You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a
few, or democracy, but you cannot have both."
- Louis Brandeis
"The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent
of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of slate
noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has
a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like
Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Guyana. "
Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times 11/7/2010
Economists who say we should relegate questions about inequality to philosophers often advocate
policies, like tax cuts for the wealthy, that increase inequality substantially. That greater
inequality causes real harm is beyond doubt. Robert H. Frank, New York Times, 10/17/2010
"... high levels of inequality strain the bonds that hold us
together as a society. There has been a long-term downward trend in the extent
to which Americans trust either the government or one another. In the sixties,
most Americans agreed with the proposition that “most people can be trusted”;
today most disagree.’ In the sixties, most Americans believed that the
government is run “for the benefit of all”; today, most believe that it’s run
for “a few big interests.” And there’s convincing evidence that growing
inequality is behind our growing cynicism, which is making the United States
seem increasingly like a Latin American country. As the political scientists
Eric Uslaner and Mitchell Brown point out (and support with extensive data),
“In a world of haves and have-nots, those at either end of the economic
spectrum have little reason to believe that ‘most people can be trusted’ .
..social trust rests on a foundation of economic equality.” Paul Krugman, The
Conscience of a Liberal pg 251
“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not
exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous
efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian
fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind,
To
Have and to Have Not
Large disparities in income are bad for democracy, bad for the general
welfare, bad for the economy. They lead to inequity in the Courts, destroy
domestic tranquility, suppress economic activity, and because we have ignored
it, we are experiencing
economic collapse.
It looks like the US is now being run by oligarchs. Media moguls control
pretty much everything broadcast. Bankers get unlimited amounts of taxpayer
money without strings. The Congress often gets it wrong because it is money
driven. Democracy withers when income disparities are extreme.
We have a strong-man Presidency.
Republicans ignore this problem because they are on the winning side of the
class struggle. Except the result of all this inequality is financial collapse
in which everyone is a loser.
There is evidence that high levels of
income inequality, as in the US, are highly correlated with corruption. (1,
2
Republicans brought on the financial crisis with deregulation that allowed
markets to go out of control, privatization that removed the public from the
process, tax cuts that in effect directed massive public debt into deep private
pockets (banana republic), civil service destruction and cronyism placed
incompetents in public office; regressive, anti-labor policies led to a
general decline in consumption; a determination to build an empire for world
domination requires unlimited budget for the military; a contempt for
international law covered up illegal activities including torture, renditions,
secret prisons; Congress did no oversight during the Bush years;
regulatory agencies were captives of the industries they were supposed to
regulate; industry migrated to low wage countries and not much was done to
mitigate the damage; but there was war enough for everyone. War is profitable,
and in its chaos pallet loads of shrink wrapped money just disappeared.
Civil
liberties here in the good old US of A were cut down to size by chicken hawks
who built the profitable national security state. PayGo left.
There is a relatively simple way damp down obscene compensation, to pay our
bills (which we are not), to reduce inequality and to keep up our
infrastructure, and that is to re-implement a stiff
graduated income tax. Continue the estate tax to be sure that we do not
create an aristocracy, and to break up extreme
concentrations of wealth...such as Walmart.
UN: Financial Inequality Rapidly Grows in US
A United Nations report has revealed major US cities, including
New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans, have levels of economic
inequality that rival cities in Africa. The report found that the
United States had the highest inequality and poverty after Mexico and
Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000. The life
expectancy of African Americans in the United States is about the same
as that of people living in China and some states of India.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/27/headlines#16