As if this comes as any shocker:

Corporate America finished the second quarter with “near-historic” profits, largely by cutting costs, laying off employees and streamlining operations, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Profits for companies in the S&P 500 soared 38 percent from the same period last year, hitting $189 billion, the WSJ says, the sixth-highest quarterly total ever. S&P analysts expect the trend to have continued in the third quarter.

Since 2008, corporate profits increased 10 percent — but revenue was down 6 percent, the WSJ says. To achieve the impressive quarterly results, companies have had, as the WSJ puts it, to “streamline” their operations. This means firing workers, outsourcing labor and shuttering

This amounts to a Republican Mecca of capitalism ; the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And while the poor are eating from hand to mouth, the Tea Partiers want to increase this dangerous economic disparity by doing such things as eliminating the minimum wage.

The thing that drives me crazier than anything though is the minions who by into this “let the corporations rule” meme the right pushes. So many are in the middle class and one down sizing or out sourcing away from hitting hard times. Reality is a myth to these people.