America's Real Job Creators Are Broke

As narrators used to say in Western movies: "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

Our policy makers in Washington have totally lost sight of what's happening at the ranch. Both John Boehner's GOP-controlled House and Barack Obama's White House are riveted on slashing trillions of dollars from the federal budget, as though that's America's most important need. Bovine excrement! If they'd lift their vision to the countryside, even they could figure out that our great economic urgency is for the creation of good, middle-class jobs to get America moving again – moving upward and moving together.

Today, we are a dangerously dis-united society. Elite CEOs and big investors are grabbing all the gains, leaving the vast majority mired in recession and facing falling incomes. Since the recession technically "ended" 18 months ago, corporate profits have zoomed, sopping up an unprecedented 88 percent of America's economic growth. Meanwhile, only one percent of the growth that we all help produce has gone to wages and salaries, which is the source of income for about 90 percent of us.