this is the. middle class families should pay higher taxes millionaires and billionaires well mr president that may be easier said than done considering the us has one of the largest income inequality gaps for developed nations in the world so as the president unveils his debt reduction plan the budget battle rages on with some politicians now declaring class warfare. and it's not just politicians sounding the drums of war the american people are fed up as well we'll take you to the big apple where main street is trying to occupy wall street but the use of social media in this case seemed to be more chatter of

an actual target years where the financial district was not. and at the meeting of the minds taking place right now in the new york city the sixty sixth annual question of the united nations general assembly the big question will the organization accept the palestinian bid for statehood and will for some of the struggles facing those living in the west bank. is monday september nineteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine friends out there watching our team well let's start off with a closer look at the economy this evening president obama earlier today laid out a plan that if passed would save the country more than three trillion dollars over the next decade this is on top of the one trillion dollars in spending cuts that the president already signed into law last month post debt ceiling debate now among the i. some const to medicare and medicaid changes to the entire tax code and

letting the bush era tax cuts expire president obama today making the case once again that for the needed changes there needs to be a shared responsibility middle class families should pay higher taxes that millionaires and billionaires it is long that in the united states of america a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns fifty thousand dollars should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in fifty million dollars as expected whenever we talk about taxes in this country there was a strong reaction from other lawmakers coming out to defend the millionaires who some of them call job creators and to criticize the president's plan across the board what it does is it adds further instability to our system more uncertainty and it punishes job creation in those people who create jobs class warfare chris

may make for really good politics but it makes for rotten economics president obama's response it's not class warfare it's simple math so the war of the words and the numbers have already started and while the spin is fun we want to take a different look at this and put it in some perspective earlier i spoke to lou rockwell the chairman of the liquid bomb mrs institute he gave me his thoughts on obama's plan. there's just more than a loney i mean first of all these so-called so-called cuts whether the one signed last month so the ones he's proposing are not cuts at all they're rather they're alleged cuts in the rate of increase which is the way they were when they were in washington when they talk about a cut that's what they mean but even that is not in his control he's talking about over the next ten years will who's going to be president ten years from now it's not going to be obama must there's a coup so and then of course however the tax increase is a real biting hard and immediately would come into effect and by the way despite his talking about the buffett rule in this sort of thing these things are not going

to hurt the buffett or soros or blankfein or jamie diamond or any of the other billionaires and all the guards in the u.s. they're aimed at a human ssion at the young entrepreneur is a minute at the business people starting out and the oligarchs like the government don't like these people they don't like new people coming up and moving up from within the social hierarchy as well as in the economy they like to crush them so they're going to have more taxes on the other job creators the wealth creators in fact taxes are wealth destruction so anybody proposes more taxes seeks to make us poorer as a group however the elites will make a lot more money out of this the government's going to do for on all the government the job holders that obama's been wanting us to weep over her make twice as much by the way as the average american taxpayer cops firemen teachers and so forth government construction workers make twice or more than twice but the average guy makes so about talking about that kind of class where warfare he actually wants to

help the ruling class and stick it to the productive process will certainly lose there are some teachers in construction workers that make six figure salaries but i would argue that in the jordie of than you know our right there in you know the fifty's and sixty's and for a family of four for a lot of people that's barely scraping by but i but this isn't necessarily you know about dividing these people on. it's the fact that a president obama has said that there needs to be some sort of establishment so that people who do make fifty million dollars are getting are not getting away any longer with paying zero dollars in taxes i mean wouldn't you agree that it's because of a lot of the things that in this system in this country that those people are able to make the kind of wealth that they're making. well you know i don't want to shock anybody but the rich run the system and the notion that somehow you know a bomb is out for the poor remember who were his big donors the last time he ran

for president goldman sachs j.p. morgan bank of america citi bank these you go to there to be on president in this country you're going to need big donors you know it doesn't matter where they come from you're going to need a donor and they're going to most likely be from large corporations and so is he working is against those people or is it working against the interests of those of the people those people don't like i would argue the latter and that he wants to curb make the system rigid make social mobility even more difficult and he wants to enhance the government and have governments friends in this corporate state government big government big corporation rule that's he wants to increase that at the expense of the rest of us and it's a very vicious program is but those i'm good how is he doing that by saying that the that the wealthiest in this country need to take more taxes not less and that the people who make under two hundred fifty thousand shouldn't have to pay more in taxes i mean you know we actually saying that the u.s. government the biggest richest most powerful government in the history of that

world the average government employee and making twice what the average citizen makes we're supposed to think they don't have enough money they got too much money for too much money so the idea that anybody's taxes should be increased and let's remember what taxes are the government has a gun to your head and says hand over your wallet or suddenly you to jail now i don't think that's a good sort of conduct in society i think we don't need more of it well if the government didn't do that it's hard to imagine anyone that would willingly give you know the spare money that they had as people would go and buy their second and third yun let's not go about inequality in the sky was their second and third hamburger yes or that let's talk about any quality in this country and some figures that sort of map out part of the point that i think the president was trying to make today a diagram that illustrates sort of in your face inequality in america. so this takes data from the last thirty years and demonstrates that those actually growing their wealth are the top one hundredth of one percent to make an average of twenty seven million dollars per household the average income at the bottom there that's

ninety percent of us that average salary is thirty one thousand two hundred forty four dollars i want to get your take lou is this a result of this enormous gap between the wealthiest and the rest of everyone else is this a result of the tax code is it political policy i mean who is to blame for this growing gap and how do we change course. you know i would argue the the main culprit is the federal reserve indeed ever since the nixon close the gold went back and the early one nine hundred seventy s. that has cut off the final tie from between the dollar in the goods and gold and the fed can print whatever it wanted the average american working families income in real terms after taxes after inflation has stagnated has not gone up and indeed the latest census figures show that the median american families income in this last ten years is down seven point two percent we're getting poorer and it's absolutely true that government connected rich are getting richer so what do we do about that do we punish businessmen who are creating jobs and creating wealth and

making things better or do we take some of the stolen goods away from the people in washington away from the oligarchy away from the ruling class i think that's what we have to concentrate on not let the guys at the top which you know but who are bombers working for against soros and profit and these kinds of guys not let them try to focus our attention on hating the guts of a guy who owns a bunch of the subway sandwich shops he's not the problem the solution is the bankers and all the people who got rich wall street the military industrial complex big pharma it's these kinds of arms of the corporate state that are getting rich far too rich and you know they need to be cut back come back cut back government that's what we need to do and the idea that in a diffraction which is what we're in not a recession we're in the second great depression of america the idea that we should take more money out of the private productive sector and give it to those monsters and creeps and crowns in washington to do waste and damage with them build more

marble palaces what an outrage well what about the us is to know that we have in this country and the president lives and works in washington and i think that you'd probably agree that regardless of what party whether it's president obama george w. bush or is it or you know the future president whether it's rick perry or michele bachmann or whatever and i think it would all be working for the same sort of powers that you're talking about well let me ask you this then let's look at it from a global perspective i mean there are quite a few countries and having some financial hardships especially across europe and when in your mind that's doing it right that the u.s. should learn from. well lebanon did it right levanon during the boom and in fact for that matter canada did it much more right than the us they didn't go crazy during the broom as the europe and the united states didn't however this is entirely a bank problem which is what they're talking about in europe so they talk about here bailing out the banks that's why the people were greece are being squeezed he proposed in europe are being squeezed enron and so forth to bail out their banks or

something sick and wrong about the system where the big banks are able to stick it to everybody else in society we need to let the banks go bankrupt that's what it should have happened here in the beginning of the financial crisis then you can rebuild but assets go to those who can make better use of them and you don't keep putting hard peoples money into these losing enterprises in fact these disastrous and anti economic enterprises these big fractional reserve banks that are partners of the government so we need to let him go bankrupt no more no more tax in the germans for the for the all the banks that hold the greek debt and that sort of thing that's what that is and that ends in disaster in fact we're headed for is a global inclusion of the sort of the john maynard keynes dreamed of in the one nine hundred thirty s. and that just to her renders damage i mean we're all attuned to add vastly increasing prices like in the one nine hundred seventy s. or worse on top of depression as not iraq but point out the one great thing about the great depression before was prices were falling so your money bought more and

more were going to turn that around that reversed into depression people losing their jobs people losing their savings and every prices in ming up banks big banks banks big government but we definitely need a change i might add in talking about the candidates ron paul of course talked a different line than the result of all right certainly an interesting perspective i think a lot of people might agree with you that looking back perhaps the bank should have been allowed to go bankrupt lots of talk about family we're out of time the rock out chairman of the livid and funny says institute thanks so much thank you. well over the weekend in new york city crowd that gathered in the financial district to protest against wall street greed and lack of accountability if you aren't twitter this weekend you may have thought it would be the beginning of america's own arab spring but retreating the ideas did not translate into masses of people turning out our views on a thousand years you're going to however was at the rally and brings us this report

. yes. america's attempt to follow the example i think arab spring banks do is fraud continues now with bonuses obscene merica. how wall street and on the social media have been abuzz with this planned occupation of wall street for months. i talked to twenty thousand people were supposed to spill out onto the streets of the big apple financial district. but not more than a thousand of the most fed up americans showed up again my sleeping bag and told not to bring it. then flew in from out of state to camp out here day and night he has a simple message for the u.s. president he's just backed out of everything you can promised in the campaign so

it's like he's asking you to listen to it like when. i show you what greed and corruption and the lack of accountability that followed brought these americans to the brink this is just the beginning of occupying wall street this crowd say they're going to be here until their demands are heard inside the offices of the wall street skyscrapers over forty six million people are living in poverty in the u.s. with fourteen million unemployed much of this triggered by the shameless gambling of wall street c.e.o.'s this very spot wall street is the site of a heinous crime has been perpetrated by wall street bankers. who instead of guarding people's money speculated with reckless abandon and incompetence. and clipped the whip the wings of the american dream to get these corporations out to pay no tax i pay more tax and then she. that's something i spent a lot of years

a lot of money working very hard to get a great degree is worthless now and right now ultimately. the emperor's ever been we're placing down an army of caesar's. and caesar most. mayor bloomberg has good morning new yorkers that has youth unemployment skyrockets riots could be around the corner what these people bring him to everyday people want to be about in politics and we deserve to be involved in politics and i don't think you should have to be a billionaire like michael bloomberg to be involved in politics you know michael bloomberg is a beautiful example of what's wrong with this country demonstrations like this want to become a real force and not just a fringe group more americans will need to join these crowds i suspect the volume will get a little a little larger you know start off small. questions why there's so few people it's like again the information that gets out is controlled by the mainstream media

the corporate media so will the political and financial elite push americans into launching their own arab spring or will be take note before the crowd swell out of control yes yes yes yes yes this is sure enough for two. and i was able to speak a little earlier with one of the people in attendance at the protest david de gras he is a journalist and also author he wrote the road through two thousand and twelve revolution or world war three now to start off our conversation i asked him to give me his take on the rally and the fact that it was a little smaller this year than it was last year here's what he had to say. well first of all i was down there and i was pretty impressed by the turnout down there i think what we have to understand here is i mean i could speak to us mainstream media is probably the most efficient weapon no question that has ever been so i so you know want to keep our you. know half the size of us on fox news is all over it

and and all the major media companies have their people there and their stench really pushing those protests but in a situation like this when the media companies u.s. media companies are primarily you know major shareholders you know wall street banks and major shareholders of the mainstream media but also or the protests so you don't really hear about it on u.s. television and fortunately the overwhelming majority of the american public does when they get their news and information so i suppose another reason for that could be because i've covered some of these tea party protests as a lot of the people that attend dress in crazy costumes and say outlandish things and hold crazy signs on tell me a little bit about morrie more about your experience there over the weekend i mean this seems to me it was just regular people sort of outraged at what's going on with last free right of the organization that has been very centralized you know there was a general assembly of people who held meetings were forward and it was all very

democratic process you know people have political views across the political spectrum there sensually people who are fighting a back against their own personal financial oppression so that kind of takes on many different ways and like i said you know a lot of americans are propagandized and they're unaware with the realities people understand that the global banks that rob this country but they don't have a more in-depth understanding of that and you know certainly the united states is not the only country with issues people having issues with their banks that you know we think you think a close eye of course on greece but. or not it will default there's a lot of people angry in the street certainly much more there than we've seen here but across europe there are several countries dealing with financial hardships a lot of people angry but the banks i'm wondering david if you see you know any country that the u.s. should try harder to emulate in terms of what they're doing what maybe we can learn from. the main protest was right now as economic policy wise in dealing with

banks oh and unfortunately you know we live in a global economy that will look dominated by the big banks so wall street that will reserve the international monetary fund the bank international settlements so you know they're run the global economy so it's tough to emulate other countries unless there's country that are stepping outside of you know global central bank and we're so you know any step away from the two big banks in the federal reserve into a more essential ally economic system is what we should be emulating. you know i want to take a look at you know again from a global perspective i want to talk about any quality in this country and pull up another chart that we got our hands on to demonstrate the inequality that exists here and kind of compare it to other countries this is called the gini coefficient

it measures income and wealth inequality and basically you can see the top of this chart is denmark sweden and luxembourg these are the three countries that have i guess you could say the smallest gap between the rich and the poor now if you go all the way down the chart you can see other countries and putting the u.s. the u.s. is about twenty seven from this one but this is with poland portugal turkey and mexico. you know i lived right across the border from mexico i grew up in california and that was a place to me that you know there were tiny pockets of extremely extremely wealthy people and the rest of that country seemed to be you know living on the streets you know the kids come up to you and sell. you know at the end of the night talk i mean how is it possible that we arranged as a country this close to mexico in an income inequality chart we're all basically we have a system that was set up one or one percent of our population to run

a. wait with the well over the past generation so now we currently have the highest quality well in american history and you know look at new york city where these protests are happening in new york city as any quality equal to places like honduras i mean you know most desperate third world country you know you have wall street and i'm sure where i know if you have. short subway ride south areas of brooklyn that are devastated poverty you know we have over fifty million people living in poverty. now we were talking a little bit earlier about president obama coming out today and laying out his plan and certainly there's a lot of it that's gotten mixed up in politics but. you know if people are starting to look at things like military spending like the tax code like structural changes to medicare and medicaid that could save money based on your research david and you know from that from the people that you associate with the research that you've

done that you've done have you heard any plan that you've sort of feel is a good one. well you know there's some good plans but all these plans are essentially putting a band-aid on what is it absolutely horrible situation that we need structural changed if you're serious about changing the situation you have broken someone on the system a political bribery which is campaign finance a lobbying and a revolving door between washington and the or biggest global corporations and so you have to break up the too big to fail banks and any change needs to be centered around those things moving or so and plans to you know maybe slight changes are not going to work because we're fair step one what about changes you know designed to bring in money from the wealthiest in this country thought of a a stablished tax rate for millionaires i know that's one of the things the buffett code that president obama talked about i mean is that as if he just trying to throw out fancy language so if we want to get our fair once again that you know campaign

obama coming back promised a lot he's one of those millions through you know people who are not the richest one percent but you know the bottom line as i said who are bob was serious about a period change he would be working on campaign finance because these are all temporary stokes's and so you fix the core structural problems which is team watch money in politics and it's a bit weird when it's having way too much power garman a the market to essentially rig the market and destroy the free market until those changes are made you know all this stuff is you know switch and chairs on the planet and that was david de gras journalist and author of the book road to wreck two thousand and twelve a revolution or world war three. well i had an r t one of the low recognition for palestine from the un really need the return of territory on the west bank and you land more for those who live there ahead we'll tell you how statehood is affecting

people's livelihood. he just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i think i'll make her. get a sense that i love rap and hip hop is that. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the wall that it's playing.

inside all their military mechanisms to work how to bring justice or.

i have a right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize them as very charismatic. american exceptionalism. well the sixty sixth annual united nations general assembly is now underway and in just a little while russian foreign minister sergei lavrov is scheduled to meet with secretary of state hillary clinton but who have already spoken over the phone about this week's events they are expected to touch more upon the arab spring and the situation in libya but at the center of their discussion and perhaps of the entire u.n.g.a. will be the palestinian bid to gain statehood recognition from the united nations

it's a plan the u.s. and israel have both pledged to veto but one palestinian president mahmoud abbas says he will try for anyway now many other leaders actually support that bit and say there is she is actually with israel and in particular the expansion of settlements in the west bank settlements are correspondent paula fleer visited here's her report. he was wanted to meet us here in one of israel's bustling cities he wants to talk but not in his own settlement where he's seen as a troublemaker people they are afraid to talk because the for. the problem move from a group of pinney won't be shut up he says he's tired of being used as a pawn by the government fifty years ago the state made it easy for him to buy a house he didn't have the money so they offered him a cheap one the only catch it was in a whisper and settlement now years on he wants to leave but can't because his

property has hard in value since he bought it so. from no one. because the government doesn't want people in. the west bank of the ones you have agreement was there for the seriously we have to show the. world and the people doesn't want to live he says one in two states has pointed out that the government does everything it can to keep him in most of the land and difficult for that hard. on him in a month to month constructs and has begun on more than two thousand projects here in the west bank melissa policies get extra money from the ministry of education for extra teachers or extra money from the ministry of infrastructure for more interest rector means less payment by the surplus these were the biggest incentives that are not written anywhere in the book istomin suggests prime minister netanyahu

spends nearly a billion dollars a year just to keep decisions going but that has to come from somewhere and tens of thousands of israelis diplomats the answers will come onto the streets in numbers never seen before in israel's history but netanyahu has no plans to leave decisions regardless of what it does to his economy alter the peace process there is no open political debate in israel about whether it's right or wrong doing it and we know about many certain events and there is some part of the event where you have a lot of documents which are empty as palestinians head off to the united nations the israeli army digs in around the sears women's and with women the way the prospects of peace seen as unlikely as binney was actually leaving the west bank policy r.t. class. and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash u.s. they.