Get your pitchforks ready, people!

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Time for ’59 buckers’ to unite!
By Kelvin Wade
From page A7 | March 28, 2013 | 7 Comments

Some startling financial numbers leaped out at me this week.

    $423,644. That’s how much Alameda County administrator Susan Muranishi will receive per year when she retires. That will make her the highest paid public retiree in California.
    $371,043. That’s how much former Solano County administrator Michael Johnson, the reigning champion of California’s ridiculous public retirement salaries, rakes in every year. Johnson has to feel good that he will be passing the golden baton to Muranishi when she retires.
    $94,758. That’s how much Solano County supervisors are paid.
    $85,282.20 is how much future supervisors would earn if the current supervisors had voted for a 10 percent pay cut this past week. The majority opted not to, using the well-worn excuse that we need high salaries to attract good people. What kind of public servant is going to work for a mere 85 grand?
    9,111. The number of California public employees who make more than $100,000 a year in retirement.
    $110,651 is what you have to make in a year to put you in the top 10 percent of Americans.
    $366,623 is what one has to make in order to be in the top 1 percent. Our Michael Johnson is a 1 percenter. Yea, Mike.
    Six. That’s how many Walmart heirs it takes to equal the net worth of the bottom 41.6 percent of Americans in 2010, according to Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute. Yes, six people are worth as much as the bottom 128 million.
    $59. That’s how much the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has increased between 1966 and 2011, according to an analysis by Pulitzer Prize winning David Cay Johnston for Tax Analysts.
    $2.25. That’s how much the Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District Board voted to raise water rates on area customers starting in July and continuing for two years. If that last number made you wince, it’s a safe bet you’re not in the top 10 percent or collecting a fat California pension.

It’s amazing that at a time when income inequality is at an all-time high, instead of focusing on those corporations and entities that have gamed the system to stack the deck against the middle class, we’re busy sniping at each other.

We’re looking down our noses at folks on food stamps and demanding welfare recipients be drug-tested while those at the top are laughing all the way to the bank.

Divide and conquer.

A paper called “The Future of Children” by Princeton University and The Brookings Institution finds that the United States has lower income mobility rates than Canada, Sweden and several other countries. It’s harder to get ahead. It’s easier to achieve the American dream in several western countries than in America.

Of course when you point out the obvious income inequality in America, people will accuse you of engaging in “class warfare.” The shocking thing is that it’s not the wealthy that’ll call you out. It’ll be someone making what you’re making, a “59 bucker,” blindly doing the bidding of the aristocracy.

Maybe we should use that 59 bucks to buy pitchforks and torches. Peace.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES;  Can everyone get paid? Can we equal with this stuff out? Surely CEOs aren't working 209 times as hard as their workers so why should they be paid that many times more than their employees? That's not right. People are out there struggling, busting their asses trying to make ends meet. Can we get some equity? Just more equity? Why is it such a fight to get a minimum wage increase? Why are people still buying into trickle down when it has been thoroughly disproven? C'mon, let's do something different.