The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office released a survey that comes as no surprise to any of us: The rich are getting richer.
Since 1979, the top one percent’s growth was 275 percent. The middle class was light years away with 40 percent. And the poor, well, they barely scratched the surface with 18 percent.
This will give fuel to the 99ers to keep driving the message home whether they’re occupying Wall Street or Oakland.
The survey will also kick Fox News into high gear as it tries to steam-roll over the occupyers with its propaganda.
One of the “journalists” on “Fox and Friends” referred to everyone who was taking part in Occupy Wall Street as “filth.”
Pathetic.
That would be like saying everyone at Fox News is a fascist. And that’s on a good day.
“There’s nothing surer
the rich get rich and the poor get pooer.
In the meantime, inbetween time ain’t we got fun.”
That’s from a Depression-era song that succeeded at easing a little bit of the pain people were experiencing.
If you had each other, at least you had fun.
People went to the movies for escapism back then. They enjoyed the movies about the rich who weren’t affected. How the other half lived in the movies was apparently popular. Maybe it was because the movies were screwball comedies. And the have-nots had the opportunity to laugh at the haves and not scorn or envy them.
Hollywood fantasies made people believe that the rich weren’t so bad, even if they had it all. They made you laugh. Laughter was the best medicine during a time in our history when there was little to laugh about.
Filmmaker Preston Sturges brought that message home in his “Sullivan’s Travels,” in which a director, famous for making comedies, wanted to make a serious movie about how the downtrodden were suffering.
The director goes as far as living among the poor. But in the end he discovers that no matter how bad the people had it, they were still able to laugh. They lost just about everything, but not their sense of humor.
In the end he discovers that what he had been doing all along at least made the people laugh. So he sets out to do what he does best, and make it better.
The Hollywood ending.
When David always slays Goliath in some form or another.
It’s the selling of the American Dream. You know, the one where we too can somehow strike it rich some day.
You see it constantly played out in real life. The elderly gentleman who spends $50 a shot on lottery tickets. You wonder why, since he doesn’t have many years left to enjoy it if he wins. But he does it for his family. To give them the chance to have in life what has always been denied him. And he does it for himself, too. He can go to the grave having finally accomplished what he strived for all his life: To go out a wealthy man.
Maybe life can imitate art. The Hollywood ending comes true. The ugly duckling is accepted among the beautiful people after having done something extraordinary.
Just put a happy tune around it like a ribbon. “In the meantime, inbetween time, ain’t we got fun.”
We believe in the American Dream like we believe in guardian angels.
Fact of the matter is, we have a much better chance of joining the unemployment line than we ever will becoming part of the nouveau riche.
In the meantime, the rich getting rich and the poor getting poorer doesn’t sit right with the 99ers, who could use a song. So sing along to these words to the tune “Taxman,” made famous by the late, great George Harrison of The Beatles:
“Here’s how it’s been and will always be
here’s 40% for you and 275% for the wealthy.
Income inequality,
ya, inequality.
“Should 40% appear too small
be thankful you got anything at all.
Inequality,
Income inequality.
“In the one percent
you get tax breaks.
Think you can be rich
vote for the fakes.
In the middle class
give more than you take.
If you’re dirt poor
let them eat cake.
“Here’s sound advice not pending.
stop believing in the Hollywood ending.
There’s just inequality,
income inequality.
America remains strong through disparity.”
