How Democrats Can Become Relevant Again (And Rescue the Nation While They're At It) by Robert Reich

[Mira]

We can't let the Republicans try to set the working middle class against itself.


March 3, 2011



Republicans offered Democrats two more weeks before the doomsday shut-down. Democrats countered with four. Republicans held their ground. Democrats agreed to two.
This is what passes for compromise in our nation's capital.

Democrats have become irrelevant. If they want to be relevant again they have to connect the dots: The explosion of income and wealth among America's super-rich, the dramatic drop in their tax rates, the consequential devastating budget squeezes in Washington and in state capitals, and the slashing of public services for the middle class and the poor.

It is not a complicated story. Begin with what's happened to the typical American, whose wages have been stagnant for thirty years. Today's typical 30-year-old male (if he has a job) is earning the same as a 30-year-old male earned three decades ago, adjusted for for inflation. (Although women are doing better than they did 30 years ago, their wages still trail men's.)

The bottom 90 percent of Americans now earn, on average, only about $280 more per year than they did thirty years ago. That's less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. Families are doing somewhat better but that's only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.

But wait. The American economy is more than twice as large now as it was thirty years ago. So where did the money go? To the top.
The richest 1 percent's share of national has doubled -- from around 9 percent in 1977 to over 20 percent now. The richest one-tenth of 1 percent's share has tripled. The 150,000 households that comprise the top one-tenth of one percent now earn as much as the bottom 120 million put together.

Given this explosion of income at the top you might think our tax system would demand a larger share from them. But you'd be wrong. You're not taking account of the power of the super rich. As income and wealth have risen to the top, so has political power. As a result, their taxes have plummeted.


to finish reading Robert Reich's analysis go to

http://www.alternet.org/story/150124/how_democrats_can_become_relevant_again_%28and_rescue_the_nation_while_they%27re_at_it%29_?akid=6602.254620.JTORx9&rd=1&t=2



 
  
 
 

[Citizen Worker]

1. It has always been and always will be that money begets power and power begets money. The democrats

will never bite the hand that feeds them. We need a second political party and soon.

[polichick]

2. No Kidding! If Dem "leaders" are just going to buy the fake Republican narrative...

They ARE irrelevant - and the sooner we can toss their sorry butts out of office, the better.

[kentuck]

3. Robert is right.

The Democratic Party is becoming irrelevant.

[Lasher]

4. Good advice, but too late.

Almost all of Reich's recommendations in this article would have been achieved if Congressional Democrats and Obama had simply let the Bush tax cuts expire. But they were extended, and nothing is going to change that for at least the next two years.

[mmonk]

5. They can. But that is different than will.

I don't see it happening. They might win by the public trying something new. But I think the public is increasingly frustrated. The more they are frustrated, the less predictability there is.

[rucky]

6. Irrelevant or complicit?

It's like the "lying or stupid?" question we ask of RepublicAss