OF THE 1%, BY THE 1% AND FOR THE 1%

Conservatives have sworn allegiance to trickle-down economics since Reagan.  In theory, tax breaks and other economic benefits to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole.  So, how has that been working for you?  Let’s use the consummate example of American business - Walmart – to judge our progress.  Here’s a company that boasts its prices will beat anybody and you will never know the difference between a steak prepared in a five-star steakhouse and the Walmart steak you eat at home.  Their fruit is all local and juicy and “the best I’ve ever tasted.”  They portray a young black man as a stock boy who is exuberant to be “working his way up” on the Walmart team!  It is a company worth more than 500 billion dollars – the American success story!  OK, TRICKLE DOWN – DO YOUR MAGIC!  Well, here is the drought reality:

The wealth of the Walton family – heirs to the Walmart fortune - is as large as FORTY-TWO PER CENT OF ALL OTHER AMERICAN FAMILIES COMBINED!  Yet, the company still receives an estimated 2 billion dollars of tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance and grants from the American taxpayers every year.  Walmart consistently finagles working hours so “associates” do not qualify for benefits (and before you blame Obamacare, this has been a consistent practice for more than a decade).  The AVERAGE salary for a Walmart employee is less than $240 per week without benefits.  Most make a measly $6 per hour with less than 28 hours of work per week allotted.  This pay scale places employees with families below the poverty line with the MAJORITY of Walmart employees' children qualifying for free lunch at school as a result.  When closely examined, this amounts to a form of double-dipping corporate welfare, as the taxpayer subsidize not only the company, but the low salaries of its employees as well!  In some stores, 80% of the employees are forced onto public assistance because they don’t make a living wage.

SO, WHERE IS THE TRICKLE DOWN?  Well, many will say the low prices enjoyed by the many who shop at Walmart stores is helping the overall economy despite the fact that its own employees don’t earn enough to shop without public assistance.  You have to look at the whole picture.  So, let’s do that: Despite a well-publicized "Made in the U.S.A." campaign, 85 percent of the stores' items are made overseas, often in Third World sweatshops (remember Bangladesh?). By taking its orders abroad, Wal-Mart has forced many US manufacturers out of business.  Plus, Walmart’s practice of saturating the marketplace and clearing out the retail competition has been remarkably successful, thus closing countless stores of its competitors and leaving them sitting empty.  Is this helping the economy or simply lining the purses of the Walton family?

OK – enough about Walmart – maybe they are just a “bad apple”.  The fact is many conservatives revere the people at the top-of-the-food-chain as morally better and more deserving because their hard work has paid off.  I’ll say it’s paid off – but at whose expense?  The top 1% earns 25% of this country’s income every year.  The top 1% now controls more than 40% of America’s total wealth.  Over the past decade, the income of the top 1% has increased more than 18% while those in the middle and poorer classes have seen their incomes fall.  And, with all of this concentrated wealth combined with the legislative and judicial buying-power it affords (like Citizens United), the concept of a better economy for all from trickle-down effects is laughable.  In reality, we are the land of economic EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF and, more and more, only a very select few have a voice.  Yes, we are becoming a country of the 1%, by the 1% and for the 1%.