The rich get richer, and you know the rest

As Holly Sklar notes in her recent article Billionaires up, America down on Daily Camera Online, America is producing a record number of billionaires, and a record amount of debt and record poverty. If you're one of the 482 billionaires, the news is good, if you're just about anyone else, things are getting worse.

A few gems from her article:

We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures, a record 47
million people without any health insurance and 5 million more people living
below the poverty line.

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of
households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at
New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.

The top 1 percent of households — average income $1.5 million — will
save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax
Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department,
Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer
Product Safety Commission.

Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between
2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus
interest.

Many of the new billionaires made their fortunes on the backs of Americans' misery – namely, with hedge funds short-selling subprime credit this summer. As hard-working Americans who were just trying to get a slice of the "American Dream" fall by the wayside, losing their homes, the sleazeballs in the subprime hedge fund market, with their special tax breaks intact, rake in billions. What is wrong with this picture? Plenty.

It is eerily similar to the inequality and the stock market euphoria of the 1920's – and we all know where that led.