By The Way, We Lost (Village Voice)
[From Bob Herbert's Op-Ed column, "Winning The Class War", in today's New York Times online:]
Even as millions of out-of-work and otherwise struggling Americans are tightening their belts for the holidays, the nation’s elite are lacing up their dancing shoes and partying like royalty as the millions and billions keep rolling in.
Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street ... They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.
Spring, 2010: The Capo Gives The Soldiers A Taste
The ranks of the poor may be swelling and families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever... the highest total since the government began keeping track more than six decades ago.
...On the same day that The [New York] Times ran its article about the third-quarter surge in profits, it ran a piece on the front page that carried the headline: “With a Swagger, Wallets Out, Wall Street Dares to Celebrate.”
'Wall Street Warrior' Parties Are Very Popular, These Days
...Families on the wrong side of the divide find themselves under increasing pressure to just hold things together: to find the money to pay rent or the mortgage, to fend off bill collectors, to cope with illness and emergencies, and deal with the daily doses of extreme anxiety...
(Photo: Go Here)
Extreme inequality is already contributing mightily to political and other forms of polarization in the U.S. And it is a major force undermining the idea that as citizens we should try to face the nation’s problems... in a reasonably united fashion. When so many people are tumbling toward the bottom, the tendency is to fight among each other for increasingly scarce resources.
...Aristocrats were supposed to be anathema to Americans. Now, while much of the rest of the nation is suffering, they are the only ones who can afford to smile.
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