Momentarily Untitled

pantslessprogressive:

“If you’re part of the 1 percent, even getting fired comes with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, ‘Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million.’ That’s each.

This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, ‘At Risk: America’s Poor during and after the Great Recession.’ Its researchers conclude, ‘The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010 … Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment.’

In fact, the white paper finds that we now have the largest number of long-term unemployed people in the United States since records were first kept in 1948 - four million report they’ve been unemployed for more than a year. Not necessarily counting the former CEO’s gently floating to earth from those golden parachutes.

So, no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, we’re not guilty of ‘envy’ or ‘class warfare,’ as you claimed to Matt Lauer on NBC’s ‘Today.’ Nor are we talking about everybody earning the same amount of money - that’s the straw man apologists for inequality raise whenever anyone tries to get serious.” - Bill Moyers and Michael Winship 

Inequality Matters

[Photo: Occupy Wall Street]

 The most upsetting thing about it all is how people like Romney and Boehner and Palin (and Bachmann and Santorum and pretty much every person on Fox News) use these very specific buzz words designed to invoke emotions of indignation, horror and uncertainty among the very people that would benefit from a greater focus on economic equality in our society.  We all agree there is such a thing as too much government.  We all agree that there is also a problem when people can’t even get a job, well-qualified, hard-working people.  We all agree that even when you do get a job, it’s often hard to make ends meet.  And yet, no one does anything about it, and those who speak up are considered radicals, labeled by the media as “UnAmerican”.  Is it “unAmerican” to want a better life for yourself, and for your children? 

(via mermaidcomplex)