PewResearchCenter Publications
January 11, 2012
The Occupy Wall Street movement no longer occupies Wall Street, but the issue of class conflict has captured a growing share of the national consciousness. A new Pew Research Center survey of 2,048 adults finds that about two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor — an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.
Not only have perceptions of class conflict grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense. According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30%) say there are “very strong conflicts” between poor people and rich people. That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this[...]
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2167/rich-poor-social-conflict-class
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 30′s, warned America of a creeping risk to its Democratic government. He called that risk Fascism. America was at risk of government ownership by other than democracy. Democracy is the “sea to shinning sea”ownership of America – by Americans. The business ownership of America is not Democracy.
An early shot across Democracy’s bow came from Mr. Sewell Avery in 1944. Mr. Avery was the head of the giant(at that time) Montgomery Ward. A description of Mr. Avery’s attack on the American government is described simply as “The Avery Problem” by TIME Magazine. Joejolly’s post, “Advancing Toward Fascism”, referenced that TIME magazine article which now requires being a TIME subscriber to read the whole article.
This early attack on Democracy by BIG BUSINESS was bold, frontal and stupid. Imagine a BIG BUSINESS leader controlling a BIG BUSINESS and, in his spare time, controlling America’s War Department. That’s what Mr. Avery wanted to do.
The idea of officials being elected to run the country, using the “one man one vote” rule was under attack by BIG BUSINESS. BIG BUSINESS did learn from this behavior. Rather than try to play dual rolls of big business leaders and leaders of the “WAR DEPARTMENT(at that time)”, use politicians to do the bidding of BIG BUSINESS. BIG BUSINESS captured the Republican Party in 1980. And a conflict between the rich and the poor began.
In 1980, the neocons reversed the falling per-centage income trend of the top one per-cent of America’s income earners. The earnings of the top one-percent started heading upward again. Perhaps the “wizards” in the neocon’s leadership wanted to prove that there was no relationship between America’s Great Depression and the greed of the wealthy – even billionaires.
The top one per-cent of America’s income earners finally arrived at their targeted 23% of the 25% of America’s income earnings. The neocons/Tea Party performed well for BIG BUSINESS. Below is a picture(worth a thousand words) of neocon performance. The picture comes from Wikipedia.
U.S. inequality from 1913-2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_late-2000s_recession
Note the graph’s rate of positive change after 1980. It is humongous. The first thing one might do after seeing that rate of change is to check the graduations on the years axis. Are they equal?
Yes.
Then what happened in 1980?
America elected neocons to head its government.
And the race toward the December, 2007 Great Recession began.
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Tags: advancing toward fascism, attack on democracy, conflict between rich and poor, fascism, occupy wall street, president franklin d. roosevelt, sea to shinning sea, sewell avery, the avery problem, time magazine
