Income Gap

"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." -- Plutarch

"The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues -- not faction, but rather distraction -- there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth." -- Plato

One of my big pet causes is income inequality and the effects that it has on our society. Jon Talton of the Arizona Republic wrote a pretty good article on it this last week, which I've excerpted below:

The grand canyon -- The gap between the haves and have-nots gets worse

The American Dream: It used to mean that any kid could become president, of a company if not the United States, that the poorest citizen could work hard and gain prosperity, security and, yes, the pursuit of happiness.

It was an ideal, sure, but for much of the 20th century it was also a reality.

Now the dream is being downsized alongside the corporate icons and government programs that made it possible, leaving many parents to hope that their children can just get a full-time job with benefits.

This year's report on income inequality from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that the share of income held by the richest 1 percent was the largest since the years before the Great Depression. The data show Arizona with the greatest increase in income inequality between the top and bottom earners over the past 20 years.

... According to the Federal Reserve, the net worth for a median family rose only 1.5 percent between 2001 and 2004.

Those families face rising interest rates and record debt loads. Expenses keep going up for everything from gasoline to health care, child care and college tuition.

... The reasons are complex, and include:

• Global competition and more open trade have pressured American companies to cut wages and other labor costs to survive.
• Deregulation allowed record numbers of mergers in formerly staid industries such as banking, telecommunications and airlines, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs and driving down wages.
• A rising gap between the skilled and less-skilled tends to disproportionately reward highly trained workers in certain fields.
• Major losses of manufacturing jobs have taken away a path to rising incomes and secure benefits for blue-collar workers.
• The decline of unions has helped drive down wages and diminish the political power of organized labor in Washington.
• Immigration has provided business with a steady pool of low-wage labor, especially in the jobs once taken by the poorest Americans.
• More corporate power than ever controls politics, as seen in the revamp of bankruptcy laws and lax antitrust enforcement.

The pain from these forces is not being evenly shared. The share of income held by the richest 1 percent was the largest since the 1920s. The top 100 chief executives make an average real compensation that is 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In the mid-1970s, it was about 39 times the pay of the average worker.

The gaps are even more pronounced for minorities. For example, nationally 30.4 percent of Black workers and 39.8 percent of Hispanics earned poverty-level wages in 2003. The numbers are even more severe for minority women.

... But his (Robert Gutierrez -- former mainframe operator, now security guard) philosophy gets an edge when asked about the rising gap between rich and everyone else.

"The people on top - and I say this as a Reagan Republican - those people don't care. They're not the ones that worry about paying for health care or college for kids or the cost of food prices."

Gutierrez paused. "We're in a boat with lots of holes in it. Ninety percent of the people are bailing with tin cans, and 10 percent are sitting high and dry on the luggage. And we're sinking."

Some are reluctant to call this a class war, but you have to call it like it is.

People are being penalized not for their knowledge or character but for the financial position into which they were born. The ruling class is supplied with people and money from the rich and in turn, it helps to make sure that the rich stay rich.

Until the cannibalistic relationship between the government and rich is broken, the disparity between the rich and the poor is going to grow.

The rich complain about welfare, yet they are the biggest recipients of corporate welfare. How is it that a significant portion of the most successful companies pay NO TAXES WHATSOEVER? Please explain to me how that is fair.

And the beat goes on: The world gets 102 more billionaires

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." -- John F. Kennedy

"Between persons of equal income there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of equality." -- George Bernard Shaw