The 99%

Some weeks ago Mad Dog wrote about some really amazing pie graphs which showed in a very visually striking way the astonishing reality of wealth distribution in the United States.

Now we have the 99% crowd, apparently motivated by the same images, in streets from New York to Boston and beyond. What exactly brings them to the streets is not so easy to discern, but clearly, a common theme appears to be outrage at the few how have so much, while the many have no jobs and no prospects.

Last night, on The News Hour, a man from a "conservative think tank" said that if you really think about the 99%, they are objecting to the fact that some people make only $500,000 a year, by which he meant in the upper 10-20% of the wealthiest Americans there are people making that much but they do not make it into the upper 1%.

Nicholas Kristoff floated another figure in the New York Times: the 400 wealthiest families in the USA own more wealth than all the wealth owned by 90% of the population.

Different ways of looking at who owns how much.

For the conservative think tank guy, he is very smug about how you slice and dice the numbers, but if you look at those pie graphs, there is no real argument. This looks worse than the distribution of wealth in Marie Antoinette's France, and smug rich conservative Republicans can say "Let them eat cake," all they want to, but they ignore what everyone else can see and they do it at their own peril.

Those pie graphs ought to be printed on T shirts and handed out at super markets by Democrats here in New Hampshire and everywhere around the country. They ought to be on bumper stickers. Don't explain too much, just put up those pie graphs and let people ask you about them.

And while we are printing up T shirts, let's print a few with Got Medicare? Thank Democrats on the front and Got Social Security? Thank Democrats on the back.

And when we get closer to November 2012, Frank Guinta, Medicare Killer. Kelly Ayotte, Medicare Killer. (I know she's not running but maybe we can shame her into resigning. Hey, Republicans live in a dream world, why can't Mad Dog?)

If the 99% movement means anything, it's that class warfare should be alive and fed and nurtured. The only class warfare we've had thus far has come from the rich against all the rest of us.