Americans and specifically those more dependent on Social Security voted for Conservatives. In other words, they voted against their financial well being because of their willful ignorance. While the Conservative are happy to have the middleclass dependent on social security fight for scraps in order to keep taxes inordinately low on the wealthy, they have no problem taking a strong stance to ensure that the rich get to pay ever more low taxes.
Inasmuch as wealth continues to migrate to the top two percent, Conservative politicians are still asking for more from the middleclass. It is imperative that the following is noted. The top 1% of the population owns 34% of the nation’s wealth, the top 5% owns 58.9% of the nation’s wealth, the top 10% owns 71% of the nation’s wealth, the top 20% owns 85% of the nation’s wealth, and the lower 40% owns less than 1% of the nation’s wealth. Income is similarly distributed.
Entitlements need some adjustments.Taxes on the wealthy must play a major part in that adjustment. The wealthy have been carried by the middleclass long enough. The middleclass better educate themselves and start voting their pocketbook. The wealthy has been doing that a long time and it worked for them.
My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://books.egbertowillies.com – Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
First Salvo In Social Security Fight: OweNo, A $20 Million Campaign Launched With Bayh, Conrad As Allies
Rally – HD from Peterson Foundation on Vimeo.
WASHINGTON — In what may be the first major move of the forthcoming Social Security debate, the Peterson Foundation launched on Tuesday a $20 million TV ad campaign to promote the need for a major discussion on debt and deficit reduction.
Titled "OweNo," the campaign, which promotes a mock presidential candidate irreverently named Hugh Jidette (get it? Huge debt), doesn’t take on Social Security reform directly. But the connections are fairly obvious and it has the program’s defenders deeply wary about being outgunned. The Peterson Foundation, for one, has never shied away from its push to reform the entitlement program. And in introducing the $20 million effort, the organization’s founder, former Nixon commerce secretary and fiscal conservative Pete Peterson made it abundantly clear that Social Security is in his sights.
"Solving our fiscal issues without fundamental entitlement reform is a statistical impossibility," he said. "Entitlement reform must provide benefits for the most vulnerable. But if we wait too long to reform and we confront a crisis, the politics may become brutal and even violent and in such a situation there would be no assurance that the safety net, even for the most vulnerable, might not be seriously frayed."
Perhaps the most frightening part of the unveiling, however, is that Peterson — long a scourge of progressives for having earned hundreds of millions in the hedge fund business while preaching financial sacrifice for others — has prominent Democrats backing his latest campaign. Appearing alongside him at the Newsuem on Tuesday morning was outgoing Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Budget Committee Chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).
"People on the left who don’t want to touch entitlements, that is just unrealistic," said Conrad. "I would say to my friends on the left it is unrealistic, Medicare and Social Security are headed for insolvency. The idea that nothing has to be done is divorced from reality. On the right, those who say no new revenue, I believe, are also in denial."
"The election a week ago today would have been a lot more edifying if we had more commercials like that then the ones running out there in the various states," Bayh said of the ad campaign. "Very impressive."
