This is not good... and won't be for a long time

So here are some stories that have a great deal to do with one another, and almost nothing to do with any good or beneficial direction in the state of the planet. Consider three distinct areas of operations in which the money is flowing: military expenditures, energy resource costs, transportation of necessities. All of these are huge burdens on the mass of the population of the Earth, yet there are those that extract the financial rent from the system, who are under no illusions about their desparate need to keep the status quo in order to insulate themselves from the coming global depression.

With labor under attack the "share of American workers carrying union cards has plunged from over 20 percent in 1980 to under 13 percent in 2005, and almost half of those are government employees." In a report on the recent boom in corporate profits, economists at Goldman Sachs wrote plainly, “The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income." Cornell University researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner writes, at least 5 percent of workers involved in unionization campaigns are fired, which is both quite illegal and quite routine: Companies would rather pay the nominal fines than pay their workers higher wages and lose the absolute control they hold over the work lives of their employees." Today's labor movement faces union-busting law firms and consulting agencies which are increasingly enlisted by union-wary employers to keep labor from organizing. Today, the vast majority of union members -- 84 percent -- live in only 12 states, leaving workers with little organized power in much of the country.

Dare we say that most citizens of the US, 95% of them, are not experiencing the best possible potential future, given the current state of their lives, their access to healthcare, their costs for energy, and their costs for food??

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs will set a record this year when it comes to paying bonuses. It is giving out $16.5 billion. Some top executives are expected to get a whopping $100 million dollars. They are the highest paid people in one of the world's richest cities, and they're about to make even more. After a year of record profits on Wall Street, investment banks are dividing up the winnings. Goldman Sachs is reportedly leading the way:

Average worker at Goldman will take home $622,000 this year

Senior administrators will get $5 to 10 million dollars

Senior executives and traders get $10 to 20 million each

Company CEO and department heads get $25 million

Top traders will get $50 million and more

"The reason they're making so much money for themselves is because they're making so much money for their firms ... You can debate all day whether it's fair or unfair but they're being compensated as a portion of what they're making," Neil Weinberg, of Forbes Magazine, said. The bonuses help fuel the city's economy through income taxes and sales taxes. Everyone from luxury car dealers to jewelers will feel it. But economists say Wall Street's richest drive up the cost of living in New York and widen the gap between the rich and everyone else.

But that is not all, by any stretch of the imagination

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., led by its strength in bond trading, reported a 22 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit and ended the year with a record $4 billion in earnings. Lehman, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm by market value, increased earnings at a slower pace than competitors Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. Growth was led by a 31 percent gain in revenue from fixed-income sales and trading. Fees from investment banking rose 5 percent, reversing a third- quarter decline

So we live in a country that is now so glaringly dysfunctional that those that are reaping the direct benefits from it all are demanding and requiring the rest of us to keep ponying up so that they won't begin to slide down. They need us to believe that because as long as we do, they "promise" to protect us from the depression that will happen anyway.