Embedded in this transcript of yesterday's Fresh Air interview with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is a little statistic that, once it sinks in, frames so much of our current economic woes much better than any sterile arguments over fiscal or monetary policy.
In 1970, the top one percent of wage earners took home roughly 9% of the total earned that year. In 2007, they took home about 23%. When one hears commentators screech "class warfare!" whenever a modest tax increase is offered, or when there are discussions of how to come up with solutions to our current malaise, remember - corporations and the very wealthy waged a war against the middle and working classes, covering it up with that bright sheen of cultural and social politics that can distract people from the obvious. We all lost.
