Root of Our Economic Mess

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

Our federal government's problem is that we have a minority run government. Majority rule has been taken from us. Special interest groups with lots of money and ideologues with lots of organizational energy have taken control. Most of what the majority of Americans dislike about our federal government's policies are the result of minority influences.

As for family economies, real wages stopped rising abruptly between 1976 and 1980. They have been nearly flat ever since. Before that workers shared in America's GDP growth, but after that wages only rose with inflation. COLA's are adjustments, not raises. And such a sudden change in the U.S. wage structure can only result from willful planning by the business elite, An evolving economic process, as many economist claim, would not so suddenly appear.  So American wages have been suppressed for 40 years.

Then beginning in 1980 the progressive tax structure was dismantled and the riches 0.1% started paying the same tax rates as people making $100k or so. These two indisputable facts ARE the root cause of our present economic woes and the reason income disparity today is the worse it has been since the turn of the last century. I could go on, but enough for now. Suffice it to say we have to stop treating the government as an "it" and start treating it as an "us" again. [ Feel free to browse my blog at www.aseyeseesit.blogspot.com ]