"And the result is an economy that’s become profoundly unequal and families that are more insecure. Just to give you a few statistics: Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than 8 percent. Since 1979 our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of the growth has flowed to a fortunate few. The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income; it now takes half. Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today’s CEO now makes 273 times more. And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country."

Obama. Gearing up for the mid-term elections? Casting a theme.

So, that "since 1979" line, in the middle of the speech. Let's see. What happened in 1979 that might serve as a bellweather? Oh, yeah. The actor ...

We—today’s living Americans—have in our lifetime fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom and done more to advance the dignity of man than any people who ever lived on this earth. The citizens of this great nation want leadership—yes—but not a “man on a white horse” demanding obedience to his commands. They want someone who believes they can “begin the world over again.” A leader who will unleash their great strength and remove the roadblocks government has put in their way. I want to do that more than anything I’ve ever wanted. And it’s something that I believe with God’s help I can do.

I believe this nation hungers for a spiritual revival; hungers to once again see honor placed above political expediency; to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privilege. Government should uphold and not undermine those institutions which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded—religion, education and, above all, family. Government cannot be clergyman, teacher and parent. It is our servant, beholden to us.

We who are privileged to be Americans have had a rendezvous with destiny since the moment in 1630 when John Winthrop, standing on the deck of the tiny Arbella off the coast of Massachusetts, told the little band of pilgrims, “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

 My 11/13/79 speech!

A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and—above all—responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.

I believe that you and I together can keep this rendezvous with destiny.

And the result is an economy that’s become profoundly unequal and families that are more insecure. So ...

___________UPDATE__________
If gearing up for the 2014 elections is the theme, one cliche is all politics is local, with that link noting:

Dayton said he hoped the swing from a deficit a year ago to a surplus would counter arguments that Democrats had endangered the state’s comeback by raising $2.1 billion in taxes to head off additional cuts and allow for new spending on priority programs.

“Critics claimed that this balanced fiscal approach would have a chilling effect on Minnesota’s economy,” the governor said. “Today’s forecast proves those critics wrong.”

Republicans complained Democrats were taking a “victory lap” for taking in more tax dollars than government needed.

“Minnesotans frankly don’t care how much government has to spend,” said House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown. “They care how much their families have to spend.”

Daudt displays the FEBM mentality some have described in earlier years and by current repetition as an innate part of the very genetic code of our Republican friends. An extreme thought perhaps, but Matthew 19:24 (Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25, etc.) has truly had scant play in Republican rhetoric over decades and decades of our nation's history; even among those now vocal and of a theocratic bent. In other words, has Michele Bachmann ever discussed the thought or publicly acknowledged the passage as part of her "literally true word of God" bible? If so, give me a link to the lady's musings that way.

Most telling, Daudt's response is not in wide-perspective terms of income disparity and government's role in reducing it as a way of basic justice in alleviating the nation's majority's suffering and Angst, but rather about politics being very, very, very, VERY local; at least in Daudt's worldview.

Me, mine, and never mind thine seems his theme going into the next elections.

How well will that play? It is a hackneyed GOP theme.