Transcription
So they vote for a bill that is horrible for the people of the United States. So let me begin with that. What's the problem here that others aren't talking about? Very simple. The single most important problem of the American economy that everyone really knows is the fact that we are now one of the most unequal economies in the world.
At the end of World War II, the United States was remarkable because it was less unequal than, for example, countries in Western Europe. Now we are more unequal than the countries in Western Europe. We have really raced to the four to be as unequal as we possibly could. Over the last 40 years, to be crystal clear, we have had a redistribution of wealth in the United States. Not the one that Republicans and Democrats worry we might have and have to avoid. No, I'm not talking about that fantastic one which never happened. I'm talking about the real one that happened that we don't discuss although we should, which is a redistribution upward, taking from the bottom, taking from the middle, and giving it to the richest people among us.
Let me give you the statistics today, how unequal we are, and then go back and show you how and why the big beautiful bill is really ugly. All right, I'm going to start with the bottom half of the American people. The bottom half. We are a country of 330 million. So I am talking about 165 million Americans, half our people together, the bottom half. Today, they own 2 and a half percent of the wealth in this country. That's what they own. 50% of the people have to get along by sharing two and a half percent of the wealth. Try to get your head around that, and you will understand what it means when people tell you that half of Americans are poor, cuz that's the truth. Not the makeelie, not the fakery, the truth.
Now let's take the next 40% of the people. They're richer. They have more than the bottom half but less than the top 10%. So we've talked about the bottom half, 50%. Now the next 40%, what you might call the middle of the United States. How much wealth do the middle of the United States enjoy? 30%. Notice, less than their share of the population. If the bottom half get only two and a half percent and the middle, so we're now talking about the 90% of our people out of 330 million, they get 30%. That leaves the remaining amount—23% of the income of this country—is in the hands of the top 10% of our people. That is extremely unequal. You could never have, you could never dream of a democracy, one person, one vote. If you take 90% of the people and tell them you live on one-third of the income we all together produce and we give the top 10% the other 23%, that will make the 10% rich and the rest of us spectators as to how rich they are.
Now, please keep that in your mind when I tell you that the only significant economic act that was passed by and through President Trump's first presidential term was the tax cut of 2017, passed in December of that year. It gave an enormous tax cut to corporations and the rich. Precisely the people who needed it least. Precisely the people who had enjoyed a rising share of the wealth of this country being redistributed to them out of our hands, out of our wealth. They didn't need it, but Mr. Trump gave it to them anyway. And that's the secret to why we have a second Mr. Trump presidency. Because they were so happy with what he did for them in December of 2017 that they brought him back for another term, and he just delivered the same tax cut to them again. He extended the one from 2017, and he added a bunch of extra goodies for them. He will buy this bill, which is admitted by the Republicans, those who have half a brain at all. Even they understand it. This will make inequality worse, just like his first tax cut for them did. Because we need to go back. To really make America great again would mean to make it as less unequal as it once was, not more unequal as it now is. But Mr. Trump won't tell you that because he's, as you might have noticed, among the people at the top, and he's loyal to them, not to you necessarily, you who voted him in, but to the people who put him in. And that's different.
We are making our society a society of extreme inequality. And history teaches us, if it teaches us anything, that in the long run, as masses of people understand the inequality imposed on them and what it costs them in careers they can't have, in jobs they can't get, in income they can't enjoy, in promotions denied to them, as it becomes clear that that's what an unequal society produces, they will not tolerate it. And then the bad news comes as the people at the top realize that the long-term payoff to taking more than a fair share is you lose it all. It's happened over and over again. And to those who think it can't happen here, watch. It is happening here. It's not sustainable. What we are doing in this country, the people at the top, the millionaires who dominate in the Senate and the House are simply feathering their own nest, imagining it will never come back to haunt them. Imagining they could just go on and on. And they have been doing it for a long time. I'll give them that. But they're running out. They can't anymore. It's too extreme. We are watching what happens when that crucial moment is arrived at.
The Democratic Party is so corrupted by its donors that it offers no significant opposition. In France, twice in recent years, the government tried to do the kind of step towards inequality we're doing here. And both times, the French people did the same thing. Out into the streets they went. Their left-wing political parties, their progressive parties, their anti-capitalist parties led them into the street and said, "This country will not go to that level of inequality."
And let me remind you, for those who may not know, in France, the law is once you graduate from high school or college and you take a job, the law requires your employer to give you five weeks of fully paid vacation every year. You get that? And next time you hear an American politician say we're the greatest country, remember what I just told you. Likewise, in France, and there are other countries like it, I just know France well, so I'm picking my example. You're covered with health insurance from the day you are born to the day you die. Anything that happens to you, the government covers the cost of your medical care. It's a right you have as a citizen. It doesn't depend on whether you have a job or what job you have or what your employer is or isn't willing to give you as medical coverage. None of that. It's your right and you get it as a matter of right.
I'm a college teacher. In France, colleges are free. That's right. No tuition, no fees. You pay your room and board, but you are not required to pay. So, you don't build up a big load of debt to get through school. That's all burdensome because we're not allowing that. We want a society in which the rich pay a big share of their wealth to have a decent society and not one that's falling apart because they want to keep the lion's share, as I've just told you, of the society's wealth. The rest of us, we're supposed to produce the wealth in the factories, the offices, and the stores where we live. But we don't get the wealth we produce. We the people get one-third. And the 10% at the top, the boards of directors of the corporations, those people, they take two-thirds. We should have the courage and the determination for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters, and for our children, not to let the growing inequality proposed by Mr. Trump, now rammed through by Mr. Trump, simply to continue. It is taking us in a direction none of us will want to see the last steps of.