Forum Post: US Gov. Spending Cuts: What's On The Table? You're On The Table

Under the first U.S. income tax law that was passed in 1913, only 1 percent of Americans were required to file income tax returns, and to be liable to file you would have had to be earning an annual income of about $120,000 in todays dollars. It was passed during a period called the Progressive Era: "a period of social activism and reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s" during which there were widespread "efforts to reform local government, education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas" of American life.

It was a period of steady economic growth in the U.S. and produced a since unparalleled level of prosperity that lasted for decades. The politics of the era included the concept of an economy of high wages and the idea that American labor could undersell foreign labor by being highly paid, well clothed, well educated, healthier labor with high productivity. The concept of "free market" during the period was an entirely different concept than it is today.

That idea of steady economic growth is now on the table.

[snip]

...what's happening in Greece is a dress rehearsal for what's going on in the United States....

...you have an identical strategy being used between Greece and the United States. Greece is the first domino since Iceland. And the financial interests that are looking at this post-2008 debt crisis as a grab bag think now is the chance for us to make our move. Now we can take all this debt that we've built up and we can get out of the financial system, we can turn it into direct ownership of property. We can own the Greek islands, we can own the Greek public domain, just like we can own what Minnesota, Chicago, Wisconsin, and California own. And all of a sudden you have a huge virtual foreclosure process.

[snip]

You can look at what's happening in Greece when it says cut back your pensions, cut back your Social Security, cut back your medical care. This is exactly what we're going to see done ... by the Obama administration here.

[snip]

...former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinskiz warned that the growing wealth imbalance in America - now reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression - could lead to civil unrest in the streets. As the middle-class in America falls deeper and deeper into desperation - Brzezisnki said, "we're going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society." We have a society in which 400 Americans own more wealth that 150 million other Americans. We have a society in which 50% of all the children in America will depend on food stamps at some point in their life before they are 18 - and among African American children that number is 90%. We no longer live in a just society - and if Brzezinski is right - turbulent times could be ahead for America.

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US Gov. Spending Cuts: What's On The Table? You're On The Table

http://antemedius.com/content/us-gov-spending-cuts-whats-table