Stan Sorscher argues that Americans are currently living “the cookie joke” — because income inequality is all about political power:

“A CEO, a Tea Party member and public employee sit at a table, with 12 cookies on a plate. The CEO grabs 11 cookies and tells the Tea Party member, “You better watch him. He wants your cookie.” The CEO took 11 out of 12 cookies. This isn’t a question of what’s fair. The CEO has the economic power to take 11 cookies, and he does.

“I found a conservative blog that explained this point of view. The CEO deserved 11 cookies. Without the CEO, the 12 cookies would never have been baked. No one would have anything without the CEO. Not only did the CEO deserve 11 of the 12 cookies, but if we somehow had 15 cookies, the CEO would deserve 14. If the CEO made 24 cookies in China, he should get 23. The Tea Party member and the public employee should thank the CEO for their one cookie. The conservative blogger acknowledged that his interpretation wasn’t funny.

“[...] By shoveling 93% of new income to the top 1%, we are currently living the cookie joke in full measure. This isn’t working. If trickle-down policies could ever work, then our figurative cookie-bakers would already have hired millions of new employees. They didn’t. It hasn’t worked for the last 35 years.

“It doesn’t work.

“Well… it doesn’t work for 99% of us. Stiglitz puts it this way, “We’ve been shaping our society to create people who are more selfish.” Increasingly, policies are created by the richest 1%, and for the richest 1%. Their interests are placed first, through globalization, privatization, deregulation and insanely expensive political campaigns.

“Meanwhile, 99% of us are put at risk. We risk losing our jobs, our economic security, our homes, health care, education for our children, and economic opportunities.

“As always [the rich] seem to be the winners from the policies that they advocated and that imposed such high costs on others.”

“This is bad for democracy, bad for our future as a nation, bad for our ability to solve serious problems on national and international levels, bad for the environment and the planet, and just plain bad.

“We could just as well shape society to restore balance to our social, political and economic life. We start with a rehabilitation of the Social Contract. We need each other to prosper. That is,our neighbors must prosper for us to prosper.

“We need to restore trust in institutions of civil society. That includes government.”

It’s no coincidence that the GOP / one percent want the good old reliable conservative voter base to keep buying into the Republican ‘ideal’ of less government, smaller government, government can’t be trusted, government is baaad, the only good government is currently drowning in a bathtub. And it’s funny because as the rabble expect less of government, and as they elect politicians who promise them less government (and who, when elected, actually give them government that truly doesn’t work, as promised), somehow the rich wind up with more for themselves – from government, in the form of policies, tax laws, and benefits. And the rich get even richer while the rest of us get poorer.

If conservative voters opened their eyes, they’d see the elite don’t use “boot straps” to get ahead. They’re using government.

via: christopherstreet