century, whose main
thesis is that the gap between the poor and the rich has reached
dangerous levels. Picketty warns that the U.S. may be on the same
trajectory as France before the Revolution, where the very rich
ended with their heads chopped-off.
Picketty is not the only economist concerned about the inordinate
growing inequality in America and the world. For more than a century,
economists have documented the existence of this alarmingly growing
gap using a scale, known as the Gini coefficient or Gini ratio,
devised by Italian statistician Conrado Gini in 19122. The Gini
index is used to represent the income distribution of a nation’s
citizens, and is commonly used to measure income inequality
According to the Gini index, if all the income in a country would
were earned by one person and the rest earned nothing, they would
have a Gini index of one. On the other hand, if everyone in that
country earned exactly the same income, they would have a Gini
index of zero. So a Gini index of 0 represents total equality,
while an index of 1 implies total inequality.[4]
Since 1947, the U.S. Census Bureau began using the Gini index
to calculate income inequality. According to its statistics, between
1947 and 1968 the Gini index in the U.S. dropped to .386, which
indicated a reasonable, relative equality of income in America.
But then it began rising and currently income inequality in the
U.S. is greater than in any other of the Western developed countries.
While countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands
and Finland ranged between .200 and .300 in the Gini scale, between
1975 and 1985 the U.S. Gini index jumped from .397 to .419.
But there is more than meets the eye in those statistics. According
to statistics provided by the Center for American Progress, while
the U.S. shows pre-tax inequality similar or lower than Canada,
U.K. Taiwan, Germany or Norway, it stands out as the leader in
after-tax income inequality[5]— a clear indication that
the U.S. tax system is slanted to benefit the rich.[6] Currently
in America, the average pay for a CEO of a corporation is 185
times bigger than the average pay of a worker — probably
closer to difference in earnings between a slave and its master
in the pre-war South.
This inequality gap is also evident in the political elite. While
median worth for American families is $120,000, median net worth
for members of Congress is $912,000. There are at least 10 members
of Congress whose net worth is more than $100 million. Not surprisingly,
seven of them, Darrell Issa, Jane Harman, John Kerry, Jared Polis,
Mark Warner, Herb Kohl, Jay Rockefeller and Diannne Feinstein
are Democrats — the party that allegedly cares for the poor.
So, have your pitchfork at hand and ready for the coming battle.
If you don’t have a pitchfork, an AR-15 or AK-47 will do
the job nicely.
Notes:
1. I remember that some years ago Rush had a problem, must likely
a set up, related to overuse of prescription drugs. Some time
later he signed an eight-year contract for 400 million dollars.
Obviously he carrot worked better than the stick. See, Damian
Sofsian, “Conservative Radio Host’s Prescription Drug
Addiction Story,” EzineArticles.com
2. See, “‘Record gap’ between rich and poor,”
Yahoo.com, May/21/2015, See also, Paul Harris, “Is
the US Heading for 'Developing Nations' Inequality Levels?,”
The Observer UK, July 30, 2007.
3. "The Current Tragedy of the Commons," NewsWithViews.com,
June 27, 2014.
4. Though there are no statistics for Cuba, I would guess that
the Gini index for pre-Castro Cuba may have been around .400,
with relative income equality due to a large middle class, while
it jumped in the 1970s to close to .900, with Castro and his family
members and close associates taking the lion’s share of
the country’s income.
5. See, John Cassidy, “American Inequality in Six Charts,”
The New Yorker, November 18, 2013.
6. Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot “It's the Inequality, Stupid:
Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America.,”
Mother Jones, March/April, 2011.
----------------------------
Servando Gonzalez, is a Cuban-born American writer,
historian, semiologist and intelligence analyst. He has written
books, essays and articles on Latin American history, intelligence,
espionage, and semiotics. Servando is the author of Historia
herética de la revolución fidelista, Observando,
The
Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol, The
Nuclear Deception: Nikita Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis
and La
madre de todas las conspiraciones: Una novela de ideas subversivas,
all available at Amazon.com.
He also hosted the documentaries Treason in America: The Council
on Foreign Relations and Partners in Treason: The CFR-CIA-Castro
Connection, produced by Xzault Media Group of San Leandro,
California, both available at the author's site at http://www.servandogonzalez.org.
His book, Psychological Warfare and the New
World Order: The Secret War Against the American People is
available at Amazon.com.
Or download a
.pdf copy of the book you can read on your computer, iPad,
Nook, Kindle or any other tablet. His book, OBAMANIA:
The New Puppet and His Masters, is available at Amazon.com.
Servando's book (in Spanish) La CIA, Fidel Castro, el Bogotazo
y el Nuevo Orden Mundial, appeared last year, and is available
at Amazon.com
and other bookstores online.
His most recent book, I
Dare Call It treason: The Council on Foreign Relations and the
Betrayal of the America, juste appeared and is available
at Amazon.com and other bookstores online. |