A massive transfer of wealth over the past 30 years has moved 90 percent of the nation’s wealth to a small fraction of our society. We are now a more stratified society then Europe.  But more important to note is that great inequities in wealth translates into great inequality of power.

How did we get to the destruction of our modern economy? At end of WWII we emerged as the only intact economy on the planet. We then built the greatest economy on the globe and helped everyone rebuild in order to have customers for our military and industrial complex we built to supply the war effort.  We also kept our rival, the Soviet Union in check but at the price of flooding Washington with money and special interest lobbyists.  We also did it on credit to build it faster, and throwing away the last vestiges of the gold standard with the Nixon administration. And the American worker prospered with this new found credit and easy money.  Only occasionally did we question the inevitable boom bust cycle we have lived with since the 1950’s. Life is good and we keep on spending, more than we made and allowed our government to be dominated by corporations on both the national and state level

 The first reaction to this mess was the Tea Party, and the debt mantra. Then came “Occupy Wall Street”, another example of the frustration with the collusion between big business and government.  This is the state of the union in 2012.

So what does this mean to you? It means we are now the modern Romans.  American workers are now the vast armies of peasants in the Roman Latifundia, the farm hands of the great estates, except now it is global corporations. In 1971 Milton Friedman, president Reagan’s economic advisor wrote that the only responsibility of corporations was maximize shareholders’ equity .Sounds good till you examine the facts. Two- thirds of the shareholders represent the richest 5% of Americans, and more than half of those shares belong to the top 1%…By December of 2007, just before the crash, almost all economic growth benefited the top 10% of Americans. The easiest way  to boost profits is by holding down wages, streamline labor by layoffs, and  outsource jobs.  By the 1980’s managements compensation rose from a ratio of 15 to 20 times that of the lowest paid worker to 400 to 1, where it stands today.

How did we manage to run up so much debt, since the balanced budget era of President Clinton? In 2001 president Bush made a fatal error which eventually led to the crash of 2009. Rather than use the Clinton surpluses to pay down the national debt or fix Social Security, he pushed through two massive tax cuts on the grounds that it was “the people’s money”. Then he started two unfunded wars at the cost of $1.3 trillion, spent $272 billion on a Medicare prescription benefit, and expanded defense and domestic spending.  When the economy crashed in 2008, it cut heavily on revenues already reduced by his “temporary tax” cuts.

The Congressional Budget office showed that the Bush policies account for more than $ 47 trillion of the current debt. Obama, including his $719 billion has added another $ 41.7 trillion to the debt with the Stimulus program.

It all began with a choice 10 years ago to cut taxes to the lowest level in 60 years, with no apparent cut in spending …and the rest, deregulation of banking, subprime mortgages, the derivative market, and a public that never saw it coming.

So, forget “We the people”, and replace it with ‘‘Citizens United”. The “activist Republican Supreme court struck down all provisions of the McCain-Feingold act that had barred corporations, unions and wealthy individuals from unlimited buying of elections. Now super- Pacs  can raise unlimited amounts of cash with no disclosure. So where is “we the people?”

 It was government’s failure  to make the right decisions about our surpluses ,a stimulus that was poorly designed and executed, and a congress that  allowed special interests to press for lax laws for the financial markets,  consumer protection, and health care,  And no serious debate on out of control entitlements.

Criticism may be in vogue, but the enemy is us.