Tamara Draut
And the gap grows…
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute released a new study yesterday finding that the giant chasm between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow in America. And while everyone lost when the tech bubble burst, early indications are that inequality began growing again in 2003, according to the study.
As America's top earners pull away from the bottom and the middle, we all suffer the consequences. As my colleague, Jim Lardner, writes in Inequality Matters, a book he co-edited, "National tragedies do not have to be sudden. [Rising inequality] has changed America in profound ways, by slow degrees. It has been going on for nearly three decades, so far without a presidential statement or a lead story on the evening news, to say nothing of a claim of responsibility."
Not since the Gilded Age has America been so unequal. And its effects are everywhere, though not always obvious. Its poisonous consequences can be seen in the decline of our public schools, in the creation of the higher education debt-for-diploma system, in the priorities of our nation's leaders who too often legislate where the money leads them, and in the toiling of millions of families for whom working hard no longer means getting ahead. Inequality hurts us all. Yet the sting has not brought outrage, but instead a numbness and resignation that the powerful are unstoppable. And the problems, intractable.
Tamara Draut: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 7:23 AM, Jan 27, 2006 in Economic Opportunity
Permalink | Email to Friend | Comments (2)
Comments
I have a question
Why is a teen mom,
pregnant, with no prospects,
deemed "A Family"??
A delinquent child,
sexualized before her time,
maybe.
A family?
It is an Anarchist's fiction.
Just make THAT
most sad of situations
into some kind of norm...
And all will easily
come crashing down.
Don't forget, you get
exactly what you plan for.
Oh, I'm so sorry,
not PC enough?
Posted by: Harry Springer | January 31, 2006 02:35 PM
I accept it as well within the rights of a blog owner to censor, delete, or simply not accept comments that are perhaps a bit outside the intended community's box.
However...this destroys the potential fertility of the interchange, and in clear Darwinist fashion, enables less viable memes to rule the day., thus emasculating the community so "served".
I had noted decades ago that certain fictional arrangements had begun to press for acceptance as families.
Often, those counted as such a family maintain several viable income schemes and domestic habitations, simultaneous with the fictional arrangement, which is then presented to social service fundgivers as "A Family In Poverty".
When living in New York City, a neighbor, a community activist, schooled young women on the current requirements for getting assistance.
Whatever stays in shelters, or funded apartments they gleaned from his tutelage, brought him an income stream (yes, this was illegal),
and he proceeded to buy half a dozen tenements, and populate them with his "clientele", doing so as a progressive person of note, hand in glove with city govcernment, who found financing for him.
This entire sham empire no doubt inflated poverty figures.
However, during their involvement, these young people had mothers, fathers, cousins, siblings, and current "spouses" (unwed partners)
in earning situiations, with domiciles of their own, very close nearby, often in the next building.
I was in these apartments. I knew these folks, as friends. I partied in their "Weekend Houses" (funded apartments),
and occasionally visited their relatives' apartments nearby.
This inadvertent research has helped me assess true "poverty" as against fictional "Funding Poverty".
It is much, much less than is stated.
I see that my recent post , above, was removed from the
"Recent Comments" listing on your home page.
Although you can certainly do this, does it help the quality of thought evinced on these pages??
H.S.
Posted by: Harry Springer | February 1, 2006 06:47 AM