Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012

[cal04]

Commentary: 6 reasons we can’t stop coming economic meltdown
Paul B. Farrell
http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=5E28392E-C763-11E0-A28C-00212803FAD6

What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new “Planet of the Apes” film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.

Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.

Crackpot warning? No. This warning comes from the elite International Monetary Fund. A recent IMF report looked at “the causes of the two major U.S. economic crises over the past 100 years, the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2007,” writes Rana Foroohar, an economics editor at Time magazine.

“There are two remarkable similarities in the eras that preceded these crises. Both saw a sharp increase in income inequality and household-debt-to-income ratios.” And in each case, “as the poor and middle-class were squeezed, they tried to cope by borrowing to maintain their standard of living.”


here's the article he wrote in March
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-the-super-rich-now-or-face-a-revolution-2011-03-29

[DCKit]

1. Love the post, the subject line is a bit dramatic. nt

[inna]

2. Clearly, the so-called rulers/elites/TPTB are fully prepared for mass riots.

We are entering some uncharted territories here; our pitchforks are not going to be of much use.

[bemildred]

4. They think so ...

They are wrong.

[MedicalAdmin]

7. It's hard to use a pitchfork against a predator drone with hellfire.

On the other hand, this might come in handy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126102247889095011.html

[fasttense]

9. There is a Prolonged Occupation of Washington DC planned for in October.

http://october2011.org/welcome

It is nonviolent. If you really feel that pitchforks are needed come and join us. Try it the nonviolent way, you will be surprised at how effective prolong protests really are.

[DCKit]

11. Their list of action items contains nothing I can't get behind:

* Tax the rich and corporations
* End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending
* Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all
* End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests
* Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation
* Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages
* Get money out of politics

[bemildred]

3. Correct, we are getting there real quick now. nt

[HotRocks]

5. and the riots won't be colorblind

If there are riots there's no way they won't be heavily color-coded, even more so than they were in the UK, this article has a ton of interesting data: http://tremblethedevil.com/?p=867">Accidental Guerrillas in Our Midst:

Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you that the average black family has eight-cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth owned by whites, that the the ongoing recession has doubled the wealth gap between blacks and whites, or that the unemployment rate of blacks is edging up on twice as high as the white rate – easily surpassing it when you count incarcerated blacks. After all, a black child in American is nine-times more likely than a white child to have a parent who’s locked up.

But let’s look into the data and the implications a little bit more, because no economic disparity is starker than the one that correlates directly with race.

The very idea of what it means to be poor is color-coded, as while 1 in 3 blacks live in poverty, less than 1 in 10 whites do. Despite making up roughly 13% of the population, African-Americans only control one-point-three percent of America’s net financial assets. And yet the very definition of poverty itself now varies to the point of absurdity, since “poverty level whites control nearly as many mean net financial assets as the highest-earning blacks, $26,683 to $28,310. For those surviving at or below the poverty level, this indicates quite clearly that poverty means one thing for whites and another for blacks.”

And as the real estate market crashed blacks have suffered much more severely than whites. Even when income and credit are controlled for, black families now have their homes foreclosed on and are on their way to being kicked out into the streets over three-times as often as white families.

The impact of these facts have echoed across generations, as nearly three-quarters of all black children grow up in homes with no net financial assets. That’s nearly double the rate of white kids. And nine in ten black kids grow up in homes without enough monetary reserves to last more than three months at the poverty line if their income were to drop, roughly four times the white ratio.

[Demeter]

6. The Elites THINK They are ready for us

I think they are deluding themselves.

[yurbud]

8. I would add ''and prosecute them when they break America or the WORLD economy''

[Fearless]

10. I already have MY shoes on.