Why we're poorer

The peerless Dean Baker has the answer in a nutshell: 

...the rules get changed whenever it is necessary to make sure that money flows upward from ordinary workers to the rich...

Here are a few numbers that reveal just how poor America has become: 42 million Americans are on food stamps; 48.5 million Americans are on Medicaid; 35.9 million Americans live below the poverty line.

Those horrific numbers could get worse if the attacks on working people continue. Overt attacks include governors putting union-busters on the state payroll, right-to-work (for LESS) proposals in state legislatures, demonizing government workers, attempts to eliminate prevailing wage and project labor agreements and on and on and on.

Baker, though, identifies a subtler attack: legal changes that siphon money from people who work to people with wealth. "Debts Should Be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People," is the headline to his excellent article today at truthout. That working people can't collect what's owed them, writes Baker,

...seems to be the lesson that our nation's leaders are trying to pound home to us.

Baker notes that members of Congress are trying to find a way to let states declare bankruptcy so they don't have to pay their pension obligations. 

State governments are legally obligated to pay retirees the pensions they worked for just like any other debt. It is fascinating to see the interest by many pro-business conservative types in defaulting on this debt. Many of these same people have been determined to argue that homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages should pay their debts....back in 2005, some of the same crew were busy rewriting the bankruptcy law. They wanted to make it harder for individuals to get out of their debt through bankruptcy...

But when the banks were close to bankruptcy because of their own recklessness, the government gave them trillions of dollars of loans for practically nothing, writes Baker. The Treasury even changed tax law (though the Constitution says only Congress can change tax law) to let Wells Fargo buy insolvent Wachovia in 2008.

One of the bailed-out banks that's getting all those near-zero-interest loans is JP Morgan. And guess what? The more people go on food stamps, the more JP Morgan makes because it contracts to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 states and the District of Columbia.

Writes Baker, sadly,

...In 21st century America, upward redistribution seems to be the guiding principle.