In November of 1863, Lincoln said that:

“The government of the people, by the people, for the people… Oh, not you.  Or you, or you, or you, or you, maybe that guy with the nice hat, no, not you, or you, not you either, maybe you…“

They edited some of that out but clearly our first Republican President’s (back when Republican meant a rejection of the aristocricy, not the worship of it) selectivity was taken to heart as the wealth of the top 10% has more than doubled in the last 30 years while the rest are, of course, flat or down (because where do you think they took the wealth from?). The above chart is from the CBO’s Report to Congress and, of course, our Republican Congress will take it as a sign of success, not failure.  

Here’s a lovely chart that highlights what’s been happening to the Middle Class since the Reagan Years – the only thing shocking about this is the fact that people aren’t rioting:

And how have things been going for our nation’s 75M poorest citizens?

They went from ZERO to -$13,000 as we cut back on aid. That’s $390Bn we took from 30M families to transfer up to the Top 1% (and the CBO, ordered by Congress, is not allowed to break down groups smaller than 10% or these charts would seem really outrageous). Fortunately, Think Progress was able to break things down a bit further on the income side and made this chart to illustrate how much money the Top 1% (30M Americans) and the Top 0.001% (30,000):

And yes, of course their net effective tax rate is higher so they contribute more. The average person who makes over $62M per year paid 17% of their income in taxes while those welfare queens making $36,000 paid just 14% – it is indeed an outrage because 17% of $62M is $10.5M leaving them with only $51.5M to spend for the year while 14% of $36,000 is just $5,000 – why even bother collecting it? 

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