Wow! Class Warfare

I couldn't resist taking a peek at a posting from www.businessinsider.com with this title:

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America

The 22 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

See proof of the Middle Class extermination -->

I never thought I would live to see the day when a business publication would climb the ramparts and wave the red flag of revolution! This company is pointing out to ordinary Americans that they are being screwed by the current business/political elite. They are implicitly demanding revolution! I have now beheld the promised land. I just never thought the leaders of the Revolution would be a bunch of businessmen.

Seriously... I would expect that the leaders in government and industry would take stock of the mess they have created and either resign or have a personal conversion to another philosophy of life. To destroy everything around you to feather your own nest makes no sense. It is far better to grow the pie and let everybody have a bigger piece. The last 30 years of "beggar thy neighbor" and "let the little people live off the crumbs from the table" approach is bankrupt.

But I worry that nothing will make the elite see the catastrophe they are calling down on themselves (and as a consequence, on everybody in society). Here's one of the statistics cited in the above article to show how blind and obsinate the ultra-rich are:

Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

Here some of the other statistics cited in the above article:

• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.


• 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.


• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together


• For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.


• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.


• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.


• 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

What does it take to have sirens and flashing lights go off? What does it take for a society to realize that it is rushing over a precipice to its doom?