Sunday, December 16, 2007

Startling numbers

Check out this essay revealing the astounding shift of American incomes in the last five years, with the top 5% of household incomes gaining income at unprecedented rates, while the bottom 95% has lost an average of $3,600 annually in the shift.

I'd like to see the Democratic-controlled Congress address this issue, for heaven's sake. So far, I don't think it's even on their radar.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, not exactly - they (the Democrats) have indeed been addressing the issue albeit in a highly underwhelmingly way, for reasons that have escaped my understanding and shared frustration, too.

Additionally, late this past week, Alan Greenspan when interviewed, added the simple figure that the wealth of the top 1% (yea, that's, one, uno, singular....) of the pop. grew more then the combined total income of the lowest 20%.

Anyway, Pelosi et. al. have repeatedly lamented the tax cuts from day one, and upon majority proposed reversing some of them, which are arguably the principal cause of the shift in the first place.

Such a proposal is easy fodder for the Roves of the world to turn around as "tax increases," which is immediately repulsive to the big lobbies, and dooms such ineffective efforts as dead on arrival.

The Roves and Bushies of the world have always been very good (to their disingenuous credit) of turning lemons into lemonade. The Democrats have similarly to my observation been equally ineffectual in fighting the battle.

Erik said...

I agree that the regressive tax structure is responsible for much of the income-shift. Other culprits: Free Trade, resulting in making American workers compete with foreign workers for manufacturing jobs; the anti-union bent of predominately Republican administrations; the judiciary, which has favored anticompetitive practices and consolidation of businesses, leading to the creation of extreme power in the hands of few owners; and the general sense of powerlessnes of the wage-earning citizenry because of the above and the failure of the dominant media (owned by a few huge corporations) to report this phenomenon.

Does this sound like a class war? Does it sound like only a revolution will change things? You betcha!