The NY Times notices the rich are getting richer and the poor, well, you know the drill:
At Wal-Mart, shoppers cut back on staples like milk and meat that had price increases of a few cents. At Saks Fifth Avenue, they paid full price for shoes and designer fashions at a rate higher than before the recession.
As several big chains reported third-quarter results on Tuesday, the divide between hard-pressed and prosperous Americans continued to be a defining characteristic of the retail economy.
“Clearly it’s a bifurcated market,” said Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks, in an interview. “The high-end consumer is much more tied to the stock market and the Dow and how they’re feeling about their personal situation, more so than the lower end of the market,” where concerns about gas prices and unemployment were more prevalent.
The rarified air of a Saks CEO. The reason the poor and working class are cutting back on necessities like meat and milk isn’t because they are “more concerned,” it’s because THEY’RE FUCKING BROKE AND HAVE NO JOB. You may cut back on luxuries out of concern, but you don’t cut back on feeding your family unless you have no money. You may say to yourself “the market really took a dive, so I guess I’ll hold off on that Bugatti,” but no one says “the market was down a touch, I think I’ll starve the kids.” Wanker. I’m to the point now that I think any asshole making stupid remarks like this should be forced to wear a top hat and monocle in public so everyone knows to kick them in the junk.
Maybe that cheating scumbag John Edwards was on to something. At any rate, it looks like the days of the rich feeling guilty about conspicuous consumption are over.
Linda Featheringill
Knit one, purl two.
JPL
A song for the occasion..
srv
Yeah, Edwards points out the problem 7 years before Greenspan admits to it and he’s the scumbag.
Some folks spend a lot of time obsessing about the wrong kind of fucking.
I have to go wax my Veyron now.
Cat Lady
The rich need their heads bifurcated from their torsos.
AT
But the strapping young bucks are eating steaks using food coupons! The “poor” have never had it so good.
Must cut social programs as a result!
PeakVT
Edwards was on to something, which makes him being a cheating scumbag even more annoying. “The 99%” works just as well, though.
Southern Beale
Oh FUCK ME and FUCK YOU, it’s not a “bifurcated market” it’s exploitation, Jesus Christ on a Cracker. Yeah we’ve seen this before, we saw this story 2 months ago:
This is what pisses me off. The Ownership Class, they KNOW why people are pissed. They know why people are Ocuupying everything and everywhere. And they don’t give a shit. They make up some BS name — “a bifurcated market” — which is just another way of putting the fucking blinders on.
Torches and pitchforks are coming and they’re acting blithely unaware, while at the same time giving us every indication that they know exactly what the fuck is going on.
Fuck me? Fuck YOU.
David Koch
John Edwards knew what he was talking about, after all, he was working for a Wall Street hedge fund that made money foreclosing on homes in New Orleans after the Katrina disaster.
Calming Influence
For the win.
rikyrah
this is who they are.
Calming Influence
@Southern Beale:
If a peasant’s pitchfork tears a hole in your Armani suit, blame yourself!
JPL
An acquaintance complained about how easy it was to get medicaid and I said lets look up the GA requirements.
There are also income requirements and they average 8000 a year so there is that.
The acquaintance was shocked because that is not what bozo boortz told her. Being poor is hard work.
El Cid
Perhaps this indicates that the real utility of the 99% movement would be as a focus group for their purchasing needs. I mean, if they’re going to be out there annoying everyone, at least they could help Walmart and manufacturers figure out how to more efficiently sell them stuff.
Comrade Javamanphil
It really is a mystery what Occupy Wall Street wants.
sven
John, you have it all wrong, just ask PBS.
A few weeks ago when the CBO released the latest income numbers there was a lot of attention paid to the evidence of inequality within their report.
Here is how Newshour covered it. Headling: “Does inequality have a good side?”. The CBO reports rising inequality and PBS is there to tell us not to worry about it.
If you think I am exaggerating, watch the video at the link.
Jager
I think we’ll be seeing silver plated Bentleys soon. Our rich have kept themselves under wraps for too long, they neeed to step it up like the Saudi Arabians do!
JBerardi
Georgie:
WereBear (itouch)
They have ruined millions of lives when the extra money means nothing to the way they live.
Hungry Joe
I’m starting to think that for some people to wake up, it’s going to take more than their “cutting back” on food: They’ll have to be starving. Literally. With the GOP having razor-bladed the safety nets, that might be happening soon … and starving people do more than just pitch tents next to big buildings.
Litlebritdifrnt2
The most telling example of this is that my DH and I are considered “professionals” (by my UK sister’s standards), I am a paralegal, DH is a teacher. We earn approximately 55K a year between us (including the month that DH is basically unemployed because he is not paid). My sis and her DH are both the equivalent of CNAs, they own their own home (paid for years ago) they take at least three vacations a year, they get six weeks vacation a year cause they work at a school for the disabled, and they have boatloads of disposable cash a month to spend on what they want. Me and the DH? His paycheck goes to paying the monthly bills, mine gets us through the week, and if we have money in the bank at the end of the week after groceries and gas money we are lucky. As John said, we don’t spend money cause we are fucking broke.
El Cid
__
I guess we’re excluding all the wise leaders and pundits trembling with orgiastic joy at any chance they can create to on their tight-fitting “Austerity” outfits to enforce some sweet, rugged discipline on all these helpless children and elderly and sick people in front of them.
Boomin
It’s not that rich people are ever going to feel that the pain from the poor is a bother. Of the 1% class I know, the driving method is to step on someone to get more. The whole class is a psychological study in what happens when the people that hold the reigns will do anything to keep them. It is the American way after all. To get higher, you need to step on the person next to you. These people see this as a right, not a problem. “i got mine, fuck you” is a way of life.
Egg Berry
The high-end consumers must be fucking idiots, then, because the stock market is all over the place these days, and maybe they haven’t heard of this little situation called The Slow-Motion Train Wreck That Is the European Union.
Lysana
@JPL:
So much this. I was complaining to my (obtained thanks to soshulized medicine) shrink about how I get burned out dealing with the bureaucracy of poverty. He assured me that was normal for someone so stressed over money for so long. I was so relieved to hear that, it was almost pathetic.
BlueDWarrior
Sometimes in the dark recesses of my mind I wonder if they are just trying to goad the 99% into an revolt so they can use their private security forces to do some impromptu population culling.
Some particularly assholish 1%ers might even try and rationalize it as doing their part to help save the Earth; you know, less idiot consumers = less resources used, what you dirty hippies have a problem with our methods?
Then I snap myself out of it and just think that’s all crazy talk… or is it?
NobodySpecial
@WereBear (itouch): Sure it matters. Imagine the horror of being the only person in the gated community without a private jet or having to admit that you only have one Rolls on hand for the chauffeur to go buy the groceries.
Warren Terra
Definitely seems like an argument for top hats, monocles, and superglue.
Caz
Why don’t you just join the communist party already, dimwit. The land with the most opportunities usually has the most rich people. If you hate rich people so much, go move to China. Go bust your ass and invent something or invest in something if you want to be rich, or you can sit on your ass and blog about your jealousy and not be rich. It’s your choice. Do you want more people to fall from rich to poor to equal it out somehow? Do you even have a suggestion as to how to fix your problem of rich people? Do you even think about this shit before you post it, lol? Ah, but the echo chamber applauds your class warfare post, so that’s all the matters!
MikeJ
Very few things on earth piss me off more than Marketplace on public radio when they play “We’re in the Money” as an intro to “stock market was up five points today on news that Ford is sliming down its workforce by 15,000!”
RossInDetroit
I used to work at Saks, in Menswear and in Fine Jewelry. What he says is true of only part of their clientele. A lot of the floor traffic is middle class people looking to move up in status through better clothes or branding.
The much smaller proportion are the very rich, who just buy what they want. That’s the segment all of the high end retailers are courting because they appear to be recession proof.
Calming Influence
Time for a little inspiration from Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964 (it’s only a minute and a half, and the last 30 seconds should be as well remembered by Americans as the Gettysburg Address).
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
Woodrowfan
a staple gun would work as well..
RossInDetroit
@Caz:
And how many people in that Opportunity Land should be poor? One in six sound about right? That’s where we are.
Xboxershorts
Not that we have no jobs, but that too many of us do not.
Not that we’re broke, but like 100 Million of us hit this crash with long n short term debt.
And we bailed the banks out, a Trillion+ in public bailouts, and the4 fed bought up another 20+ trillion through the back door lending facility (seriously, check the fed’s balance sheet trends for the last 5 years)
This is my general theory here..
Anyways, after bailout, credit worldwide dried up. And the banks we just bailed out raised interest rates and fees worldwide. Several times.
100 million of us used to pay 10% on our debt, now we pay 20%-29% on our debt.
What used to cost me 200 bux pre-crash, now costs 500 bux. And that’s just to whittle it down….
Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain Italy….all pay higher interest rates on debt we held before the crash…
Krugman said it a couple days ago…”Italy’s debt is manageable at 4%. It is not at 7%.
Apply nthat to the 100 million Americans who got caught with a credit load at the crash, and that’s where America’s middle class.
If it weren’t for the arbitrary interest rate increases, I’d be doin ok.
Fuckin interest rates,,,
lol
Edwards’ problem was that he was a slick talking pretty boy who would tell his audience whatever he wanted to hear. His rhetoric was at odds with his actual record in office and his run for President just four years before.
Sound like any particular also-ran running today on the GOP side? You could probably draw a lot of parallels between John “Co-Sponsor of the Iraq War Resolution” Edwards and Mitt “Individual Mandate” Romney.
Yeah, the two Americas stuff was great to hear. But then you look at how he went to work for a hedge fund after losing in 2004 and setup non-profits whose only purpose was to appear on his resume as though he’d been up to better stuff.
That he turned out to be a cheating scumbag just means most people’s impression of him being someone you can’t trust was *right*.
Calming Influence
@Caz:
Caz, did you really just “lol”?
“lol”?
PurpleGirl
@JPL: You can not have assets — savings or anything. Must be next to nothing. I had the dregs of a former 403(B) and couldn’t get Medicaid. At least the City hospital charges are reasonable.
AliceBlue
@Linda Featheringill:
Touche, Madame DeFarge!
lol
@Caz:
Societies with this much income inequality tend to have particularly violent solutions for the “problem” of rich people.
That’s why the right’s hard-on for hating FDR is so funny – He saved American capitalism from a communist revolution.
El Cid
@Caz: In China, the Communist Party includes Capitalists. Formally. It does.
At least use some modern slur, such as ‘Why don’t you go down to Venezuela and work in one of Hugo Chavez’ subsidized-yet-small-commerce grocery stores?!’ or ‘Why don’t you just row yourself down to Communist Cuba where Raul Chavez can lay you off from your gubmit job and if you can’t manage a job in the very high tech biopharma industry, run a dollar-related tourist hotel or kitchen, or prepare to sell your house, you fucking commie!’
David Koch
@Litlebritdifrnt2: What’s a CNA?
Southern Beale
Unrelated but I’m worried about the new kitten. He’s awfully lethargic. It’s been 4 days and he should have had enough rest and recuperation by now. I hope there aren’t any internal injuries or anything.
Talked to the vet today, he gave the kitten a thorough workup so maybe I’m being overly dramatic here, I’ve just never seen a kitten this young so … mellow.
Litlebritdifrnt2
@Caz:
I could go into a good take down of your entire argument but to be honest it is late and I am tired, cause you know after having worked all day. So basically fuck off.
Egg Berry
@David Koch: Certified Nurse Assistant/aid?
flukebucket
What makes me sick is that the bastards think I envy them.
Litlebritdifrnt2
@David Koch:
Certified Nursing Assistant basically the lowest of the low when it comes to the medical profession in the US, paid minimum wage, the bedpan emptying bedbath giving personnel. In the UK they are known as something else, can’t remember what (I seem to think it is Ward Elderly or something like that).
Gin & Tonic
@Caz: If you’re actually interested in the topic, and not just a troll or a DougJ sock puppet, take some time to read this report about rising income inequality. That’s what Cole is talking about.
Mike in NC
Hey, Mitt Romney would look damn good in a top hat and monocle. Spats, also too!
PurpleGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt2: Do you mean a Ward Sister? (Not that I know a lot about British medical personnel, but I remember that from a TV show.)
El Cid
@Calming Influence: Time is apparently putting its archives behind the paywall.
This was from a few months later than the famed Sproul Hall speeches — March, 1965 — and looks at why all these crazy Berkeley kids want to cause trouble.
But, but, what do these people want?
jl
@Caz:
“Do you want more people to fall from rich to poor to equal it out somehow?”
No, I want an economy that allows more poor people to become richer.
“Do you even have a suggestion as to how to fix your problem of rich people?”
repeal Bush tax cuts for higher incomes
Tobin tax
increase capital gains tax and repeal loopholes, carried interest being an example.
“Do you even think about this shit before you post it, lol?”
Don’t you have some math to work on, DougJ?
hrprogressive
It’s shit like this that makes the poor and unemployed (like myself, currently) hate the rich.
Warren Buffet says “Raise my taxes”; I don’t hate him.
Steven The Asshole says “Well no shit, the market is split in two between those who can afford to look at my store and the plebes and trash that have to shop at *scoff* Wal-Mart”; I’d like to disembowel him.
This is pretty much the entire Occupy Movement summed up in a couple sentences.
Raven
@jl: Why would anyone want to talk to this fucking moron?
jl
@Raven: DougJ’s not a moron. But his spoof trolling has gone downhill, lately.
MikeBoyScout
Cripes John, it feels like forever since you gave us such a good rant.
Keep up the good work.
ps. Monocles and top hats seems like a good costume for an #OWS activity.
shortstop
Nice post, Cole.
The Thin Black Duke
Don’t you mean armored-plated?
Judas Escargot
@Caz:
Sure. Tax them more than we’re taxing them now.
I seem to recall the 1990s (with its higher tax rates) as being much better than now.
magurakurin
@Comrade Javamanphil: It’s not a mystery as to what is wanted, what’s a mystery is how they want to achieve it. Electoral power? Revolution? Spiritual transformation? It’s obvious what they want, but the path to getting it isn’t clear…yet.
RossInDetroit
I neither hate nor envy the rich for their wealth. I particularly hate those who brought economic disaster on American families through their greed. It’s a subset, but it’s important (to me) to be specific.
MikeJ
@Judas Escargot:
And the 1950s had the most explosive growth ever with a 90% top rate.
RossInDetroit
@Judas Escargot:
To say nothing of the fifties, with sky high marginal rates and a thriving middle class.
MikeJ
@RossInDetroit: Jinx! You owe me a coke!
Ben Cisco
@MikeJ:
There, that’s better.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Egg Berry:
These are the same people that thought you could eliminate the risk of hundreds of mortgages made to people with unverifiable income by bundling them all together.
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
FTFY
Liberty60
@RossInDetroit:
But there weren’t any labor unions or banking regulations then to muck things up…wait, what?
General Stuck
It has been my own personal big issue for years, even decades, the ‘two America” thing, and the only reason I supported Edwards early on, in the first place. He was the only one articulating the problem in a clear and correct way, and would be how he would look at things in America. He turned out to be a douchebag of the first order, but he wasn’t wrong about that.
But these powerful interests are well entrenched, after 30 years of adjusting the levers of our economy to favor the rich, and it won’t be undone overnight. Except for a handful or two of blue dog types in congress, I think most dems, including Obama, have their heads wrapped around the problem, but there is just not enough of them to tip the balance in the big way it needs tipping, through straight up majorities big enough to turn that worm.
So we are left with pol strategy, that always involves compromise, sometimes painful compromise, to get done what will save the realm. That is why I think it is paramount to break the no tax raise siege of the wingers, as soon as possible. And why I would reluctantly cede some ground on entitlement benefits for the trade off of sizable tax increases for the wealthy, and later, for everyone. And there are at least rumblings from the wingnuts that they may jump that shark, and tear up their Norquist pledges, and do what the country deeply needs, more revenue, and more than just a little.
Interesting bind they put themselves in, the goopers, with the supercommittee deal, with a trigger pointed squarely at their own feet, especially the big cuts to their beloved defense budget. Almost like sub consciously setting a trap for themselves to end the insanity of continued starving the government to drown in Grover’s bathtub. Of which, even wingnuts, have voters that depend on a social safety net.
And lack of food and shelter has a liberal bias.
Villago Delenda Est
I see others have already made the necessary allusions to France in the final decade of the 18th Century.
These assholes seem to be saying “bring it on!” to the tumbrels.
WereBear (itouch)
No one has anything against the rich who accomplish something and contribute something. The device I’m typing on was the creation of a man who got really rich re-shaping the modern world. The people who did that are welcome; they gave something to the world and the world is grateful and glad.
What people with any sense objects to is rigging the system so that tiny minds and tiny souls get to cheat their way there by crushing the innocent and the powerless. They steal the opportunities and the health and the dreams of others.
Then they attempt to undermine the moral and ethical underpinnings of humanity so their theft and cruelty are not so stark and sickening.
That’s what I find objectionable.
PurpleGirl
The Board of Trustees of the organization I used to work for had some quite well-off members. The kind of money where they could sell stock to pay their pledge for the year at any time. Some very wealthy people. But I liked the older people better than the younger ones; they were gracious and never seemed to show off their wealth… unlike the younger ones.
bystander
@Caz:
Any chance you’re the author of this? ‘Cause you sure sound like you could have been.
Litlebritdifrnt2
@PurpleGirl: Ooooh heavens to bestsy no, a ward sister is a Registered Nurse, more than likely with an equivalent of an MBA, who is in charge of an entire ward, in UK hospitial lore she is GOD, even the resident MD would not tackle her.
Comrade Javamanphil
@RossInDetroit: You clearly fall on the evil end of the spectrum. I’m in the stupid camp. And it’s not that I don’t think they would be evil if they could, I just think they are too stupid to be properly evil. Think Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
Mr Stagger Lee
@lol: FDR’s cousin Theodore understood it more personally, he succeeded a president who was assassinated by an anarchist inspired by class warfare, in a age of the violent Homestead and Haymarket strikes.
The Thin Black Duke
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
― James Baldwin
PurpleGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt2: Thanks for the information.
Raven
@The Thin Black Duke: Wasn’t that in the Godfather too when Michael saw the revolutionary blow himself up with the frag?
Mr Stagger Lee
@Villago Delenda Est: This morning I was watching Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst(nom nom)can’t help thinking the extravagance of France pre 1789 and today’s Masters Of the Universe.
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Javamanphil:
General Stuck
@RossInDetroit:
I think you broke a record for multiple posts.
RossInDetroit
So sorry for the postbomb. I have no idea what Chrome is trying to do here…
Cacti
@Caz:
Indeedy.
What’s striking is that “the land with the most opportunities” has 22% of its children living in poverty, and 20% of them lacking consistent access to adequate daily food.
Almost sounds like the “opportunities” are rigged to exclude those at the bottom.
Calming Influence
@RossInDetroit:
Dude, WTF?
RossInDetroit
@General Stuck:
Well, SOMETHING’S broken. Gonna flush & reboot before I cause more mayhem.
BonnyAnne
@Litlebritdifrnt2:
I supported myself and my husband for 6 months as a CNA. It was, to put it mildly, brutal. The pay was $12; benefits: time and a half on holidays, and slowly accruing sick leave/vacation pay that you could start to access after a year on the job. Also, the option of purchasing health care benefits, for only $250 per month per person! I waved the extravagant benefits and so they paid me an extra $1/hr.
And it was terrible. Physically, mentally… in between bouts of hot, sweaty, exhausting work, I got to listen to old people weep because their children never came to visit them. Sometimes I got groped. Sometimes I got shat on. Sometimes I tried to feed 4 people at once while the other workers yelled at me because I was too slow. (It was true.) I cried every day on the way home, because it was the only job I could find.
I cannot imagine the joys of making a living wage doing that, and having actual benefits. Crazy, having a society that values all jobs and not just ones that involve wearing suits and pushing money around…
Calming Influence
@RossInDetroit:
Please tell me how you did that, so I can use it when I have a particularly salient point to make.
MikeJ
Somalia is the land with the most opportunities if you have the gumption to grab a boat and an AK. And if you don’t have the gumption, you’re just a [word that will cause moderation].
Steeplejack
@General Stuck:
LOL. I was just going to say the same thing. Just . . . wow.
RossInDetroit
@Calming Influence:
My tab key stuck, sending the cursor to the SUBMIT field. Then every letter I typed was received as a ‘submit’ for whatever was in the box. Hence manymany posts. I changed keyboards. I like my IBM Compact kbd, but it’s 20 years old & cranky.
This was embarrassing…
Calming Influence
@RossInDetroit:
Awesome. It’s like a FYWP denial-of-service attack for comments.
arguingwithsignposts
@RossInDetroit:
On this blog? What, were you skullfucking a kitten?
The Thin Black Duke
“People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”
― James Baldwin
Preach it, Brother James, Preach it.
mining city guy
David Koch has asked about the CNA referred to Litlebritdifrnt2’s (does that mean anything?).I am sure that the post is referring to a Certified Nurse Anesthetist. These are the medical professionals who administer anesthesia during surgery. At least here in Montana they are very, very well compensated.
RossInDetroit
@Calming Influence:
I was thinking I’d created a magic spell to kill a thread.
I’ll miss that old kbd but I can’t risk that happening again.
BonnyAnne
@mining city guy:
CNA = Certified Nurses Assistant/Aide. Pay scale minimum wage to $14/hr or so (for the top-of-the-line, unionized hospital jobs). 2 months of schooling for a license.
CRNA = Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. Yearly salary (according to the internet): $190,000 or so. 7 years of schooling for a license (BSN + MN) plus at least 1 year’s experience as an RN in a hospital, generally in ICU. Make far less than MD anesthetists, but have better schedules.
mai name
@mining city guy: I doubt that. I am betting she means certified nursing assistant. It wouldnt sound surprising if it was a nurse anesthetist.
Nutella
@Litlebritdifrnt2:
A sad irony: Your UK relatives who make a decent living as CNAs live in a country whose health care costs per capita are less than half ours.
Somehow all that extra money in our health care system is not trickling down to the CNAs.
Gex
@Cacti: Those babies need to pull up their bootie-straps and better themselves then.
handy
@The Spy Who Loved Me:
That’s a strange target.
lol
@handy:
John Edwards is to 2008 what Mitt Romney is to 2012.
The Two Americas rhetoric was great but I didn’t believe for a second that he was sincere. The affair only drove home that he was a two-faced cretin who’d tell you whatever you wanted to hear. It also highlighted how uncritical the Netroots had been in its support of him.
Anoniminous
@JPL:
Here’s a newer, and better, cover.
Comrade Javamanphil
@RossInDetroit: And here I thought you just wanted to highlight my beautiful snarky brilliance.
Triassic Sands
All we need now is a flat tax.