Class warfare summed up in a simple joke (with an accompanying cartoon)

If we're going to torture this analogy, the CEO didn't pay for the cookies.

A baker set up a cookie-making kitchen, then sold it to the public to make a shit-ton of cookies upfront because it was getting too productive to manage by himself. The public who bought it just wanted the cookie profits and didn't care about the actual cookie-making process, so they set up a small group of people to help keep the kitchen organized. Through an unforeseen flaw in the system, that group of managers voted on how many cookies each other got, and the whole thing became a mutual admiration society where it was up to professional managers to decide how many cookies professional managers deserved, even if they didn't vote directly on their own cookie allocation, it still ensured that manager cookie compensation skyrocketed to obscene levels out of whack with what the cookie-market forces would demand if the actors involved were behaving with economic rationality.

In the meantime, cookie-production technology increased to the point that you only needed 1/3rd as many bakers as you used to, meaning the market had a glut of bakers, and transportation technology allowed some of the ingredients to be mixed off-site as well. So now the bakers have no leverage to demand a higher cookie allocation, and while that is unrelated to the manager-cookie debacle, two separate problems that leave one group rolling in cookies and the other dealing with fewer than they are used to is leaving people understandably pissed off.

 

Poll Shows Support for Embattled Public Sector Workers

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01poll.html

 

The problem is the growing income gap between the top earners and the other 90-percent of the population.

 

Sacrifices must be made!

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/comics/this_modern_world/2011/03/01/this_modern_world

 

But that other 90% all have a few nice flat screen tvs with 300 channels of cable so life is not that bad for the unlucky.

 

Yes, thank God George Bush gave everyone $500 so they could purchase TVs and forget about their lives.

 

Really given the deficit it was immoral to accept that check.
If I had qualified for one I would have not cashed it.

 

Rising gas, food and even cotton prices will end that pretty soon.

 

Let 'em eat Ace of Cakes!

 

Thank God for Walmart.

 

Thank God!

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/29455149.html

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has avoided millions of dollars in state taxes by paying rent on 87 Wisconsin properties in a way that the state Department of Revenue calls an "abuse and distortion of income."

As a result, state tax auditors say, Wal-Mart owes more than $17.7 million in back corporate income taxes, interest and penalties for 1998, 1999 and 2000. More could be due for later years.