I know, I know. You’re shocked.

The CARES Act, or what most people know to be the stimulus bill to fight the COVID epidemic, vastly favors the wealthiest one percent of Americans, about 43,000 people according to the great reporting in Rawstory.

You will not believe that a massive amount of tax relief went to … real estate investors!! That’s right, our president and his daughter’s family will receive massive tax breaks that stand out from even the more business-oriented corporate interests.

Millions to billions went out to corporate and wealthy interests – most in the form of tax cuts rather than outright giveaways (for now), and a pitifully insufficient amount went to the average people I live around:

While people like Mnuchin and Trump live large on the taxpayer’s hard earned bucks and then arrange fortunes in personal tax benefits, the median wage in America is only $933 a week. That’s gross pay, by the way, not take-home pay.

And that would likely be on the high end in poor rural areas. Yes, there was money put into unemployment insurance, and yet unemployment insurance is limited to the circumstances of your job prior to being let go, and a million other “features” which make it far more difficult to obtain the full value.

Mnuchin says Americans don’t need more than $1,200 to get by for a few months. Here is Mnuchin’s exchange on CBS Face The Nation with host Margaret Brennan two days after Trump signed the coronavirus relief bill:

Define “most,” Ace?  If 45% of Americans very much do need that amount or much more, then they are in real trouble. Of course, Mnuchin is the same man who made hundreds of millions of dollars foreclosing on the homes of the poor people who lost those homes due to the great Recession of 2008-2009. There was no relief for the poor in those years. Maybe we should be celebrating this as an improvement? No, Pelosi and the Democrats wanted $2000 per person, children included. If a family of five got $10,000, that might carry them over that couple of months – and he knows it.

The lesson here is that while Trump continues to talk about the “greatest economy ever,” these statistics reveal a lot of details that Trump doesn’t factor into his equation.

In 1960, the largest private employer in the United States was General Motors. The average assembly-line worker with a high school degree made between $55-60K in today’s dollars. It allowed a middle class to grow, where mom could stay home, the family had cars, owned their own home, and took paid vacation to Disneyland or the Grand Cayon.

Now, the nation’s largest private employer is Walmart. The average employee without a high school degree makes about $12 an hour, and if that employee doesn’t have a spouse working, but has two to three children, that employee qualifies for SNAP and Medicaid. Of course, GM’s CEOs and Board members never had anything close to the wealth gap that the Waltons and their CEO enjoy.

The economy is very good for some people. But many hardworking, good people, try to make it on $25K a year, and that is simply not keeping up with inflation. Their wage is stagnant, and the slide will only speed up during this crisis. Meanwhile, some of the wealthiest will likely benefit from the crisis, or at least cover all losses.

I know, you’re shocked.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom