Doing Real Fine

More evidence, as President Obama said a few weeks ago, that "the private sector is doing fine" (via The Christian Science Monitor) [italics mine]?

A shocking figure from the Wave [Accounting] survey [of their 250,000 micro and SMB customers] relates to how well the business owners were able to meet their basic needs through their business. An incredible 52 percent of American small business owners can’t put food on the table through the earnings from their business over the past 12 months.

Even though many said they can’t make ends meet, it is not due to a lack of effort. Two thirds (66 percent) of business owners in the Wave survey reported struggling with time management and work/life balance with 43 percent of respondents having to work after normal business hours to take care of administrative tasks like accounting and bookkeeping.

If this is Mr. Obama's idea of "doing fine," I'd love to see his definition of "doing poorly."

Comments

[Tom]

We'll get to the doing poorly part after the election (of our fearless leader taking us over the cliff). Expect martial law as the banks and Wall Street finally melt down and the industrial economy grinds to a halt. If we can resist for as long as possible and take-over where ever we can (including getting the police and military to JOIN us) we may be able to outlast it (the amount of energy needed would be unsustainable unless it was a concerted surprise attack on the entire country, probably big cities first). What to do after that is wide open and scary to think about.

[Binko Barnes]

We now live under an economic and governmental system where ONLY large corporations can thrive. Only large corporations can afford to buy access to the legislature and regulatory agencies. Only large corporations can successfully navigate the morass of laws and regulations. It's their world.

The fact that average Americans are impoverished in the process of building a corporate friendly nation means nothing to the elites. They take a world view. More sheep to shear somewhere else. Pleasant places to live somewhere else.

Doesn't matter who gets elected. This process is so entrenched that it can't be derailed without a complete tear down and rebuild.

[stevefraser]

Small businesses are the heart of a free society....so the present administration of radical DEMS will do everything they can to undermine it...and put all their efforts behind the crony capitalism of selected large corporations.

[eugene12]

An old vet friend and I were talking about how we were just cannon fodder in a day gone by. Then we realized we've been cannon fodder always. We were just financial cannon fodder from the get go of the nation. We simply went from a royal elite to an economic one. This isn't new. Much of what we believe about ourselves, our role in society and the America in general is simply mythology. A belief system hammered into us as children. The disillusionment is tough, huh?

[roger]

Reallity can be disturbing.
A people's history of the United States, 1492 to present By Howard Zinn.
A very good read.

[ChipN]

Inevitably the 'Chattering Class' will transfer
responsibility for the economic catastrophe
onto the People and their Representatives,
exactly as the Deficit-Debt was bailed out,
transferred onto the Backs of the People!
That's what Fascists Do! That's ALL they do!

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids,
and the Long Con That Is Breaking America
by Matt Tiabi

The financial crisis that exploded in 2008
isn’t past but prologue. The stunning rise,
fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-
and-bailout era was the coming-out party for
the network of looters who sit at the nexus of
American political and economic power.

The grifter class—made up of the largest
players in the financial industry and the
politicians who do their bidding—has been
growing in power for a generation, transferring
wealth upward through increasingly complex
financial mechanisms and political maneuvers.
The 2008 crisis was only one terrifying
manifestation of how they’ve hijacked America’s
political and economic life.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia
How America's biggest banks took part in a
nationwide bond bid-rigging conspiracy FOR
THE LAST TEN YEARS-
until they were caught on tape,
BUT NOBODY WENT TO JAIL!
www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620?print=true

Don Rumsfeld was forced to admit the Pentagon
'lost track of' $2,300 BILLION on the eve of
Sep11, since that time, they have lost and/or
accumulated an additional $3,000 BILLION from
the Bush Resource Wars, and soon on to Tehran.

We've been HIJACKED and our SSTF been STOLEN.
Americans are now $8,200 BILLION in the bag
to the Grifting Class. Confirm at Treasury.gov.

[SurvivalAndProsperity.com]

Anyone else think we've gone from a republic to a plutocracy (gov't by the wealthy)? Or maybe it was a plutocracy the whole time.

[roger]

it was a plutocracy from day one.
All (men) where created equal exept slaves (people of color)people without property, and the femal gender.