The One-Sided Sacrifice

This week we're going to hit with a shit-ton of lies about the need for working people to sacrifice the last shreds of the middle class in order to reach a completely unnecessary federal budget deal to avoid the imaginary fiscal cliff.

As you listen - and you should listen, because the Grand Bargain is a giant barbed dildo headed right for your ass - keep this is mind from David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

 The crucial context here is income inequality. Corporate profits and income inequality are at record highs while median incomes are abysmally low. Unemployment is still ridiculously high given the glut of cash held in corporate coffers. The minimum wage hasn't been indexed to inflation in years. Median income in the United States is at its lowest point since 1969. The stock market sits above 13,100 as of this writing, a statistic considered good news to those with investments, but outrageous and offensive to working people struggling to get by given the unemployment and underemployment rate.

Any story about who should "sacrifice" given these realities must contain this context, or the journalist tells a gross lie of omission. When the poor and elderly on fixed incomes are asked to give up needed benefits in exchange for pittance tax increases on the wealthy, it's not a fair trade. It's not even close to a fair trade.