A number of subtle and hidden Government policies are designed to funnel more and more money away from the middle class and move it to the upper, already wealthy class. Tax Rules, subsidies etc.

Did you know...

• In 1985, The Forbes 400 were worth $221 billion combined. Today, they’re worth $1.13 trillion—more than the GDP of Canada.
• Among The Forbes 400 who gave to a 2004 presidential campaign, 72% gave to Bush.
• Bush's tax cuts gave a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722 - or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids.
• A 2-child family earning $50,000 gets $2,050—or 1/5 the cost of public college for one kid.
• A minimum wage employee who works 40 hours a week for 51 weeks a year goes home with $10,506 before taxes. This would take 7,000 years to earn Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s yearly compensation.
• The fifth leading philanthropist last year was Boone Pickens, in part due to his $165 million gift to Oklahoma State University’s golf program. Within an hour, OSU invested it in a hedge fund Pickens controls. Thanks to a Katrina relief provision, his “gift” was also 100% deductible.
• Poor Americans spend 1/4 of their income on residential energy costs while Exxon's 2005 profit of $36.13 billion is more than the GDP of 2/3 of the world’s nations.

~ Mother Jones, Perks of Privelege

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES

Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less.

The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant, and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared.

The Rich Get Richer by James Kurth

In 1914, Henry Ford paid his factory workers $5 a day, twice the going rate, with the aim of creating a broad middle class able to buy the cars they were building. Today, that project isn’t faring so well: The Economist reports that in the U.S. “the gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country.” And it’s growing. According to the Congressional Budget Office, from 1979 to 2001, the after-tax income of the top 1 percent of U.S. households soared 139 percent, while the income of the middle fifth rose only 17 percent and the income of the poorest fifth climbed just 9 percent. Last year American CEOs earned 262 times the average wage of their workers—up tenfold from 1970.

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Having even more wealth than they had before, the very rich can thus buy even more government supports and giveaways and acquire even more wealth, enabling them to buy even more government supports and giveaways. And so on. The result of great wealth buying public policies is a positive feedback loop, or perhaps a vicious cycle, which transfers ever greater wealth and power to the very rich and away from everyone else.

Read More...

Free Lunch: Why the Rich get Richer.

Fresh Air from WHYY, January 3, 2008 · Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

Listin to NPR Radio Broadcast.

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