It's the Wealth Gap, Stupid [View all]

[NNN0LHI]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/its-wealth-gap-stupid

Why the truly alarming economic trend is not income inequality.

—By Reid Cramer

| Mon Feb. 13, 2012 3:00 AM PST9

When Mitt Romney bowed to political pressure and released his 2010 tax return, it showed, to no one's great surprise, that the Romneys are rich. Really, really rich. They reported income of more than $21 million, itemized deductions of over $4.5 million, and a total tax bill of just over $3 million. They made charitable contributions of almost $3 million, although more than half of that went to their church.

But what really stood out in the tax return—beyond the presidential candidate's 13.9 percent tax rate—is not that Mitt makes a lot of money, it's that he has a lot of money. Romney's finances are illustrative of the growing gulf between haves and have-nots. It's not about income equality; it's about the widening wealth gap.

In recent years, the fortunes of the Romneys and others in their cohort have continued to grow, notably diverging from the majority of Americans still struggling to deal with a slow economic recovery. The Occupy Wall Street protestors stole the media spotlight this past fall by creatively highlighting these discrepancies. President Obama has taken notice and, as reflected in his State of the Union address, is teeing up inequality as a major a campaign theme for the fall. But it is not enough to highlight the gap between incomes of the top 1 percent and the bottom 99. What’s more alarming—and consequential over the long haul—is the growing concentration of wealth. snip

There's an additional problem. When wealth is concentrated at the top, there are fewer resources available for everybody else to deploy. And in the aftermath of the Great Recession, we should recognize that the dynamics of inequality have fundamentally shifted.