The Real Redistributionists

I often hear Obama called a "redistributionist", someone who takes money away from hard-working Americans through taxes and gives it to the undeserving.  Obama is coming for the sweat of your brow, they say, he's coming for the fruits of your work to fund his massive welfare state and to entrap America as slaves to government.

The funny part is that the people who scream this the loudest have been redistributing wealth from the middle class to the top...to themselves... for decades now.  Jim Quinn:

The parallels between the period leading up to the Great Depression and our current situation leading to a Greater Depression are revealing. When you examine the facts without looking through the prism of party politics it becomes clear that when the wealth and power of the country are overly concentrated in the clutches of the top 1% wealthiest Americans, financial collapse and depression follow. This concentration of income and wealth did not cause the Stock Market Crash of 1929 or the financial system implosion in 2008, but they were a symptom of a sick system of warped incentives. The top 1% of income earners were raking in 24% of all the income in America in 1928. After World War II until 1980, the top 1% of income earners consistently took home between 9% and 11% of all income in the country. During the 1950′s and 1960′s when Americans made tremendous strides in their standard of living, the top 1% were earning 10% of all income. A hard working high school graduate could rise into the middle class, owning a home and a car.

From 1980 onward, the top 1% wealthiest Americans have progressively taken home a greater and greater percentage of all income. It peaked at 22% in 1999 at the height of the internet scam. Wall Street peddled IPOs of worthless companies to delusional investors and siphoned off billions in fees and profits. The rich cut back on their embezzling of our national wealth for a year and then resumed despoiling our economic system by taking advantage of the Federal Reserve created housing boom. By 2007, the top 1% again was taking home 24% of the national income, just as they did in 1928. When the wealth of the country is captured by a small group of ruling elite through fraudulent means, collapse and crisis becomes imminent. We have experienced the collapse, while the crisis deepens.

And now, once again we are in a depression.  The money's already been taken from you, not by government but by the people at the top seeing massive wealth growth while 90% of Americans have seen their real income fall since 1990.

The American middle class was dying long before Obama ever entered national politics.