George Carlin on who "owns" American society

"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it reason why it will never, ever, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better; don't look for it; be happy with what you got. Because the owners of the country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the big--the wealthy--the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevant--politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners; they own you. They own everything; they own all the important land; they own and control the corporations; they've long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls; they got the judges in their back pockets; and they own all of the big media companies, and they control about all of the media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want, they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.

"But I'll tell you what they don't want; they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that; that doesn't help them; that's against their interests. That's right. You know something? They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers, obedient workers: people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

"And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use all day to beat you over the head with when they tell you what to believe--all day long, beating you over the head and their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good, honest, hard-working people--white collar, blue collar, it doesn't matter which color shirt you have on--good, honest, hard-working people continue--these are people of modest means--continue to elect these rich cock-suckers who don't give a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you; they don't care about you at all, at all, at all."

"The Public Overwhelmingly Wants It: Why Is Taxing the Rich So Hard?"

When even the New York Times, the supposed bleeding heart of the liberal media, is asking whether it’s more “perilous politically” to accept tax increases for 3 percent of households or benefit cuts for everyone, you’d assume that even Americans who aren’t rich are are opposed to raising taxes on those who are. But you’d be wrong: nearly three-quarters of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. So why is raising taxes on the wealthy so hard—or why do we think it is?

The obvious answer is that rich people have political clout—but can it really be so simple? A growing mound of evidence suggests that while wealthy people’s preferences may not be the only factor in political decision-making, it’s a worrisomely important one. In a recent study, Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels found that senators outright ignored the views of their least advantaged constituents while catering to the preferences of the wealthy. Princeton’s Martin Gilens has also found that policy changes reflect the preferences of the most affluent, while the preferences of poor and middle-income Americans have almost no bearing.  

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Rich vs. Poor

Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

Inequality

Today there is a higher Gini-Coefficient (which measures the wealth disparity in a nation) than [during] the Great Depression. The US now ranks 42nd from the worst in the world in terms of the gulf between rich and poor, slightly worse than Iran, Nigeria, and Cambodia.

Source: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/02/06/the-disastrous-legacy-of-ronald-reagan-in-charts/

Number of Americans living in poverty 'increases by 4m'

One in seven Americans was living in poverty in 2009 with the level of working-age poor the highest since the 1960s, the US Census Bureau says.
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The bureau defines poverty as any family of four living on less than $21,954 a year.
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The official US poverty rate in 2009 rose to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008. In 2009, 43.6 million Americans lived in poverty, up from 39.8 million the year before, the third consecutive increase, the bureau said.

Where's The Money In America?

A neat infographic.