Because I can tell you, after having spent years in Washington, that nothing good happens
in Washington unless good people outside Washington are mobilized and energized and organized
to make sure it happens.
And it is beginning to happen.
You are happening.
And that gives permission to millions of other people to not only have the discussion but
also to get mobilized and organized and energized around the same issues.
You see, when 25 million Americans are looking for full-time work, when 14 million Americans
are out of work altogether, when millions of other Americans are too discouraged even
to look for work, and when even people who have work are watching their wages drop.
A lot of people say to themselves, it's my fault.
They say to themselves, the reason I don't have a job, the reason my wages are going
down, the reason I can't pay the bills, is there's something wrong with me.
They don't know that exactly the same problems affect millions of other people, that it's
not something wrong with them, it's something wrong with the system itself.
This economy is right now richer than it has ever been.
This is the richest economy in the world.
It's the richest economy in the history of the world.
And yet, what are we doing?
We are cutting education.
We are cutting child welfare services.
We are disregarding environmental problems.
We are saying over and over again, all we need to do is cut this and cut that.
We are getting rid of teachers.
We are saying education.
We don't care about any of this anymore because why?
Because we can't afford it?
Well, let me make sure you understand.
We can afford it.
We can afford it.
We, the people, can afford it.
This economy right now is twice as large as it was in 1980.
But most people don't know that because their wages, if they have jobs, their wages have
stagnated for three decades.
In fact, they've been going down.
If you adjust for inflation, they've been actually going down.
Now where's the money gone?
If the economy is twice as large as it was three decades ago, and if most people have
not seen a wage increase, in fact, most people's wages are going down and they're losing their
jobs, where did the money go?
It went to the top 1%.
A lot of it went to the top 1 tenth of 1%.
Now look, when I talk about this kind of stuff, when you talk about it, many people say, oh,
this is class warfare.
It is not class warfare.
What it is is a recognition that the system has got out of culture, out of balance.
What we want to do is the same thing the progressives did at the turn of the last century.
The same thing that FDR did in the 1930s.
The same thing that we tried to do in the 1960s, and we certainly did with civil rights
and voting rights.
What that is is to save the system from itself.
Save capitalism, because capitalism cannot function when so much income and wealth are
going to the top.
Why do you think there's not enough demand for the goods and services that are being
produced in this country?
Exactly.
There's not enough demand because consumers who's spending a 70% economy, they're worried
about their jobs.
They're worried about their wages.
They're worried, and so they're not going to spend, and if they're not going to spend,
who's going to create jobs if they're no customers?
You see the vicious cycle we get into when so much income and wealth go to the top, but
it's not just the economy that suffers.
It's also our democracy.
Because when you have an economy in which, and let me just give you some facts, and you
probably know these facts already, but we've all got to make sure we have the facts together
because they are truth, and we've got to speak the truth over and over again.
In the 1970s, when I began to look at all of this stuff, the top 1%, we're getting
about 9% of total income.
I thought that was pretty bad, but it seemed to me that, well, maybe that's what's needed
in order to provide entrepreneurs and inventors enough incentive to continue to be entrepreneurs
and inventors.
But then income kept on concentrating more and more and more.
By 2007, the top 1% was no longer getting 9% of total income.
By 2007, the top 1% was getting 23.5% of total income.
And then you know what happened in 2008.
