We Are Starting To Force The Issues.

Sign The 99 Percent Are Winning: Even Ayn Rand Fan Paul Ryan Is Complaining About The Top 1 Percent

By Zaid Jilani posted from ThinkProgress Special Topic on Nov 17, 2011 

99 Percenters nationwide have been engaged in raucous protests for two months now, seeking to call attention to income inequality and other social injustices that have enriched the top 1 percent at the expense of the rest of us.

Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — a hard-right congressman whose political inspiration was ultra-right ideologue Ayn Rand — released a report offering an analysis of the nation’s growing income inequality.

It’s a sign that the 99 Percent are having an impact, forcing even staunch conservatives to address income inequality. Ryan’s report bemoans the country’s growing inequality and even highlights the huge growth of income among the top 1 percent, using the following chart from the Congressional Budget Office:


While the report does go on in other sections to blame the wrong culprits for income inequality and in other ways downplay income inequality altogether, the fact that a congressman who gets his political inspiration from Ayn Rand — who targeted altruism itself as evil — is now forced to openly talk about the problem of income inequality is a huge victory for the 99 Percent.