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The tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have gutted the earnings and purchasing power of the middle class, and crippled the nation's economy with debt. The RED bars in the chart below represent the past 30 years of Republican tax cuts and deregulation. The earnings of the entire nation are now concentrated with the very wealthy. The Green bars are the post FDR years that preceded Reagan, when all Americans experienced prosperity.

The results of Republican tax cuts? Decayed infrasturcture, mandatory two-income families, bad schools, fast food, cheap imports, poor health and obesity, job outsourcing, increased consumer debt, privitazion of public services, free-market monopolies, a corrupt financial sector, and corporate-controlled media and government:

OECD: The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly, continuing a long-term trend that goes back to the 1970s. The use of taxes and transfers in reducing inequality has fallen still further in the past 10 years.

American business has suffered a great blow from wealth inequality, severely damaging the economy. This is because purchasing power has been slipping away from the middle class and working poor:

OECD: Rich households in America have been leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The distribution of earnings widened by 20% since the mid-1980s which is more than in most other OECD countries. This is the main reason for widening inequality in America.

The greatest harm of the past thirty years, however, has been done to minimum wage workers, who actually saw their income drop:

Although minimum wage workers are more educated than ever before, since the Reagan years, the value of their wages has sharply declined:

The US is one of the only remaining developed nations where a full-time worker cannot escape poverty through higher wages or low wage subsidies:

OECD: Redistribution of income by government plays a relatively minor role in the United States. Only in Korea is the effect smaller. This is partly because the level of spending on social benefits such as unemployment benefits and family benefits is low - equivalent to just 9% of household incomes, while the OECD average is 22%.

As a result, nearly one in four American children currently live below the poverty line, one of the highest rates among the top 40 developed nations. Poverty among the elderly has grown to nearly 25 percent, as well:

OECD: Social mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries like Denmark, Sweden and Australia. Children of poor parents are less likely to become rich than children of rich parents.

To guard against poverty, especially in children and the elderly, the 40 most developed nations provide a social safety net for low wage workers and the retired. Only the three very poorest nations and the United States do not provide basic income security for their citizens.

During 2008, the year of reckoning for the Bush administration, the house of cards -- composed of off-budget war spending and tax cuts for the wealthy -- began to collapse. That year, the wages of America as a whole began to plunge:

By the end of 2008, layoffs began in earnest. Long term unemployment will be with us for many years to come and unenployment benefits will likely be automatically extended.

While US wage inequality is among the world's highest, so is worker productivity. American workers are the hardest working of any developed nation. Yet Americans have no legally-mandated paid leave as does the rest of the developed world:

The number of employers offering health care benefits go down year over year, although I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. Like serfs, Americans are held hostage by corporations via health insurance. There are far better models for a free people.

Nevertheless, that's how the system currently works. So here are some of the occupations that offer the best (and the worst) benefits:

Choosing a secure job -- Workers in certain occupations are more likely to be laid off during economic downturns:

Future job security -- Those who can refocus their current occupation to processes related to health care systems will have the most economic security in the years ahead:

The health care sector is a big tent that encompasses all other occupations -- from pilots to programmers, maintenance to graphic design, and office management to food services. The trick is to refocus and get there first.