Joe the Plutocrat

plu'to·crat' (plōō'tə-krāt') n., One who exercises power by virtue of wealth. A member of the plutocracy.

plu·toc·ra·cy (plōō-tŏk'rə-sē) n., 1. Government by the wealthy. 2. A wealthy class that controls a government. 3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

Is the Republican Party really the party of Joe the Plumber? Really? Since when are the Republicans on the side of working class people? Since the year 2000, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also growing between the rich and the middle-class. When adjusted for inflation, the median household income of the average Joe out there is lower today than it was in the year 2000. In the year 2000, 57% of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits. Today, only 45% of those same-sized companies do so.

Are you Better Off Now?

According to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also growing between the rich and the middle-class. Here are a few quotes from the study regarding the United States.

“…nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is $93,000…the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of $5,800 per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries.”

Did you see that? The top income in the US is the highest of the 30 countries studied, while at the same time, our low-income citizens earn 20% lower than the average.

“Social mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries like Denmark,
Sweden and Australia. Children of poor parents are less likely to become rich than children of rich parents.”

This says that the poor in the US have less chance to become middle-class and the middle-class have less chance of becoming rich than in many countries in the study.

Switching from the topic of income to the topic of accumulated wealth, the study points out the top 1% controls about one third of all of the wealth in our nation.

“Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some 25-33% of total net worth and the top 10% hold 71%.”

Stunningly, the report says:

“The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly.”

Since 2000, the year that George W. Bush won the White House, income inequality has increased rapidly.

The Gini Out of the Bottle

The OECD study also looked at the Gini-coefficient of inequality, a commonly used measure of the gap between the incomes of people within a society. The coefficient ranks inequality on a scale between 0, which is complete equality (everyone has the same income) and 1, which is complete inequality (one person has all the income and all others have none).

They ranked 30 countries by their Gini-coefficient. Out of the 30 countries studied, the US ranked 28th in income equality. As the chart below indicates, not only is the gap between the rich and poor in the US widening, but it is widening at a much higher rate than the other 29 countries in the study.





Notice the slightly downward slope of the line from 1992 - 2000, the last time we had a Democratic president and the sharp upturn in 2000, the first year that George W. Bush was in office.

Party of the Working Class?

Obviously the Republican Party is here to enrich the already-rich by “spreading the wealth around” from the poor and the middle class to the rich. The Party of Joe the Plumber? Would Joe the Plumber spend $150,000 for clothes for a six-week campaign? I don’t think so. Working people need change. Working people need Barack Obama.

It's STILL the Economy, Stupid

From my kitchen table I watch the snow sticking to our porch screen, whiting out my usual view of the woods behind our house. I am waiting for the snow to stop so I can plow the driveway. It is mid-January in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and this is the first snow of any consequence, so plowing the driveway really isn’t such a burden. On some years by this time I was worried I was going to wear my snow blower out, but not this year.

My name is Tony. You can picture me as a middle-aged man, with a middle-management job, a mid-range income, and unfortunately middle-age spread, sitting at his kitchen table in the Midwest. I’m not an economist or a political pundit, just your average guy with a driveway full of snow. That’s my caveat for what is to follow. I’m going to give you the view from my seat at the kitchen table. Your view might be very different.

I started my political life as a Reagan Republican. I loved his "city set on a hill" vision of America. Keep in mind that when President Reagan took office, the biggest problem facing the nation was "stagflation," the wicked combination of a stagnant economy and uncontrolled inflation. Reagan's theory was to ignore the problem of inflation while stimulating the economy. President Reagan loved the phrase "a rising tide raises all boats." This began an economic boom that continued, with sustained attention and adjustments, for many years through several administrations.

On the other hand, if I could describe George W. Bush’s fiscal policies in a simple phrase it would be “a rising tide raises all yachts.” He has siphoned the tidewater from the open ocean of the economy and walled it up behind a dam of privilege where only the powerful benefit. But just like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, that levee will eventually come crashing down, revealing all that has been hidden, in all of its repugnant splendor. The only choice we have is, do we want to wait until it all crashes on us at once, or do we want to begin a controlled reduction of the pressure from the imbalance in the economy?

From here in Middle America there is a belief that there must be a middle way, not of soft-headed socialism or hard hearted capitalism, but of people-powered progressivism. I still believe that stimulating the general economy while rolling the extra tax revenue into social programs is the best way to resolve the disparity of wealth. If we can grow the economy in a way that the impact is felt at every financial stratum, we will provide hope for all the people of America, not just the privileged few. If we want to create hope where there is currently despair, wealth has to be circulated into the economy, not horded at the top. The purpose of wealth is to help others achieve some level of wealth. Obviously that’s not what we’ve been doing for the last six years.

Of course, as I’m writing this, I’m typing on my new laptop, sitting at my lovely kitchen table in middle-America, which is quite the seat of privilege. So, I could be wrong. Right now, instead of looking for a third way, I’ve got to go plow my driveway. I’ll see all of you in the living rooms and meeting rooms of Iowa as we try to work this way out together.