...our current system and philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.This piece is an excellent illustration of a carefully crafted piece of One Percent propaganda to get members of the 99 Percent to support political acts that will destroy major safety nets that are needed to sustain them, most vitally in the present crisis. The author uses a variety of tricks to induce the 99 Percent not only to act against their own interests, but to serve one of the long held objectives of the One Percent ruling class--destroy or privatize Social Security and Medicare, and definitely destroy Medicaid. I would like examine the details, but unfortunately I simply don't have the time this morning. Instead, I will just hit the high points of this propaganda piece and trust that you can critique the details.
What you see in the title and in the beginning phases of this article and related charts are the "hooks": a term used in the advertising industry to get your attention. The title got mine! Gary Dahl from Dummies.com provides a very adequate definition of this concept: "A creative hook is an emotional trigger in your advertising that attracts buyers; it appeals to their self-image and affirms that you provide what they’re looking for."
Thus, the author plays on your emotions and furnishes related actual, although superficial, facts about the recent destruction of the economy and the effects on ordinary people. Because he wants to reach everyone, he uses folksy language and claims that it is "not about politics". He just wants to present the "facts" which he provides in 63 slides with captions to insure that you interpret them correctly.
After he "hooks" you, he slowly reels you in over the course of the charts and their interpretations. Like all good propagandists, he uses a mixture of mostly legitimate facts laced with deceptions and distractions to slowly introduce what the One Percent operatives want you to do. Of course, what they want you to do is definitely political in every sense of the word. (See chart 63, the last one.)
Just one question: where do you think Social Security, funded by matching 50% worker and employer payroll taxes, would be now if the neo-conservatives starting back in the Reagan administration had had their way and privatized it, and furnished Wall Street gamblers with all this money? (In only one year, fiscal year 2009-2010 this amounted to $2.4 trillion, according to Eric Laursen in his book, The People's Pension.)
