Got Some Bad News, Gipper

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that the top 1% of American wealthy has increased that wealth by 275% since 1979. This is compared to the mere 18% increase us non-plutocrats managed to eke out. The timing of this news couldn't have been better, what with the 'Occupy' protests gaining enough ground that police now feel the need to crack heads. More fuel for the civil disobedience fire.
   Your first impression of this might be righteous indignation, as well it should be. We're cultivating an hereditary aristocracy, and there's nothing more un-American than that. But there's more to this simple statistic, and I don't think it's any mistake that the CBO measured from 1979. Think about it. What significant change happened after 1979? Yup, that's right, the advent of the Great Communicator, that former actor and great-hair President, Ronald Regan. And what did the Gipper and his advisors bring to the table? Supply-side economics. It's the concept that got him elected and set the stage for almost thirty years of deregulation and corporate malfeasance. Well, guess what, neo-cons?
   Trickle-down economics utterly and completely failed.
   The evidence is right in front of you, direct from the people charged with tracking this kind of thing, the CBO. They're telling you that terrible economic experiment has been found to be bankrupt. There's no there there.
   The idea behind supply-side economics was a deceptively - one might say conspiratorially - simple one. Give more to the richest of our society, and they will in turn push that largesse down to the common man. It sounded like a load of crap back in 1979, and it's been found to be a load of crap thirty years on. When you give more money to people - not just to rich people - they're going to keep it. It's not going to charity, it's not going to job creation, it's not going to help anyone but the people holding the cash. Supply-side economics ignores the basic human tendency to grab what little we have and hold on tight; it's counter-intuitive and just plain wrong-headed.
   Yet the idea that this kind of thing works has been touted as successful ever since the Gipper took office. People have made early-retirement careers out of defending trickle-down theory. Even now, these 'voodoo economics' principles are what underlay current proposals like a flat tax or lowering the tax obligation of the wealthiest people. It's just a money grab, and letting the situation perpetuate itself for so long has caused the economic system to sputter and fail.
   I think it's vital that people understand this failure, because supply-side economics has been the guiding principle behind American economic policy for decades. To continue to govern according to those principles is to be the Soviet Union in the 1960s: everyone in the world could see their system was going to fail, it was just a matter of time before it happened, even if they were going down swinging. The American economic system as it now stands is failing everyone but the very wealthiest people, and unfortunately for the rest of us, those people are often our representatives in government.
   As a nation we're smarter than trickle-down economics; we were smarter back in 1979, we just got greedy and lazy and listened to charlatans who didn't have our best interests at heart. We know better than to allow the inmates to run the economic asylum. It's time to take back what's ours.