income inequality // Current

Statistical Study: if Obama 'loses', it's because the GOP stole it

Unless the GOP Steals the election, Obama's chances of victory are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! Professionals and university... more

lenhart
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17 days ago

How the GOP enriched the rich and made everyone else poor!

The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States in inequitably distributed by policy and by design. The US population is represented 'stretched across a football field in order of income, from poorest, on the left, to richest. Imagine a stack of $100 bills 'representing each person's income.' For example: a stack one inch high represents a stack of one hundred dollars bills, i.e, $25,000. The red line on the graph represents the height of that stack compared to an American football field.

"The red line in the first picture is the beginning of the U. S. income distribution. On the scale of the football field the line slopes gradually from zero on the left to less than 2-inches high at the 50-yard line ($39,000), to about 4-inches high at the 95-yard line ($132,000). On this scale the entire graph is less than one pixel high, up to this point. It is not until you are well past the 99-yard line that you hit the $1 million mark: a stack of $100 bills 40-inches high. There were over 144,000 people who turned in IRS returns in 1997 with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more." [See: Houston Independent Media Center, Wealth Distribution in the US http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php ]

Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following WWII. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased and is, in fact, measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.

Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies that can be identified.

The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following URL: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf]. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.

As wealth is transferred to the very top with tax cuts for only the very, very wealthy and practitioners of 'corporate socialism', the masses are left to fight over the crumbs. There is no poverty in America that could not be addressed by simply addressing GOP tax policies --give aways -- which deliberately make the rich richer, the working class significantly poorer.

If you are in the middle class now, don't kid yourself. Unless you stand to inherit a fortune of several billions from a rich and long lost Uncle, the chances are almost exponentially high against you. Chances are --you will NOT progress upward in this society. Moreover, this aspect of American society is the work of one party primarily: the GOP! The GOP is the party of a rich elites who have learned how to 'sell' a fairy tale: supply side economics, or, derisively --"trickle down theory". To sum it all up: wealth has never, does not, will not 'trickle down'. The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States in inequitably distributed by policy and... more

lenhart
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17 days ago

Renewing America's "Contract With the Middle Class"

In the last 25 years, what is good for America and what is good for much of corporate America have gotten way out of sync. ... more

lecoke
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3 months ago

China's gap between city and country incomes at widest ever

The gap between incomes in cities and the countryside has reached its highest level in 30 years despite a rapid rise in rural... more

lecoke
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3 months ago

The broken promise of America: betrayal by America's rich

Who's paying the price for America's growing income gap? In the United States it is the richest among us who are most assuredly and solely benefiting, while the U.S. economy consistently fails over 30-million hard-working Americans primarily with substandard wages.

The U.S. government rigs the tax codes and contorts the laws specifically to over-burden the working classes while making the wealthiest in the United States more and more wealthy. The top one percent garners about 80% of all income gains. It is an extremely "lop-sided" system designed by the rich of this nation to benefit primarily the wealthiest top one-percent of our nation--particularly the top one-tenth of those wealthiest "one-percenters."

The working classes are simply and efficiently over-taxed to sure economic death working as much as 6 months out the year to pay "their" taxes, while the rich pay (as a percentage) MUCH less than their fair share. Is it fair that the wage earners are held to report literally ALL their income while the rich are exempted? Is it fair that American "corporations" (which the rich control with iron-clad fists) are shipping jobs, assets and intellectual property off-shore just as fast as they can?

The insolence and audacity of the rich to frame their own ideas exclusively in terms of purely "raw commercial value," serves as the primary excuse avoiding very real and generations-neglected social obligations and responsibilities to this nation--namely "to make society a more valuable place, to create involved participants...to form a more perfect union, to promote justice, to provide the common defense, to provide domestic tranquility, to provide for the COMMON wealth (the general welfare)--those are the reasons we created this country, and those should be the focus of our policies...but if our policies are merely pecuniary...then we're going to go down the wrong path." [quoting David K. Johnston, New York Times]

A devastating cast-like system is materializing in the United States at the behest of the rich who would have us remain ignorant or intentionally misled and deluded from the startling reality that is befalling hard-working Americans today... Who's paying the price for America's growing income gap? In the United States it is the richest among us who are most... more

echoz
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4 months ago

Mith Samlanh - a program for street children in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

A short film about a program for street kids in Phnom Penh, Cambodia called Mith Samlanh.

Mith Samlanh is Khmer for Friends.

Anyone who has traveled to Phnom Penh has seen the staggering number of street children in Phnom Penh. Someone once told me that handing money to a child on the street is equivalent to telling them that you agree to their lot in life. That's why I love what Mith Samlanh does for street children and their families

Mith Samlanh’s mission is to get children off the streets. The parents of street children are given an income generating project, Mith Samlanh agrees to buy the product and sell it in there shop with the agreement that the children stay in school, instead of being sent to beg on the street. The shop where the products are sold in Phnom Penh is called Friends n’ Stuff. The charming products are made from local, recycled and easily sources low-cost materials such as recycled newspapers and magazines. So much better than buying a souvenir that is probably made in China

I love Mith Samlanh’s mission, so I am including it below.

Mith Samlanh’s mission is:
1. Meeting the street children's immediate essential needs in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child:
- the right to life: providing nutritional meals, shelter, a safe environment and medical care;
- the right to development: providing education and reintegrating them into public school and by developing their curiosity;
- the right to protection: fighting all forms of abuse against children including physical, sexual, family, and emotional abuse;
- the right to participation: making children aware of their responsibilities and promoting action within the center and in the community;

2. Reintegrating the children into their families, into society, into the public school system, into their culture;

3. and building the capacity of the staff so that  the Cambodian nationals are able to run the  program independent of foreign intervention in  the near future.

How great is that!!

A short film about a program for street kids in Phnom Penh, Cambodia called Mith Samlanh. Mith Samlanh is Khmer for Friends. ... more