Is the "Greedy Corporate B***ards" Factor (TGB) the cause of the Economic Collapse?  You bet. 

Corporate America and Banking America is ruled by utter ******** (unrepeatable expletive) who just don't care so long as they line their own pockets, that middle class thinking workers and everyone else do not make enough to make ends meet.
   by James Schumacher  (ACSA writer)

Despite all the rhetoric about Bank SubPrime Mortgages and Bad Brokerage Practices and too much liberal Credit Card use, all of what we are facing right now gives rise not from the value of the American Gross National Product or the Weakness of the dollar or the hallmark of Banking Failure or Credit Cards or Mortgages, per se.  The real cause for trouble is "the Wage Earner's Gap".

The average earning among Americans was $14,100 per annum in 1975.  Today it is only 3 times higher, $43,350.  But the cost of goods and the cost of living, including housing and cars and oil, has risen at an average rate of 4.5:1 to 9:1 throughout our society, particularly in energy, food and housing.  Corporate America has repressed Salary Increases, redistributing outlay onto each other's inflated cost of goods and services, fattening the fattened calf.  The Wage Earner's salaries, instead of climbing between 1975 and today at an average of 7.5:1 or better, has been literally oppressed by TGB to 3:1 with the largest number of earners earning well below the annual growth rate of essential living expenses. 

As a result, more and more Americans are finding it necessary to dig into a well of credit offered by the same Greedy B***ards in Banking as are oppressing them as employees.  In an effort to then capitalize on the American's "Wage Earner's Gap" more and more 2 earner households give rise, but with the increase net in taxes, results in a "treading water" phenomenon.  In short, the Banks recognized that by offering Sub-Prime Mortgage Balloon rates, they could lure wage earners into a position of decline, and knew that ultimately Uncle Same would have to bail them out.  Uncle Sam, the Bush Administration, has no choice.   The collective credit crunch and inability to pay down mortgages left them with no option, the President's Top Advisor identified the unavoidable necessity to repurchase bad debt until America was restored. 

But the Banks and Corporate America have already girded their stock options and top salaries.  They, in anticipation, in 2007 simply added 33% to their stock options or more, and sold their employees down the river by reducing or not raising their pay.  And there isn't a thing any government administration can do to straighten in out.  It's topsy turvey, workers are expected to work steadily to pay off plastic debt they need to fill the gap between the cost of living and the pay for working.  It's pathetic and the Greedy B***ards are behind it, laughing at how fast the Bush Administration had to act once it caught on that those Greedy Bas***ds were getting away with financial murder, just to save the Banks and the Economy.  The most vulnerable debts are the Subprime Mortgages, followed by other expenses such as health care (noting how many don't have any) and food (which influences health and the cost of health care).

President Bush and Vice President Cheney are going to have to move to positively influence corporate greed to pay their workers better, on the average, because the Wage Earner's Gap can only be filled by either more austere living (which is not supported by present oil, housing and food prices) or by plastic debt, which is the wrong way to go.  Here are a couple of charts.

How Much things cost in 1975
Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 858
Interest Rates Year End Federal Reserve 7.25%
Average Cost of new house $35,300.00
Average Income per year $14,100.00
Average Monthly Rent $200.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas 44 cents
Average cost new car $4,250.00
Foster Grant Sun Glasses $5.00

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From them one can see that the ever widening gap between Earning and Consuming is like two icebergs floating apart, eventually everyone below a certain earnings level will fall into the waters of bankruptcy.  This will then undermine our Country's tax base, and destroy the country from within.

Ultimately we HAVE to compel employers to raise the average wages paid, or we have to drive prices down. Reducing taxes is a necessity as seen by the fact that we reduce them by borrowing $700 billion to buy up bad mortgage debt - money that was drawn as taxes is returned as payments and guarantees. Instead of using offshore sourcing to reduce costs, the Greedy have pocketed the cost declines, leaving America worse off than before with rising unemployment from manufacturing losses.  And TGB are complacent, weak dollar and they still offshore.  They're addicted to money for money's sake.  They have thousands, millions of times as much money as they would ever need and still they can't stop conspiring to rob the middle and upper middle class.

We have, as our own government does, an obligation to insure that every American has a survivable income and a survivable lifestyle.  The GAP is getting wider.  Why?  Because we have allowed the Greedy B***ards to get the better of us.  We don't pool our resources, we don't fight rising costs, we don't collaborate to come up with better solutions.  However, we are also working longer hours for less relative pay corrected for inflation.  Today's average pay would be $55,350 to be equal to 1975's 14,100 corrected by inflation, a fact no one in business wants to mention.  Wretched excess in Corporate and Banking America from overspending on facilities and resources to massive payments to top management ignores the declining American middle and upper middle classes' ability to meet ends.

We quite literally need to rethink Corporate and Banking America, and where possible, revoke the right to underpay the worker.  It is the worker's expenditures and the worker's tax payments that keep America afloat.  It's time for us to insure it CAN keep us afloat or all the bailouts in the world are not going to prevent America from entering another Great Depression.

It's always the simple things that are easiest to demonstrate (above) but most difficult to fix.  How do we cause corporate management to increase wages so that workers can afford to live without a constant supply of expensive plastic credit to keep them afloat?  It's the TGB Factor: a few wealthy families control the entire conglomerate of corporate America to the Banks.  It's time to force them to face facts: if workers can't survive, then neither can their vast, hidden corporate trusts.  And we'll be seeing another Great Depression, only this time TGB will be footing the entire bill.

Despite the financially essential need to bail out banks by purchasing their bad credit, we still have to face the ultimate question: a more equitable distribution of wealth in this country, to every Taxpayer, something The Greedy B***tards will have a very difficult time swallowing - it just isn't in their nature.  This country lives or dies on the strength of its economy which lives or dies on the balance of wealth distribution.  When on the average it falls, we edge towards depression and bankruptcy.

Perhaps we'd have been better off if they'd been wiped out by the original Great Depression.  They've had a long time to create this system of treadmills no one but the top 5% ever seem to get past. The Greedy B***ards!

(c) Copyright 2008  American Computer Science Association Inc.