I hate to break up all that wonderful 4th of July patriotism with this one, but this is something your bank account has been telling you for decades…
The gap between America’s rich and poor is so extreme levels of inequality are worse in the land of the free than they are in many developing countries.
The U.S. ranks way behind the European Union and the United Kingdom in terms of inequality of pay, figures show. In fact, the situation is so extreme the land of the free falls behind countries such as Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and revolutionary Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen – and only just in front of Uganda and Jamaica.
According to the CIA’s World Fact Book, which ranks countries in terms of how ‘equally’ wealth is distributed, the U.S. is the 42nd most unequal country in the world.
Wages are so bad nowadays that you can’t even pay the CIA to lie to you anymore! This isn’t the America I know…oh wait, it is because I’m not paying an immigrant servant to type this for me while I dictate from an in-ground pool full of naked women.
Income disparity in the U.S. has been growing for decades but the latest figures show it has now reached levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Ten percent of the total personal income in America was taken home by the top 0.1 per cent of earners in 2008 – the latest year for which figures are available.
The top one percent took home more than a fifth of all personal income in the U.S. Research suggests the reason for this extraordinary disparity is a huge rise in pay for company executives, the Washington Post reported.
The important thing to take away from this is not that you’re taking in nowhere near what the top 0.1 per cent of earners are, it’s that you never will be. No, really. You could win the lottery on the same day that you find out that Brad Pitt is your long-lost brother who is leaving his life savings to you when he dies of a cancerous tumor he just discovered last week and you still won’t be bringing in what these fuckers are. You can teabag Reagan’s corpse while you bathe in a golden shower of trickle-down economics – it’s not fucking happening. And it’s happening because people keep ignoring this data and believing in that same American dream your ancestors did…you know, the same people who suffered through that Great Depression thing we were just talking about. Don’t you think that if you’re living in the same statistical poverty that they were that you’d finally start to stir from your slumber? Nah, that new job and fat paycheck are coming any day now…Yep, any day now…
There is a difference between us and those third-world countries, however – they start a revolution when they get sick and tired of getting fucked. But unlike most articles you’ll find about this topic, I’m not encouraging a revolution because I know you just won’t do it. Not only will you not do it, you’ll defend this massive gap by screaming into it loudly, “If you want more money, then you have to earn it!” It may echo real loud in that deep, dark hole, but that doesn’t make those words any less small or hollow. Do you really believe that slime like the Koch brothers and the Walton family got to where they are today because of honest hard work and sound investment plans? The truth is that for every came-from-nothing shining example you can throw at me, I can name 100 pieces of shit who lied, cheated, and stole their way to the top and continue to do so to maintain their god-like status over the rest of us. They did this by slowly stripping away every last bit of pride and common sense from desperate working people and by painting their scraps to look like gold. It’s not “communism” to demand basic rights, fair pay, or equal taxes – it’s “a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” If you don’t know what that means, I suggest looking it up.
So instead of getting mad at me for saying all this, why don’t you just go start your little revolution? Dust off those rifles, hum your little patriotic hymns, and march right to the capital waving your flags made in China…
…I’m waiting…
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t let that loose spring in your couch cushion give you too much trouble, now.
