It is "us" (the 1%) and "them" (all the other people).
Even if we understand the re-framing very very well, the 1% control the means to effect change right now, they have purchased almost all of Washington DC.
I believe the only way to re-frame is to go to public campaign finance, and to make all elected positions one or two terms only.
And get rid of the stagnant stylized embedded mess of "rules" that Congress hides behind.
Line item veto, or bills without riders that have nothing to do with the bill.

I will probably be given a pony before any of that happens.
Even here at DU, the shit-stirring is working - young against old, progressives practically spat upon.

Videos like this and the "Wealth Inequality in America; Perception vs Reality" series plays a tremendous part in breaking through the wall of cognitive dissonance conservatives surround themselves with, and convincing Independents to get off their intellectual asses and finally pick a side.

seems cool, Let's do this.

People like R. Reich are making headway trying to replace the false messages that are out there. People are very ready to embrace alternatives. When will we hear these messages from leadership? I suppose when there is no risk at all to them.

You notice Mr. Reich didnt mention parties. Saying that their party is worse than our party is a distraction that the Elite 1% love and encourage. While we are busy fighting the other party, our wallet is being picked. The culprits are the corporatists in both parties.

We need to get the corporatists out of Congress and it's best we start with our party.

And posted to Facebook.

With the wealthy paying their share (after all, it is our courts and police and national security that allows them to keep their wealth), and worker pay based on productivity, we would have not budget problems. We would not have homelessness and hunger, we'd single payer healthcare, we'd have shining schools and universities. Love me some Robert Reich.

It seems that Reich is doing these drawings himself.

I realize it isn't fine art, but it is actually pretty good for "presentation art". The graphs are well proportioned. The people are balanced, etc.

It seems like he has a good talent for this sort of thing.

He doesn't need any drawing talent.

but still he was doing the drawing, right?

Again, I'm not claiming this is fine art, but still for informal presentation graphics, it is pretty good stuff.

I suppose it is possible a graphics artist drew the charts in pencil, and what we see is Reich simply tracing over that.

But, in his defense, maybe Obama isn't aware that blood is involved.

Reich is a favorite. Unable to load here (my connection?). Any suggestions?

Telling Your State Legislators What to Do:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

The most important group, I’m pretty sure, is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was founded in 1973 by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and (surprise, surprise) Paul Weyrich. Its goal for the past forty years has been to draft “model bills” that conservative legislators can introduce in the 50 states. Its website claims that in each legislative cycle, its members introduce 1000 pieces of legislation based on its work, and claims that roughly 18% of these bills are enacted into law. (Among them was the controversial 2010 anti-immigrant law in Arizona.)
If you’re as impressed by these numbers as I am, I’m hoping you’ll agree with me that it may be time to start paying more attention to ALEC and the bills its seeks to promote.
You can start by studying ALEC’s own website. Begin with its home page at
http://www.alec.org
First visit the “About” menu to get a sense of the organization’s history and its current members and funders. But the meat of the site is the “model legislation” page, which is the gateway to the hundreds of bills that ALEC has drafted for the benefit of its conservative members.
http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Model_Legislation1
You’ll of course be eager to look these over…but you won’t be able to, because you’re not a member.
http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/

Youtube!

None of what he propounds will happen without Democratic majorities in Congress.

Who's to say that the capitalists wouldn't just hike the cost of rent/housing, insurance, etc... as a result? Housing especially in California is linked to how much the market would bear, thus dependent on how much people are willing to pay for housing, thus the cost of housing would only go up if income would rise. Rents in Manhattan wouldn't be outrageous if there weren't so many people willing to pay so much for apartments there.

There needs to be a comprehensive amount of regulation on the economy if we are truly able to have the benefits of our economy fully passed on to the 99%. What has happened right now is akin to a bunch of bullies in a ballgame outright cheating and dominating the game as a result and noone is there to enforce the rules of the game.

...probably among conservatives, is that the incentive of being rich (and hoarding all the wealth) is in large part the very reason that there is so many ambitious people out there being in business and making companies. In other words, greed is what drives our economy and is the primary incentive to all the ambitious people, and if workers had to be paid fairly, the ambition of these people will go away and there won't be as many businesses nor jobs nor economic output, because there won't be enough of an incentive for one to go through all the trouble to startup and run a business (it often takes at least 5 years for a business to start to be profitable.)

Of course, one can then argue that the economy was great before the 1980's and before the Republican assault on the economy, that businesses did just fine when they paid their workers fairly. Remember also that it was perfectly acceptable to have a virtual cap on wealth (that was one of the points of a 70 to 91% tax rate) that prevented people from becoming too greedy and ambitious and promoted rich people to give the excess wealth back to their workers. Popular ways of thinking were different back then (before the late 70's), it was even popular to think that productivity would be so high by now, that people would have to work so little, that they would have so much free time that they wouldn't know what to do with it. The business world of course thought otherwise, and we have this virtual dystopia now as a result.

I like the idea of linking wages to productivity growth. As productivity goes up wages should go up. Workers should be able to get at least some of the benefits of their increased productivity.

I do not like having an additional 2% tax on wealth over $2 million. I do realize $2 million is a large amount of money, however; I do not think it is large enough to warrant a 2% wealth tax. If there is to be a wealth tax start it at $10 million. Maybe it could start at $5 million.

In addition, as opposed to creating a wealth tax the carried interest loophole should be ended. I think ending the carried interest loophole would bring in more revenue than taxing someone an additional 2% for having wealth of $2 million or more. Taxing someone who makes $1 billion or more per year at a rate of 30%-40% will bring in more money than taxing someone who makes $2 million or more 42%. Also, I think more Americans would be more understanding of making Hedge Fund Managers pay the same rate as regular Americans than making someone who has a net worth of $2 million pay more taxes just because they have accumulated some wealth.

Finally, more should be said linking wages and unemployment to the state of Social Security. Since payroll taxes pay for Social Security, if you have high unemployment you will have less revenue for Social Security. If anyone wants to solve any problems in/with Social Security they should fix the jobs problem.

I love Robert, he is a clear voice of reason amid the frantic babble of fools. He makes a valuable point, but there is more to this whole issue.

In the field of taxation Corporations have become a law unto themselves. Not only do they use pretax money to fund lobbying for tax breaks, that money then become a "business expense" write-off. Multinational corporations can choose where they take profits, note: see the recent Apple interrogation by the Senate. There is no national entity that has jurisdiction that can cover a multinational corporation, therefor, you are trying to control and octopus by hanging on to one of its arms. Multinational corporations are above the law in almost all cases, if there is an possible issue, a subsidiary is created to forestall any foreseeable regulatory or tax problem. This is a problem in a society that is based on the law.

in the top 1%...

They will continue to look out at the country and see nothing but Blue Sky's awhile the rest of us have rainy days and Mondays to get us down...