Demand the impossible.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment - Social reform in the United States

The brazenness of the ruling class is a sight to behold. The people who run this country--the Wall Street tycoons and the CEOs of America's largest corporations--are not content with the extraordinary amount of lucre they've grabbed already. They're insatiable. And they don't give a damn about anyone else.

Their Republican servants in Congress, and their contract employees among the Democrats, have so rigged the legislative process that the vast majority of the American people can't get what they desperately want and need. And the plight of the sixteen million Americans without work right now does not get the attention it deserves--or the remedy. Instead, Congress protects the prerogatives of those at the top.

Meanwhile, President Obama readies the public for cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare.

In the midst of an agonizing economy, Republicans in Congress slammed the door on any serious proposal to generate jobs. They concocted the debt-ceiling crisis, and then used it as a way to extort massive cuts to social programs, which will only make the unemployment picture more dire. And even after Hurricane Irene took its toll on the East Coast, they were in no mood to approve government spending for devastated areas like Vermont.

Through it all, they made sure that no rich person or corporation would have to pay a dime more in taxes. Their priorities could not be clearer. In the August debate of the Republican Presidential candidates, they all said that even a budget deal that included ten dollars in cuts for every dollar in tax increases would not be acceptable. They've made the money-grab by the rich a matter of the highest principle.

And what a money-grab it's been.

"After remaining relatively constant for much of the postwar era, the share of total income accrued by the wealthiest 10 percent of households jumped from 34.6 percent in 1980 to 48.2 percent in 2008," according to a report last year by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. "Much of the spike was driven by the share of total income accrued by the richest 1 percent of households. Between 1980 and 2008, their share rose from 10.0 percent to 21.0 percent, making the United States one of the most unequal countries in the world."

It's even worse when you look at wealth, not income, as the top 1 percent now accounts for 40 percent of the nation's wealth, up from 33 percent in the 1980s.

"All the growth in recent decades--and more--has gone to those at the top," Nobel...