The Backlash Begins Against Inequality

As income inequality becomes more known across the world, people are responding, tired of the disparity and not being adequately compensated for their work. Income inequality is greater now than it was in the “Roaring ‘20s” and though we went through a recession, the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. As Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders surges in the polls, the British just elected its version of Sanders when it elected Jeremy Corbyn as the Labor Party’s leader in a landslide victory, by almost 60 percent of the votes. Shocked by the outcome, Prime Minister Cameron resorted to fear and intimidation when he tweeted: “The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.” It’s interesting how the U.S. and Britain’s conservative leaders tanked their economies by falsely leading their countries into war with Iraq followed by deep recessions, and the wage slaves paid dearly for their poor voting decisions. These same politicians wonder why there’s an international backlash on the horizon. Sanders and Corbyn oppose austerity measures embraced by the conservatives without holding the true culprits accountable for what brought about the necessity for the drastic measures. Both men spoke out against inequality on all its levels and both have a history of sticking to these core progressive values, and that is why people are embracing them, and not the candidates who are just now touting their concern after they’ve pocketed millions of dollars from their 1 percent donors, Wall Street, bankers and corporations. Our countries were led into this mess of inequality years ago by our then leaders, President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher, who made poor the enemy, gave control of the economies to the banks and fed us the “trickle down” theory—all right-wing rhetoric that benefited only the wealthy. On the heels of this extreme was the push to the center by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, again, the wage slaves took it in the shorts with the “centrist” crap by convincing voters this was a “Third Way” or moderation between both parties, making it seem desirable to people angry with both sides. After 30 years of watching the 1 percent reap the rewards of a rigged system screw them repeatedly, people are tired of being on the short end of the stick, and are now revolting against the corporatist politicians. They now want candidates, who will in fact, represent them, not the rich. States across the U.S. with Democratic governors have raised the taxes on the rich and have seen massive improvements in their financial situations and none of the doom and gloom the GOP have said would happen. California has a huge budget surplus after raising its taxes on the wealthy. The GOP claim they long for the good old days, but the good old days benefited everyone, not just the wealthy. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the top earners were taxed at 94 percent. Today, the top 0.01 percent and the 0.001 percent pay between 22.83 percent and 17.60 percent in taxes. These would be the people our politicians pander to. To counteract its problem of corporation influencing politicians, Brazil’s Supreme Court recently banned corporate contributions to political campaigns and parties. This is a country putting the rights of the people ahead of corporations. We have an effort underway to overturn our own corporate dark money that our Supreme Court allowed to exist. The only way we can help ourselves is by voting and voting intelligently. BREAKING: Greece Leftist politician Alexis Tsipras won re-election. Tsipras had resigned seven months after his first election due to the enormous pressure put upon him to accept damaging austerity measures Europe imposed upon Greece and to thwart a rebellion for his handling of the financial crisis. With 80 percent of the votes counted, Tsipras’ party took 35.5 percent of the vote, the New Democracy received 28.3 percent, and the Golden Dawn came in third with 7 percent of the vote.