Income Inequality

"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both."     - Louis Brandeis

"... 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

Look Out, Are You About to Join the White Underclass?
By Joe Bageant, JoeBageant.com
"We're starting to hear a little discussion about the white underclass... Mainly because so many middle class folks are terrified of falling into it." Read more »

“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

Origins of the overclass

The Impact of Income Inequality

Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality

We are not in this together (4/11/2009)

This Is What the Class War Looks Like (3/24/2009)

The Evidence

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

Steve Kangas on inequality in the Reagan Years

Video

The End of Poverty ? 2008. 105 minutes narrated by Martin Sheen. View it on-line.

Bibliography

"There are many other ways in which the government structures the market to redistribute income upward. Read my non-copyright protected book, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer to get more of the picture." Dean Baker (read it on line.)

The Spirit Level, Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Ill Fares the Land: Tony Judt

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War: Joe Bageant (an excerpt)

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America: Barbara Ehrenreich

A People's History of the United States: Howard Zinn

THE WORKING CLASS MAJORITY America's Best Kept Secret: Michael Zweig

Unjust Deserts: Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly

Retirement Insecurity: Edward N. Wolff

Politics of Rich and Poor: Kevin Phillips

Boiling Point, Democrats, Republicans and the Decline of Middle Class Prosperity: Kevin Phillips

Obamanomics, How Bottom-Up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-Down Economics: John R. Talbott

Links

equality trust

Inequality Project

Inequality.org

Agenda For a Shared Prosperity (Download a PDF copy of the entire book)

Toward an Economic Justice Agenda

Extreme Inequality

Economic Democracy

The Nation, June 30, 2008 issue: The New Inequality

DSAUSA

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