But that real­i­ty has­n’t stopped their PR cam­paign, pitch­ing their ​“sal­ad” as good and good for you! For exam­ple, a recent arti­cle tout­ed a study blar­ing the hap­py news that TPP will increase real incomes in the U.S. by $133 bil­lion a year. Even if that were true (and plen­ty of oth­er stud­ies show that it’s not), it’s a sta­tis­tic meant to daz­zle rather than enlight­en, for it skates around the real bot­tom line for the Amer­i­can pub­lic: An increase in income for whom?

The basic prob­lem fac­ing the cor­po­rate and polit­i­cal pow­ers that want you and me to swal­low their Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship deal is that they can’t make chick­en sal­ad out of chick­en manure.

In the past 15 years or so, and espe­cial­ly since 2008, it’s been made per­fect­ly clear to the worka­day major­i­ty of peo­ple that the cor­po­rate mantra of ​“income growth” ben­e­fit­ting every­one is a delib­er­ate lie. Prac­ti­cal­ly all of the mas­sive annu­al increas­es in U.S. income, which every work­er helps pro­duce, now gush­es up to the rich­est 1 per­cent, with mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires (the rich­est 10 per­cent of 1‑percenters) grab­bing the bulk of it.

Econ­o­mists have a tech­ni­cal term for this: ​“steal­ing.” TPP is writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly to sanc­tion and increase the rob­bery of the many by the world’s mon­eyed few, includ­ing pro­vi­sions that give addi­tion­al incen­tives to U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ers to ship more of our mid­dle-class jobs to places such as Viet­nam with wages under 65 cents an hour (or around $155 a month).

The arti­cle opened with this sun­ny head­line: ​“Trade Pack Would Lift US Incomes, Study Says.” Sounds like a dandy deal! But wait, a study by whom? Four para­graphs down into the sto­ry, we’re final­ly told that this analy­sis of TPP’s impact comes from the Wash­ing­ton-based Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Economics.

Fine, but who’s behind that? We’re not told, even though that infor­ma­tion is key to under­stand­ing the upbeat inter­pre­ta­tion of the TPP trade scheme. Read­ers would like­ly be less reas­sured by the pos­i­tive spin if they knew that the Peter­son Insti­tute is large­ly fund­ed by the major glob­al cor­po­ra­tions that would gain enor­mous new pow­er over con­sumers, work­ers, farm­ers, our envi­ron­ment and the very sov­er­eign­ty of Amer­i­ca if Con­gress rub­ber stamps this raw deal. In fact, many of the multi­na­tion­al giants financ­ing the insti­tute were among the 500 cor­po­rate pow­ers that were lit­er­al­ly allowed to help write the 2,000-page agree­ment they’re now try­ing to shove down out throats — includ­ing Cater­pil­lar, Chevron, IBM, GE, Deere & Com­pa­ny, Gen­er­al Motors and the U.S. Cham­ber of Commerce.

Oh, and what about this Peter­son guy — is he some sort of unbi­ased schol­ar? Hard­ly. Pete Peter­son is a Wall Street bil­lion­aire, one of the 400 rich­est peo­ple in the coun­try, and the found­ing chair­man of his epony­mous insti­tute. He’s also a reac­tionary, anti-gov­ern­ment, anti-pub­lic-spend­ing ide­o­logue who was Nixon’s com­merce sec­re­tary. Hailed by the estab­lish­ment as one of ​“the most influ­en­tial bil­lion­aires in U.S. pol­i­tics,” he uses that influ­ence (and his for­tune) to demo­nize such for-the-peo­ple pro­grams as Social Secu­ri­ty and to push poli­cies to fur­ther enrich and enthrone the bil­lion­aire class over the rest of us. TPP would be his ulti­mate polit­i­cal coup against us commoners.

We don’t need any insti­tute to tell us who would ben­e­fit from TPP. All we need to know is that it was nego­ti­at­ed in strict secre­cy with glob­al cor­po­rate elites while we con­sumers and work­ers were locked out. Remem­ber, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

Don’t be bam­boo­zled by glit­tery stud­ies. TPP was writ­ten by and for the super­rich to fur­ther enrich them­selves at our expense, exac­er­bat­ing the widen­ing gulf of inequal­i­ty in America.