middle class families should pay a higher taxes to 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 developed nations in the world while 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 to all they can do the big apple where main street trying to offer you high wall street but the use of social media in this case seems to be more chatter than action here's where the financial district was not. and it's

a meeting of the minds taking place right now in new york city a sixty six session of the united nations general assembly the big question will the organization accept the palestinian bid for statehood we'll explore some of the struggles facing those living in the west bank. it's monday september nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team and let's start off this evening with a closer look at the economy president obama laid out a plan today that if passed would save the country more than three trillion dollars over the next decade this is on top of the one trillion and spending cuts that the president already signed into law last month post debt ceiling debate i'm sure you remember that now among the ideas some cuts to medicare and medicaid changes to the

entire tax code and also letting the bush era tax cuts expire president obama today making the case once again that in order to get these needed changes there needs to be a shared responsibility. middle class families should pay higher taxes the millionaires and billionaires it is like 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 billion dollars was expected there has been a strong reaction from lawmakers on the right coming out to defend the millionaires also known to many as the 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 and those people who create jobs class warfare chris may make for really good politics but it makes

a rotten economics president obama responded to that by saying it's not class warfare it's just now so the war of the words in the numbers has already started and while the spin is spun we want to take a different look at this and put it in perspective earlier i spoke to lou rockwell the chairman of the luden von nieces institute he gave me his thoughts on obama's plan. it was just more of the maloney i mean first of all these so-called so-called cuts were the ones signed last month of the ones he's proposing are not cut so although they're rather they're alleged cuts in the rate of increase which is the way they when they were in washington where they had 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 well who's going to be president ten years from now it's not going to be obama most there's a coup so and then of course the however the tax increase is a real biting pardon immediately would come into effect and by the way this guy is talking about the buffett rule in this sort of thing these things are not going to

hurt or soros or blankfein or jamie dimon or any of the other billionaires and all the guards in the u.s. they're aimed at you mention bad to a young entrepreneur is a minute business people starting out. the other arcs like the government don't like these people they don't like new people coming up and moving up in 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 the structure so anybody proposes more taxes seeks to make us poor 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 job holders that obama's running us a repro for would 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 what the average guy makes so i was talking about that kind of class where warfare he actually wants to help the ruling class and stick it to the

productive crouse well certainly lou there are some teachers and construction workers that make six figure salaries but i would argue that the majority of than you know are 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 when she wouldn't 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 you ran for president goldman sachs j.p.

morgan bank of america citi bank you gotta learn 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 big donors and they're going to most likely the from large corporations and so is he working it 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 or make the system rigid make social mobility even more difficult and he wants to enhance the government and hence the government's friends in this corporate state this 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 he's proposing but how is he doing that by saying that the that the wealthiest in this country need to pay more taxes not less and that the people who make under two hundred fifty thousand shouldn't have to pay more taxes i mean you know we actually saying that the u.s. government the biggest richest most powerful government in the history of the world the average government employee you can make an twice what the average citizen

makes were 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 that's where both taxes are the government puts a gun to your head and says hand over your wallet to work suddenly go to jail 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 those people would go and buy their second and third young let's talk though about inequality in this country and number 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 hundred 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 federal reserve indeed ever since and nixon closed the gold window back and the early one nine hundred seventy s. but 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 where we have to concentrate on not let the guys at the top which is you know who adama's working for or against soros rocket and these kinds of guys now that i'm trying 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 he's the solution it's 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 the other i need to cut back come back cut back government that's what we need to do and the idea that in a depression 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 create some clowns in washington to do waste and damage with and build more marble palaces themselves what an outrage well what about the system though 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 a future president whether it's rick perry or michele bachmann or whatever and i think they would all be working for the same sort of powers that you're talking about but let me ask you this. and let's look at it from a global perspective i mean there are quite a few countries and having finished financial hardships especially across europe i went on your mind of doing it right at the u.s. and learn from. well lebanon did it right levanon during the boom and fight for that matter canada did it much more right than the u.s. they didn't go crazy during the boom as the europe and the united states didn't but however this is entirely a bank problem this is what they're talking about in europe that's what they talk about here bailing out the banks that's why the people who are greece are being squeezed deeper western europe are being squeezed ingram and so forth to bail out their banks with 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 that assets go to those who can make better use of them and you don't keep putting harder people's money into these losing enterprises in fact these disastrous and anti economic enterprises these big fractional reserve banks that are part of the government so we need to run go bankrupt no more no more taxing the germans for the for the outer banks that hold the greek debt and that sort of writing that's what that is that ends in disaster in fact we're headed for is a global inflation of the sort that john maynard keynes dreamed of in the 1930's and that just to our renders damage i mean we're all going to add vastly increasing prices reckon the nineteen seventies or worse on top of the depression as martin rock brought point out of the one great thing about the great depression before was

prices were falling so your money got more and more we're going to turn that around that leave us in a depression people losing their jobs people losing their savings and every price is zooming up banks big banks banks government but we definitely need a change i might have been talking about the candidates ron paul of course talks a different one than those other people 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 how they were out of time and the rock out chairman of the live advice on me says and stick it thanks so much thank you. and over the weekend in new york city crowds gathered in the financial district to protest against wall street greed and lack of accountability if you were on twitter over the weekend you may have thought this could be the beginning of america's own arab spring but retreating the ideas did not actually translate into masses of people turning out our views on a saucy a church going to however live at the rally and brings us this report. yes.

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

i was treated 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 us but 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 they clipped the whip the wings of the american dream to get these corporations out to pay no tax i pay more tax and then gee. 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 there be a provocateur here for there are being we are facing down an army of cesar's. and caesar mosco. mayor bloomberg has good morning new yorkers that as you find employment skyrocket riots could be around the corner but these people came to every day people want to be involved in politics that 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 one to become a real force and not just a fringe group more americans will need to join these crowds i suspect a volume will get a little bit a lot of you know start off small so your question is why there's so few people it's like again the information that gets out was 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 taken out before the crowd swell out of control yes yes yes if this is sure enough. and just a little bit earlier i was able to speak with one of the people in attendance about protest journalist and author david de graw the start of our conversation i just asked him to give me his take on the rally and the fact that it was reportedly 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 and the passion down there i think we have to understand here in the united states us mainstream media is probably the most efficient weapon precious metals that we've been. so you know when the cheap party has a protest that is you know half the size of fox. c.n.n. and all the major media people there and they're essentially pushing those protests

but in a situation like this or media companies u.s. media companies are primarily you know major shareholders you know wall street banks a major shareholders of the mainstream media they don't support the protests so you don't really hear about it on us television and orginally the overwhelming majority of american public that's where 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 more more about your experience there over the weekend i mean it seems to me it was just regular people sort of outraged at what's going on with austria right of the organization that has been buried centralise know there was a general assembly of people who held meetings record and it was all very democratic process you know people have political views across the political

spectrum. sensually it's people who are fighting a battle 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 of little reality people understand that the global banks that rob this country they don't have a more in-depth understanding. and you know certainly the united states is not the only country with issues people having issues with their banks that you know we've been keeping a close eye of course on greece whether. or not it will default there's a lot of people angry in the streets 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 would do us should try harder to emulate in terms of what they're doing what maybe we can learn from. you in protest larger economic economic policy

wise in dealing with banks is zero one one on fortunately you know we live in a global economy the world will call me dominated by big banks so wall street will reserve the international monetary fund the bank its national so immense so you know they run the global economy so it's tough annually other countries lost their countries that are stepping outside a global central bank and that's here so you know any step away. the children. are really more essential i economics is what we should be emulating old. 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 equality 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 seventh in 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. 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 are ranked as a country this close to mexico and income inequality chart right well basically we have a system that was set up for one or one percent of our population to run away 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 happen in new york city as an inequality of wealth equal to places like honduras i mean you know most third world countries you know you have wall street and i'm sure so where i know if you have a rock show it's all right so the area of brooklyn that are devastated in poverty you know we have. people living in poverty in this country 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 are some good plans that all these plans are essentially putting a band-aid on what is absolutely horrible situation that we need structural change if you're serious about changing the situation you have to focus more on the system of political bribery which is campaign finance the lobbying and the revolving door between washington and the biggest global corporations and to you have to break up the too big to fail banks and any change needs to be senator around those two things moving forward so i plans to you know make slight changes are not going to work just that one of our changes. designed to bring in money from the wealthiest in this country sort of a stablished tax rate for millionaires i know that's one of the things that buffett code that president obama talked about i mean is that just as he just trying to throw out fancy language so is the class warfare once again that you know campaign obama coming back from listening all these wonderful things to people who are not

the richest one percent but you know the bottom line is i said if obama was serious about creating change he would be working on campaign finance because these are all temporary fixes until you fix the core structural problems which is to watch the money in politics and the too big to fail when it's having way too much power dominate the market so essentially rigged the market and destroy the free market until those changes are made you know all this other stuff is you know switch and chairs on the. and that was david de graw a journalist and author he wrote the road through two thousand and twelve a revolution for world war three. still ahead here on our team what is a little recognition for palestine from the u.n. really mean the return of territory on the west bank and a new landlord for those who live there had we'll tell you how statehood is some people's livelihoods.

you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old don't tell the truth. to confess and i am a total get of i love rap and hip hop is a latin for. letters yesterday. i'm very aware of the world without you it's a place. to sleep.

in seattle where there was a little work to bring just to sort of the world. i have a right to know what my government would you want to know what i.

would characterize them as a terrorism. of american exceptionalism. the two. well the sixty sixth annual united nations general assembly is now underway and at this moment there is a scheduled meeting taking place between russian foreign minister sergei lavrov and secretary of state hillary clinton but you have already spoken over the phone and there expresses touch upon a few issues the arab spring the situation in libya but certainly 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 this is a plan that the u.s.

and israel have pledged to veto but one the palestinian president mahmoud abbas says he will try for anyway many other leaders are supporting that bed and they their issue is with israel and in particular the expansion of settlements in the west bank settlements argue correspondent paula sawyer went to 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 city home and where he's seen as a troublemaker they are afraid. because the before i'm away from the drug life for all me for my view of but beneath won't 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 west bank city home and now years on he wants to leave but can't because his property has halved in value since you bought it so. we'll go

from the site no more because the government doesn't want the people. the west bank after the. agreement with the we have to show that it's full of people in the people doesn't want. peace is one in two states it's pointed out but the government does everything it can to keep him in most of the land there and difficult but that hasn't stopped the building on. no constitution has begun on more than two thousand objects here in the west bank and worse apologies get extra money from the ministry of education for extra teachers or extra money from the ministry of infrastructure for more infrastructure means less payment by the settlers 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 the system is going to pat has to come from somewhere and tens of thousands of israelis diplomats he answers for them on to the streets in numbers never seen before in israel's history but netanyahu has no plans to leave the statements but godless of what it does to his economy all to the peace process there is no open political group. things are about whether it's right or wrong just doing it. we know about only certain moments and the eastern part of the ferns where you have a lot of dark moments which are empty as palestinians head off to the united nations israeli army digs in a wrong decision and with him in the way the prospects of peace seem as unlikely as binney was actually leaving the withstand policy r t. we will have much more on that meeting in our newscast tomorrow but for now that's going to do it for more on the story as we covered it r.t. dark homs last us they were.