The Great American Wealth Transfer | Progressive Democrats of North Carolina
American corporations saw record profits in 2010 even as many Americans struggled to hold on to their jobs, homes and retirement savings. Nearly 80% of all economic gains made in the past thirty years have gone to the richest 1% while wages for workers have remained stagnant or even declined as low-paying service jobs replaced outsourced manufacturing jobs. In the 1970s, the average CEO of a large corporation made 30 times what an hourly worker made. Today, this CEO makes 300 times what an hourly worker makes. And yet, corporatists and their Republican supporters want us to believe that it is the greed of the American workers who have brought this country to the brink of financial disaster by wanting decent wages, affordable health care, a modest home, a decent education for their children, and a secure retirement.
Today, the top 1% of U.S. households receives more income than the bottom 120 million Americans combined. The richest 1% of households owns nearly half of all investment assets (stocks and mutual funds, financial securities, business equity, trusts, non-home real estate). The bottom 90% of the population owns less than 15%; the bottom half—about 150 million Americans—owns less than 1%. The one public institution powerful enough to change this trajectory, government, has largely aided and abetted this trend. The primacy of property rights buttressed by tort reform and deregulation is hailed as “Liberty” -- with the help of huge amounts of corporate money -- while efforts to defend human, civil, worker and consumer rights are being dismissed as “Socialism.”