Ed Schultz spoke to Sen. Bernie Sanders about the disappointing jobs numbers to come out this week and leave it to Bernie to make sure the conversation was devoid of any spin and to get to the heart of the problem with our economy right now, which is the severe income disparity.
Sanders did not allow Schultz to paint a rosy picture about President Obama signing the rotten piece of "bipartisan" legislation cynically titled the JOBS Act, and pointed out that it's nothing more than just more deregulation of Wall Street. Sanders agreed with Schultz on the fact that after the kind of shape they left the economy in when George W. Bush left office -- where we were purging around 700,000 jobs a month -- and the fact that they've done nothing but obstruct anything the Democrats have tried to get passed which would actually create jobs, such as the transportation bill the Senate passed that's being stalled in the House right now -- hypocritical Republicans have no right to be criticizing President Obama about anything.
And as Sanders pointed out, there was a recent report that came out which points to the real problem with our economy and whether you can claim it's recovering or not, and that's the fact that all of the wealth is being redistributed to the top.
From Sen. Sanders web site -- The rich are different; they get richer:
Source: The Washington Post
By Harold Meyerson
April 2, 2012Occupy Wall Street is not known for the precision of its economic analysis, but new research on income distribution in the United States shows that the group's sloganeering provides a stunningly accurate picture of the economy. In 2010, according to a study published this month by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez, 93 percent of income growth went to the wealthiest 1 percent of American households, while everyone else divvied up the 7 percent that was left over. Put another way: The most fundamental characteristic of the U.S. economy today is the divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent.
It was not ever thus. In the recovery that followed the downturn of the early 1990s, the wealthiest 1 percent captured 45 percent of the nation's income growth. In the recovery that followed the dot-com bust 10 years ago, Saez noted, 65 percent of the income growth went to the top 1 percent. This time around, it's reached 93 percent - a level so high it shakes the foundations of the entire American project.
