Thread: "Our Banana Republic"

(Title in quote because I took it from the actual Article title, thus am quoting it). Found an interesting Op. Ed. in the NYT today that brings up not only a scary path we are moving down, but also some great questions on what will be done to cut the deficit and so forth. It is fairly long and worth reading the whole thing. The part of the Banana Republic though:

...The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/op...e&ref=homepage

The way the country seems to want to move towards, should make it so there is just the rich with all the power, and the poor with nothing.

Originally Posted by Morbx Core

Yea business is warfare,capitalism is America .I remember a time we had a middle class.

Please define, in real terms, "middle class" then post proof it is gone. Or is this emotional hyperbole?

Originally Posted by Red_Lizard2

The way the country seems to want to move towards, should make it so there is just the rich with all the power, and the poor with nothing.

Thanks Globalization!