Here

is a glimpse of working life in todays America. Contrary to the notion that most Americans are somehow lazy or apathetic to work, Americans are harder working now than they have been in the past, and yet their compensation does not reflect the added productivity. Yet, the compensation of the executives and the companies themselves has steadily grown in the last few decades. This is evidence of people working harder, not being lazy or one of the infamous Mitt Romney 47%, yet being denied their due rewards for that effort.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

 http://angrybearblog.com/2011/03/growing-productivity-stagnating.html

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/26/the-widening-gap-between-_n_828659.html

At the same time that the average wage of most workers remains largely stagnant in the United States, the cost of living has steadily gone up for basic necessities,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

http://www.alternet.org/story/152016/debt,_debt,_debt%3A_90_of_americans_experience_income_decline_as_wealth_gets_s ucked_back_into_top_.1_--_debt_explodes_as_we_try_to_make_ends_meet

as well as the cost of education.

 As shown, these are not luxuries, or frivolous purchases. These are the upward costs of some of the most important necessities for life. This has created a huge problem: how to pay for these dire needs with dwindling financial resources? Many, if not most, Americans have turned more and more to credit.
http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0062_household-debt

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/11/debt

 http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/student_loan_debt_correct.png

While these financial blows hit the American public, their jobs are being sent overseas in the effort for business to save on overhead.

 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

And the ever-nagging Ayn Rand-inspired threat that business will suddenly pack up and leave town to find better corporate pastures somewhere else in the world is hot air, considering that corporate tax rates in the United States are among the lowest in the world.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/05/260535/graph-corporate-tax-second-lowest/?mobile=nc

 One of the promises of our current economic strategy was that of making more Americans richer by cutting taxes on the wealthy and on corporations so that the free market could enrich the maximum amount of people. As shown, the last 30 years has been a period of general stagnation and decline for most Americans, while it has been a dramatic incline in pay for the top 5% of Americans.
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it

And the ratio of pay difference between executives and workers remains far higher than it has been in the past.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/CEO_pay_v._average_slub.png

Blaming average Americans for being lazy, unproductive, selfish, and not willing to do what is necessary to ensure their own financial security is not the right approach. The same people who are more productive yet are being paid roughly the same as 30 years ago is not just. Despite these workers being more productive, the cost of living has gone up for them dramatically in key necessities, education costs have risen, and all the while their pay has not kept up with these changes. Rather, part of the blame for these changes, and thus the blame for the financial dilemma that most Americans find themselves in, can be placed on policy changes from Washington that were directed by Wall Street. The Kemp-Roth Bill of 1981, the deregulation of credit derivatives, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 are all examples of former Wall Street executives, businessmen, and the wealthy working within the Government to

pass laws that help the upper class become far richer than they were in the past, These same people are involved in stocks and investments far more than most Americans, where most of the effect of these acts and laws has been felt.
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

 Prior to this financial stress on the majority of Americans, we had a general period of economic stability and growth in the United States.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Year-to- Year_Increases_in_US_GDP_(as_Percent_GDP)_and_Debt_(as_Percent_GDP)_Graph.png (emphasis added by author)

Instead of asking middle class and poverty class Americans to do more (which is exactly what the general notion has been since Ronald Reagan), it would behoove us to return to policies that served the United States well in the 4 decades prior to the Merrill Lynch approach to economic prosperity (referring to Donald Reagan and his initial economic reform of 1981, the Kemp-Roth Bill). Most notably, raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations. During the period between the New Deal and the early 1980s, wealthy Americans were taxed up to 90% of their income, and corporations up to 50%. We were able to do a lot with that money. We won a massive world war, fought in two major theatres. We built a massive domestic infrastructure of interstates, dams, electric power grids, airports, rail stations, satellite telecommunications, and even created the Internet. We sent dozens into space, and even many to the moon. We built a massive armada of a military, with hundreds of thousands of armaments from ships, planes, submarines, tanks, missiles, ICBMs, and other military equipment.


http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/11/22/the-top-tax-rate-is-27-below-us-historical-average/

http://betweenthebalancesheets.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/effective-corporate-tax-rate.png

Another modern-day example to follow, a country that is doing very well in terms of how the common worker lives, how strong their entrepreneurship is, and how friendly the business environment is, we should look to Norway. See: -US Fiscal Debate Could Learn From Norway http://www.progressivepress.net/us-fiscal-debate-could-learn-from-norway/ -In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html

A common definition of insanity is repeating the same process that is failing, and expecting different results. If we were to continue (and as of yet we have not made the drastic changes necessary) on the same course that we started back in 1981, we would be considered by this definition as insane.