By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Rhetoric:
“But we know that people’s frustrations run deeper than these most recent political battles. Their frustration is rooted in their own daily battles — to make ends meet, to pay for college, buy a home, save for retirement. It’s rooted in the nagging sense that no matter how hard they work, the deck is stacked against them. And it’s rooted in the fear that their kids won’t be better off than they were. They may not follow the constant back-and-forth in Washington or all the policy details, but they experience in a very personal way the relentless, decades-long trend that I want to spend some time talking about today. And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s basic bargain — that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.
I believe this is the defining challenge of our time: Making sure our economy works for every working American. It’s why I ran for President.”
– President Barack Obama, December 4, 2013
Action:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z5Z2maN3Ig
I have to go along with Pope Francis who has denounced trickle-down economics, basically saying it is naive to trust the goodness of those wielding economic power to bring greater justice and inclusiveness. Thirty plus years of Reaganomics has led to greater income disparity as the 1% see greater economic gains at the expense of everyone else with no trickle-down, despite significant productivity markers with no equal income gains.