Economic inequality, an economy that doesn't work for everyone, the hell with the common good....that's the awful reality in the United States now.

Jonathan Tasini at Working Life captures this terrible reality and calls it the neutron bomb economy.

"I am struck every day by the incredibly bizarre world we live in, where "up" is "down" and "down" is "up". I think many people are angry and confused because what they see in their daily lives--upheaval, struggle, fear--does not match much of the rhetoric coming from the people who have their hands on the levers of the economic and government. This morning, it dawned on me that we can explain much of what we see if we just think of living in an era of the Neutron Bomb Economy.

"The  neutron bomb  is a "nuclear weapon that maximizes damage to people but minimizes damage to buildings and equipment. It is also called an enhanced radiation warhead." The beauty--"beauty" used in a deeply sarcastic voice--of the neutron bomb is that it makes it more "attractive" to use nuclear weapons because the bomb can eliminate people but leave everything else standing.

"Which is essentially the kind of economy we now live in. Look at the  declaration from the Federal Reserve Board trumpeted with the headline, "Fed Forecasts Faster Growth as Economy Improves":

The Federal Reserve disclosed on Wednesday that policy makers had substantially upgraded their forecasts for how much the economy will grow this year, though they expect unemployment to remain painfully high for some time.

Top Fed officials now expect the output of goods and services to grow by 3.4 to 3.9 percent this year, up from the previous forecast, released in November, of 3 to 3.6 percent.

"So, we increasingly live in an economy where "growth" is divorced from the ability of real people to survive. Stuff is being made--the Gross Domestic Product is growing--but people don't have jobs, partly because corporations are figuring out how to use fewer workers.  And, when they do, work, millions of people can't make ends meet. So, the economy "grows" but the people do not prosper.

"The Neutron Bomb Economy: maximizing damage to people, except the top one percent who employ the "bomb", and leave the new structure of the economy in place--lower wages, fewer workers even as corporate profits and executive pay and bonuses are on the rise.

"Rather than see the budget deficits and longer-term debt as a direct consequence of Wall Street behavior, two immoral wars and a criminal health care system, the Neutron Bomb Economy wants to obliterate every shred of our societal safety net, leaving in place the greatest divide between rich and poor in 100 years. The Neutron Bomb Economy: Blow up the financial system and Social Security and impoverish millions of seniors but leave the Masters of the Universe sailing their yachts and buying their chauteaus in the South of France.

"The Neutron Bomb Economy: allow  a vast looting of money  over the past four decades, draining the the economy of trillions of dollars, while leaving millions of people without jobs, in poverty or without their life savings. Blow up the economy for most people but leave the shell of the economy pumping out "growth" to be siphoned off into a few hands."

Go read the rest of this concise, compelling piece.