http://www.alternet.org/economy/153531/How_Can_the_World%27s_Richest_Country_Let_Children_Go_Hungry%3F_6_Tricks_Corporate_Elites_Use_to_Hoard_All_the_Wealth/?page=entire

How Can the World's Richest Country Let Children Go Hungry? 6 Tricks Corporate Elites Use to Hoard All the Wealth

America is filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around.

"Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans, nearly 1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income."

“Study: 1 in 5 American children lives in poverty."

“In 2010, 17.2 million households, 14.5 percent of households (approximately one in seven), were food insecure, the highest number ever recorded in the United
States.”

What’s going on here? Aren't we the richest country on earth?

Day in and day out we are told that if the government doesn’t tighten its belt, we’re all headed for debtor’s prison. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are under attack. State budgets are in disarray. Teachers and firemen are getting canned. Public services are slashed. This is the new America and we'd better get used to it, the pundits proclaim. You would think we were a poor country.

But we’re not. We’re filthy rich, but the money is hidden away by the 1 percent while poverty rises all around. Here’s why.

1. Productivity continues to rise but the 99 percent doesn’t share in the benefits.

The key to the material wealth of any nation is productivity – how much we produce per worker hour. Productivity is a crude measure of our overall level of knowledge, technique, organization, skill and cooperative work practices that produce the sum total of our goods and services. Lo and behold, there’s nothing at all wrong with productivity in America. It continues to rise and rise just like it did during our post-WWII boom years. What’s changed is that the average American wage has stalled since the mid-1970s -- which is precisely the time that we started to deregulate Wall Street and cut taxes on the rich.

During the 1950s and '60s boom years, almost all Americans shared in the fruits of productivity leading to rising real wages (after inflation). But now the productivity lines and wage lines have pulled apart. The gap between the two lines represents trillions of dollars that once went to the average American but are now going almost entirely to the super-rich.

2. Large corporations pay next to nothing in state and local taxes.

As a result of the Wall Street-created crash, state and local governments are struggling to make up for lost revenues and rising costs to care for the jobless and the destitute. In a fair society we would be asking Wall Street to pay for the damage it created. Instead, Wall Street has used its enormous lobbying muscle to make sure politicians are asking states to cut back public services of all kinds.

Meanwhile, large corporations use every trick in the book to avoid paying state and local taxes. A recent joint report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and Citizens for Tax Justice reveals that 265 large corporations avoided $42.7 billion in taxes from 2008 to 2010. That’s enough money to hire more than one million teachers! Instead, we are firing teachers in the name of fiscal austerity.

3. Money that should go toward the common good pours into the pockets of the 1 percent.

In 1970 the federal marginal tax rate on millionaires was 70 percent. That means for the next dollar the super-rich earned, 70 cents went to the federal government to pay for building what was then the most productive infrastructure in the world. Now the official top rate has fallen to 35 percent. But it’s much worse than that. Most of the super-rich take full advantage of the senseless 15 percent capital gains rate which pours hundreds of billions into the pockets of the super-rich. As a result, the real overall tax rate for the super-rich has plummeted to less than what the average secretary pays.

4. The biggest corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash.

While politicians lament the debt crisis, America’s largest corporations are refusing to invest more than $1 trillion in cash because of the lack of consumer demand (resulting from high levels of unemployment caused by the Wall Street crash). That money is doing little for our economy. It’s not putting our people to work. It’s not helping to close state and local budget gaps. It’s not helping to improve our depleted infrastructure.

5. Hedge funds have over $1.917 trillion in misused investment capital.

Wall Street investment firms are loaded with investment capital looking for ways to make outsized profits while paying as little in taxes as possible. This is the money that floods Wall Street casinos and that led directly to the housing bubble and crash. The money is still there just itching to ride up and down the next bubble. Approximately 80 percent of all stock market transactions come from the manipulations of these funds. And much of the money jumps in and out of the markets in nanoseconds using high-speed automatic trading techniques that extract hidden taxes from the rest of us. Most of this speculative capital serves no broader economic or social purpose except to enrich the super-rich.

6. Many of the 1 percent cheat on their taxes.

When you have enormous sums of money, you can hire high-powered accountants and lawyers to help you avoid taxes. But these maneuvers aren’t just taking advantage of tax loopholes. It’s about cheating. Many of the super-rich hide their money in offshore tax havens. They place it in secret bank accounts without declaring it. They just pretend it doesn’t exist. How much money are we talking about? The tax revenues lost in the U.S. are estimated to be $337 billion a year according to a November report by the Tax Justice Network. This is more than enough to put America back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

So there hides our nation’s wealth. We are as productive as ever, but 99 percent aren’t getting their fair share. Instead the 1 percent are channeling our collective wealth away from our daily needs through investment hoarding, tax loopholes and outright tax cheating. Rather than using it to create badly needed jobs, they pocket it. And then our financial elites have the nerve to ask the rest of us to tighten our belts because the public trough is running low due to a financial crash they created! It’s an outrageous fabrication designed to shift the debate away from the obvious: Wall Street and its minions took down our economy, got bailed out and now refuse to pay anything to repair it. Instead they want us to pay for the damage they created.

This is the material basis for Occupy Wall Street and we should salute the occupiers for changing the national dialogue back to where it belongs. But we will have to go much further if we hope to create employment, alleviate rising poverty and bring a modicum of justice to our society. We will have to do nothing short of democratizing Wall Street from top to bottom so that our financial elites can no longer manipulate the economy and politics to serve their ends.

We are still the richest nation on earth, but our wealth has been captured and hidden from view. We can’t expect Occupy Wall Street to rectify this ungodly mess on its own. It’s time for the rest of us to join the fight to recapture our nation’s wealth while resurrecting our society’s fundamental decency.

No one should ever be poor in a country so rich.

We are not doing that well here in the UK. Twenty-five per cent of all households here are in what is known as fuel poverty. That means ten per cent or more of the total household income goes on heating and hot water for the home. To top it all we have the burden of hosting the 2012 Olympics, with goodness knows how many millions to be spent on the opening and closing ceremonies.

China has even more hungry people. I don't see what national wealth and hunger have to do with anything.

That's the nature of nature.
The strong survive.
Wouldn't be safe to make a commune.
The Feds would call it another Waco and whack-us.

It IS NOT human nature to watch children starve!!

If you watch those shows on kids starving, you and I watch them starve.

Don't know about you but, if they are showing near dinner time, I eat while watching.

I'm not in an area where there is destitution. I also don't have the ability to save starving kids.

I can't stop the starvation.

Can and do you?

Or, do you know they are starving and do nothing? Not an accusation or assumption. Just a question.

No, I don't watch the commercials
I know too many suffer...I donate money and goods.

Communal living is happening all over the place..they have each others back and no one goes without.
That is the natural human way.

That is one of my biggest complaints about our politicians. How can they possibly know how the people affected by their votes lives while looking down from glass towers?

They only meet the people on campaign tours, in a town or rural area. Few venture in to see the day to day suffering unless a catastrophy occurs...then the plight is hidden under the destruction.

I say we make ALL representatives live on a wage comparable to that of their voter base (as Paul says he will do as President), take away the lucretive pension and medical plans they voted for themselves (but can seem to get for us!), take the money and gift exchanges out of lobbying, and set term limits.... and see how they vote then!

Isn't that what they did at Waco?

How'd that work out?

Former Members Get Millions From Pensions
By Jennifer Yachnin
Roll Call Staff
Feb. 9, 2011

Rep. Howard Coble, who offered legislation to scale back Congressional pensions in the 1990s, said trying again now would be “an exercise in futility.”

Taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for at least $26 million in pensions for former Members of Congress this year, even as Congress embraces austerity by curbing its annual pay raises and voting to slash office budgets.

That estimate, drawn from data published by the Congressional Research Service, is based on payments to 455 former Members as of October 2009 and doesn’t include potential payouts to dozens of newly retired lawmakers who are eligible to draw their pensions.

While Members have taken aim at Congress’ internal spending habits in recent months — lawmakers voted against an automatic pay raise in the current fiscal year and the House voted last month to cut its office budgets by 5 percent — the Congressional pension program is rarely mentioned on Capitol Hill.

“Along with the franking privilege, pensions represent a valuable perk to both political parties that lawmakers don’t want to touch,” National Taxpayers Union spokesman Pete Sepp said.

Aside from passing a measure in 2007 to strip Members convicted of certain felonies while in office of their Congressional pensions, neither the House nor Senate has pursued major changes to their retirement program since the mid-1990s.

Rep. Howard Coble, among the leaders of a 1995 effort to overhaul the pension program, acknowledged that he eventually abandoned his legislative effort, although he continues to oppose the retirement plan.

“It was tilting at windmills. Nothing was going to happen,” the North Carolina Republican said Tuesday. “I think it would have been perceived to be showboating, to go to the well of the House two or three times a year.”

Coble said he does not anticipate reviving his legislation to end the pension in the new Congress: “In order for it not to be an exercise in futility, you’d have to have some reasonable chance of passage, and the media at large would have to weigh in.”

While both freshman Reps. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) and Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) have publicly announced they will not participate in the pension program, neither has introduced legislation proposing changes to the retirement plan for their colleagues.

It also remains unclear whether Schilling and Walsh will actually be able to decline the retirement benefits.

Congress last reformed its pension program in the mid-1980s. Members elected after 1984, like other federal employees, are covered by the Federal Employees Retirement System, which comprises Social Security payments, a monthly pension based on tenure and pay history, and the Thrift Savings Plan, which is similar to private 401(k) accounts.

Members were able to decline to participate in the program until 2003, according to the CRS, when Congress prohibited lawmakers from opting out.

Coble said he believes he is the only Member to decline both the pension benefit and the TSP.

“Those were not my most brilliant financial decisions, I might admit,” Coble said, stating that the decision to decline a pension will prevent him from being able to continue his health care coverage when he retires. “But I felt like the taxpayers are paying my salary, and I don’t know that they need to contribute to the pension.”

Under the FERS — which covers all federal employees — Congress, as the “employer,” and Members each contribute funds to the pension plan.

According to the CRS, in 2011, Members covered by the FERS will contribute 1.3 percent of their salaries to the pension program, and Congress will pay another 17.9 percent of salary costs. Members also pay another 6.2 percent of their earnings to Social Security.

Members may also contribute up to $16,500 in pre-tax dollars to their TSP accounts in 2011, and they may receive up to 5 percent in matching funds from their “employer.” Each Member receives 1 percent in matching contributions from Congress, regardless of whether they contribute.

Members elected before 1984 may participate in a different pension plan: the Civil Service Retirement System.

Each retirement plan requires Members to remain in Congress for five years before they are eligible to receive a benefit at retirement age. Both plans allow Members to take full retirement at 62, but ex-lawmakers may qualify for a full or reduced pension as young as 50 depending on their length of service.

As of October 2009, of the 455 former Members drawing federal pensions, 275 retired under the CSRS and received an average income of $69,000, while another 180 retired under both programs or the FERS alone and received an average pension of $40,000, according to the CRS.

A Roll Call review of Members who left Congress during or after the 111th Congress found more than three dozen lawmakers who could immediately begin to draw their full pensions and more than a dozen others who could potentially draw a reduced pension at an earlier age.

There is no public data on actual pensions paid to individual ex-Members, although payments are sometimes made visible when lawmakers are elected to state offices and are required to disclose personal financial data.

Former Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D), now the governor of Hawaii, reported in January that he draws a federal pension for his service in Congress that paid $25,000 to $50,000 in 2010. Abercrombie resigned in February 2010 and was sworn into the governor’s office in December.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in November that former Rep. and now-Gov. Nathan Deal (R) of Georgia will receive a Congressional pension of $52,000.

In the final analysis, Congressional pension benefits are 2-3 times more generous than what a similarly-salaried executive could expect to receive upon retiring from the private sector.

It works for illegals, students and various other peoples in the USA.

My complaint within that is the entitlements paid to the illegals KNOWN to be illegal and still allowed!

The problem is not that the top 1% don't pay enough. Even if you took their incomes entirely, it wouldn't cover any significant amount of the national debt. The GDP is only ~14 trillion, the top 1% earns an average of ~380,000. The national debt is currently $15,143,198,352,990.25

There are numerous problems. Among them, 1) close ties between government and corporations (aka "fascism") 2) the burden of national debt and inflation is passed on to the middle and lower classes and is virtually unchecked 3) The political class is easily bought off and will

Also keep in mind that in the last decade, the FED has printed more money (via QE) than has been printed in all US history up to that point.

These problems cannot be solved by destroying wealth. There needs to be real, drastic cuts in spending at all levels and a return to sound money.