Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Powerless (The Nation)

[marmar]

Rich Get Richer, Poor Get Powerless
Nicholas von Hoffman



The latest figures are out on income distribution in the United States, and they are lulus. To say the spread is top-heavy is putting it mildly.

A mere 300,000 people had incomes equal to the total income of the bottom earning half of the entire population. That's 150 million people. Put another way, those 300,000 had incomes 440 times greater than the average income in the United States. Stated yet another way, the golden 300,000 sopped up more than 20 percent of all incomes.

The last time the income imbalance was so large, Calvin Coolidge was President and people were thrilled by the first talking motion pictures. In the 1930s and '40s the gaps between wealth and income were lessened thanks to war, the income tax, pro-employee legislation and labor organizations that forced a mild redistribution of the profits. That's all gone now. We're back to the good old days, and let's hope everybody, including the frayed white-collar classes, are having a good old time.

As the years pass and the imbalances grow, so also does a background wailing about the unfairness of it all. Defining "unfair" is like trying to catch a trout in a stream with your bare hands. Very slippery. Would it be fair if the rich averaged only 390 times the income of the average wage earner? 325? 250? You name it. How does one decide when one has arrived at the fair number? Or must all incomes be equal? There's an idea that leaves a lot to be desired.
...(snip)...

Under our present political arrangement the two major-party nominees represent little more than disagreeing factions within the Golden 300,000, and we get to help choose which one is elevated to the ultimate power in the White House. Some choice, but that is what we are left with and will continue to be stuck with unless the income gap is chopped down, way down, so that the top people are hauling in only 150 times the average income of the rest of us.

Some people would call such a change Bolshevism. Others might say it is a step in the direction of democracy. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/von_hoffman

[unpossibles]

1. great! I think a compromise could be found

I am all for rewarding earned success but I am sick of people thinking that it's possible to get rich in a vacuum. I don't think giving back to the society which nurtured your success or even more fairly paying the people upon who's backs millionaires are made is a bad thing. It really does benefit everyone, and I sometimes feel the überrich forget that - that if society itself becomes unstable because of poverty, they can fall too.