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INTRODUCTION We Are the 99 Percent

They will put up with poverty, servitude, and barbarism, but they will not endure aristocracy.

—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

Photo © John Quigley.

In the fall of 2011, a website emerged urging people to share a photograph and story of their experience being in the 99 percent. One young woman wrote,

I used to dream about becoming the first woman president. Now I dream about getting a job with health insurance.1

A twenty-seven-year-old veteran of the Iraq War described how he enlisted to protect the American people but discovered he “ended up making profits for politically connected contractors.”

I returned to a country whose economy had been devastated by bankers with the same connections and the same lack of ethics… . This is the second time I’ve fought for my country and the first time I’ve known my enemy. I am the 99 percent.2

One handwritten sign simply says: I am twenty. I can’t afford college. There aren’t many jobs I qualify for, and the rest “just aren’t hiring.” Tell me, what exactly am I living for? I am the 99 percent.

Collins, Chuck. 99 To 1 : How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do about It, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/seattleu/detail.action?docID=874394. Created from seattleu on 2018-11-01 15:49:13.

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On another website, organized to give voice to members of the 1 percent who support the 99 percent, an investment advisor named Carl Schweser wrote,

I made millions studying the math of mortgages and bonds and helping bankers pass the Chartered Financial Analyst Exam. It isn’t fair that I have retired in comfort after a career working with financial instruments while people who

worked as nurses, teachers, soldiers, and so on are worried about paying for their future, their health care, and their children’s educations.

They are the backbone of this country that allowed me to succeed. I am willing to pay more taxes so that everyone can look forward to a secure future like I do.

I am the 1%. I stand with the 99%.

(Which equals 100% of America.) Tax me.3

These are the stories that are propelling a new conversation in the United States and the world. And so are these statistics:

• The 1 percent has 35.6 percent of all private wealth, more than the bottom 95 percent combined. The 1 percent has 42.4 percent of all financial wealth, more than the bottom 97 percent combined.4

• The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.5

• In 2010, 25 of the 100 largest U.S. companies paid their CEO more than they paid in U.S. taxes. This is largely because corporations in the global 1 percent use offshore tax havens to dodge their U.S. taxes.6

• In 2010, the 1 percent earned 21 percent of all income.7 • Between 1983 and 2009, over 40 percent of all wealth gains flowed to the 1 percent and 82 percent of wealth gains went to the top 5 percent. The bottom 60 percent lost wealth over this same period.

• The world’s 1 percent, almost entirely millionaires and billionaires, owns $42.7 trillion, more than the bottom 3 billion residents of Earth.

• While the middle-class standard of living implodes, sales of luxury items such as $10,000 wristwatches and Lamborghini sports cars are skyrocketing.

• Between 2001 and 2010, the United States borrowed over $1 trillion to give wealthy taxpayers with incomes over $250,000 substantial tax breaks, including the 2001 Bush-era tax cuts.8

Most Americans have tolerated these growing inequalities for decades—in large part because they believed that everyone had a chance to climb the ladder to success. The economic crisis of 2008 and the eloquent cries of the “We are the 99 percent” movement have shattered this illusion of an opportunity society.

Seven Messages of This Book

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More and more people are paying attention to the extreme inequalities of wealth that have emerged in our midst, and they are asking: How did it get this way? How did rules get changed? Who is this 1 percent? Are they all bad? Why do so many laws passed by Congress benefit the 1 percent instead of the 99 percent? And, most important: Can we reverse it? Is there hope for the 99 percent?

You don’t have to read the whole book to get a quick response. I have seven intentions for this book, points that I hope you as reader will take away.

Inequality Matters to You. Think about what you care deeply about: kids, health, education, the environment, culture, housing, and the amount of free time you have. In every area that you care about, the extreme wealth inequalities of the last several decades have damaged and undermined these conditions.

We Are Living in an Inequality Death Spiral. These growing inequalities of wealth, power, and opportunity interact in a fright-eningly dynamic way to contribute to a downward spiral of worsening social, ecological, and economic conditions. Compounding inequalities are like a black hole, sucking the life energy out of our communities, and destroying our health, livelihoods, well-being, and happiness. We really have no choice but to throw our energies into stopping these forces.

99 to 1 Is a Powerful Lens for Understanding This Historical Moment. The 99 to 1 framework is a powerful way to understand what is happening in our society and economy. It is a way for people to situate their experience and understand the dramatic shifts that have occurred in our lifetimes. It also has significant political implications for elections. Some candidates will run as “advocates for the 99 percent” and challenge their opponents as “serving only the 1 percent.” We should embrace the 99 to 1 framework and work with it.

Some People Are Responsible for Excessive Inequality. A simple explanation of how inequality has grown is that a small segment of the top 1 percent—with an organized base in Wall Street’s financial institutions—has worked over many decades to rig the rules of the economy to favor the 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. The rules have been tilted in favor of those who own large amounts of assets at the expense of wage earners. These rules include government actions and policies related to taxation, global trade, regulation, and public spending. These rule changes have led to massive imbalances of wealth and power that jeopardize peace and prosperity across the globe.

The 1 Percent Is Not Monolithic. Not everyone in the top 1 percent is to blame for rigging the rules. Nor is everyone in the bottom 99 percent without responsibility for the growth of inequality. Within the 1 percent are people who have devoted their lives to building a healthy economy that works for everyone. The focus of our concern and organizing should be the “rule riggers” within the 1 percent—those who use their power and wealth to influence the game so that they and their corporations get more power and wealth. This is good news, because the rule riggers, though powerful, don’t hold all the cards. And there are huge numbers of allies in

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the 1 percent who are part of the movements for a more fair and equitable world.

Corporations and Business Are Not Monolithic. Just as individuals in the 1 percent are diverse actors, the 1 percent of corporations are also not unified. There are several thousand transnational corporations—the Wall Street inequality machine—that are the drivers of rule changes. But they are the minority. There are millions of other built-to-last corporations and Main Street businesses that strengthen our communities and have a stake in an economy that works for the 100 percent. We must defend ourselves from the bad actors—the built-to-loot companies whose business model is focused on shifting costs onto society, shedding jobs, and extracting wealth from our communities and the healthy economy.

These Inequalities Are Reversible. Here’s the good news: we can reverse the inequality death spiral. We can change the conditions that are worsening inequality. Indeed, we did this once before, in the last century after the first Gilded Age. The seeds of a new social movement to reverse these wealth inequalities are sprouting across the planet.

This book is the story of what has happened and how we can build an economy that works for everyone.

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