Gas prices widen divide between rich, not-rich

Gas prices widen divide between rich, not-rich
Luxury retailers say spending is brisk, while Target,
Walmart, others see customers cutting back
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
5/18/2011

NEW YORK — High gas prices are driving a wider wedge between the wealthy and everybody else.

The rich are back to pre-recession splurging: Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom customers are treating themselves to luxury items like $5,000 Hermes handbags and $700 Jimmy Choo shoes, and purchasing at full price.

At Target and Walmart, shoppers are concentrating on groceries and skipping little luxuries. BJ's Wholesale Corp. said Wednesday that customers are buying more hamburger and chicken and less steak and buying smaller packs to save money.

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Synopsis: Capitalism: A Love Story examines the impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). The film moves from Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan. With both humor and outrage, the film explores the question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings. Moore goes into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story also presents what a more hopeful future could look like. Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?

Profiling CEOs and Their Sociopathic Paychecks

Profiling CEOs and Their Sociopathic Paychecks
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, July 27, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

From the article...
Only about 1 to 3 percent of us are sociopaths-people who don't have normal human feelings and can easily go to sleep at night after having done horrific things. And of that 1 percent of sociopaths, there's probably only a fraction of a percent with a college education. And of that tiny fraction, there's an even tinier fraction that understands how business works, particularly within any specific industry.

Thus there is such a shortage of people who can run modern monopolistic, destructive corporations that stockholders have to pay millions to get them to work. And being sociopaths, they gladly take the money without any thought to its social consequences.

9% of Americans Are Millionaires in 2011

Chart of the Day: 9% of Americans Are Millionaires in 2011
By Daniel Indiviglio
May 5 2011

How many millionaires do you know? The answer to this probably depends on your occupation, location, and whether or not you have your own reality show. But as explained in an earlier post, there are quite a few millionaires in the U.S. -- there will be 10.5 million in 2011 according to the Deloitte Center for Financial Services. That might not sound like too many, but this number is expressed in households, not individuals. And there are only about 118 million households in the U.S. So really, a fairly large -- if not surprisingly large -- portion of U.S. households belong to the millionaire club.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Secret Fears of the Super-Rich

Secret Fears of the Super-Rich
By Graeme Wood
April 2011 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Does great wealth bring fulfillment? An ambitious study by Boston College suggests not. For the first time, researchers prompted the very rich—people with fortunes in excess of $25 million—to speak candidly about their lives. The result is a surprising litany of anxieties: their sense of isolation, their worries about work and love, and most of all, their fears for their children.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Inequality Rising Across the Developed World 5/3/2011

Inequality Rising Across the Developed World
By Catherine Rampell, May 3, 2011

America isn’t the only rich country dealing with a rise in inequality. Most of the developed world is, too.

A new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development finds that most of its member countries have seen their richest citizens get much, much richer in the last few decades, leading to a widening income gap.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE



Inequality Is Most Extreme in Wealth, Not Income
By Catherine Rampell, March 30, 2011

Typically, comments about rising inequality refer to the stark disparities in incomes of the very highest-paid Americans and everyone. We have observed in several posts, for example, that most of the income gains over the last few decades have gone to the very richest Americans. That means the highest-paid Americans have been claiming a larger and larger share of earnings.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

The Lottery Mentality in America

As the American middle class shrinks in size, and the gap widens between the growing class of working poor and the small class of ultra-rich, a new term has entered the American lexicon, the lottery mentality. As real opportunities to enjoy a prosperous, financially-secure middle-class life shrink, more and more Americans are coming to believe that if they can just hit it big in a lottery, or make it big through one scheme or another, they can turn their lives around.

Most Americans are engaged in lottery mentality thinking to some degree. We fantasize that we are going to hit it big by actually winning the lottery, or we think that our new idea for a little retail business franchise (e.g: auto quick lube or drive-up coffee shop) is going to guarantee our financial independence.

To a large extent, the 2003-2007 real estate bubble was driven by people with a lottery mentality, people who saw real estate speculation as a path to quick profits with little risk. They bought a house, watched it rise in value, extracted the equity with a home equity line of credit (HELOC), used that money to buy another house or two, and repeated the process. They relied on continually increasing housing prices, inflated appraisals, easy credit and low-interest-rate adjustable rate mortgages to leverage their own small investment. In the end, as the economy slowed and subprime borrowers defaulted on their mortgages, it became clear that the whole financial structure was simply a house of cards that would eventually collapse. But while it existed, it was a perfect example of the lottery mentality.

Multi-level marketing businesses (Amway, Shaklee, Discovery Toys, Pampered Chef) are typically marketed to appeal to the lottery mentality. They are not presented as product sales and distribution businesses to be built over time, but rather as get-rich-quick opportunities by recruiting distributors to work for you (known as building your own downline), thus multiplying yourself. Your distributors do the work while you reap almost unlimited profits.

The tragic part is that most of us never bother to investigate the actual statistics, and so we never realize that the odds are really stacked against us. Lottery winners and Amway super salesmen are promoted in the media, and the stigmatized word gambling has been replaced with the word gaming, which sounds so much more wholesome, innocent and fun.

Reflecting the way the lottery mentality has taken over our culture is our growing thirst for TV competition, game and reality programs that promise big rewards. The following is just a partial list of popular competition/game/reality shows that vie for our attention. It includes three shows (American Idol, The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars) that are among the top five American TV shows (along with NCIS and Glee):








The Amazing Race (2001-present) (win $1 Million)
American Idol: The Search for a Superstar (2002-present)
America's Best Dance Crew (2008–present)
America's Got Talent (2006–present)
America's Next Great Restaurant (2011)
America's Next Top Model (2003-present)
The Apprentice (2004-present) (win the chance to be Donald Trump's apprentice)
The Bachelor (2002-present
The Bachelorette (2003-present)
Bachelor Pad (2010-present) (win $250,000)
Big Brother (2000-present) (with $500,000)
The Biggest Loser (2004-present)
Cash Cab (2005-present)
Dancing with the Stars (2005-present)
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (2003-present)
Family Feud (1988-present)
FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman (2006–present), children's game show
Flip This House (2006-present)
Jeopardy! (1964-present)
Let's Make a Deal (2009–present)
Millionaire Matchmaker (2008-present)
The Price Is Right (1972–present)
Project Runway (2006-present)
So You Think You Can Dance (2005-present) (win $100,000 or more)
Survivor (2000-present) (win $1 Million)
The Voice (2011) reality/talent competition
Wheel of Fortune (1975-present) (win up to $1 Million)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (1999-present)











While competition/game/reality shows may seem harmless enough, they indicate the degree to which the lottery mentality has permeated our society, and should cause us great concern.

One of the darker aspects of the lottery mentality is the way it has impacted the legal profession. Litigation in general, and personal injury lawsuits in particular, are on the rise, simply because they provide yet another way for us to win a lottery, in this case, the litigation lottery. For example, here is a blog post discussing how legal firms market themselves to appeal to the lottery mentality: Law Firm Marketing and the Lottery Mentality

As our society continues to change, we will come to resemble the Roman Empire in its decline, when it was characterized by two things: bread and circuses. The citizens of Rome were entitled to a daily ration of bread, and they were kept mindlessly entertained and pacified by a variety of circuses. The obvious parallel to the Roman bread is our social safety net, including food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. And for our circuses, we need look no further than the small glowing screen in our living room, family room or bedroom, and the wealth of mostly mindless entertainment it provides, particularly in the popular competition, game and reality programming. While we may convince ourselves that our lives are being enriched by watching these programs, the fact that corporations pay hundreds of millions of dollars to advertise on programs like American Idol, The Bachelor, and Dancing with the Stars, should give us a clue as to the real value of these programs. They exist simply to sell us products and services, most of which we do not need, and cannot really afford. Think about it, please.

Wealth Distribution in the United States - 1/21/2010

Wealth Distribution in the United States
by Ryan on January 21, 2010

Financially speaking, there is a great inequality in the United States. Over the last 30 years, while the rich have been getting richer, the poor have been getting steadily poorer. One reason for the growing disparity between the rich and the poor is the fact that most new jobs that are created pay low wages and often do not offer retirement plans or health coverage. Here is a graphic look at the widening gap between the nation's rich and poor.

My comment...
I consider the rising inequality in wealth and income to be the greatest threat to the future of the republic. The classic working class uprisings we remember from studying world history - the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1918 - were uprisings of the landless class of serfs against the wealthy nobility. President Obama understands this... his warning to the CEOs of the nation's thirteen largest banks assembled at the White House in April, 2009 was put very simply: My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.