There is something truly odd about the wealthiest country no longer with the wealthiest middle class, and in which every major competitor’s middle class is converging with ours’ in standards of living. This is the real end of American exceptionalism, in which working hard in the middle class is like being on a treadmill rather…
Tag: wealth
Banks Are Doing Better Than Ever. The Middle Class, Not So Much.
The nation’s banks are reporting record profits, according to new numbers out Wednesday from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Most of the rest of us aren’t faring quite so well. Bank profits topped $40.3 billion in the first three months of the year, according to the FDIC, attesting to a strong recovery… in the…
Ann Romney Contradicts RNC Speech, Admits Privilege
A decidedly off-message statement from Ann Romney on Sunday’s Meet the Press was overlooked by the media, since everyone focused on Mitt Romney’s false claim that he would make sure people with prior conditions can purchase health insurance. Ann Romney made a noteworthy admission in the same interview, and the Progressive Change Committee is launching…
Mitt Romney and Ann: the students “struggling” so much that they had to sell stock.
Mitt Romney is going around saying that he made all his money himself, aside from a loan from his dad to buy his first house. Journalists who buy that have short memories. I was living in Massachusetts when Romney first ran for the Senate, and remembered this interview with Ann Romney in the Boston Globe…
Our Broken Political System
Elected politicians would, at least theoretically, be expected to either represent such views or at least respond to them. But you can forget about that. On occasion, democratic pressure can build on representatives to either change a position or lose their jobs, making life sufficiently uncomfortable for them. But this is rarer than a red…
Report: US Has One Of The Highest Child Poverty Rates In The Developed World
According to a new report from the Office of Research at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.S. has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world. Of the 35 wealthy countries studied by UNICEF, only Romania has a child poverty rate higher than the 23 percent rate in the…
Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators
I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also…
The War Against the Poor
Some facts: early in 2011, the US Census Bureau reported that 14.3 percent of the population, or 47 million people—one in six Americans—were living below the official poverty threshold, currently set at $22,400 annually for a family of four. Some 19 million people are living in what is called extreme poverty, which means that their…