America's savage inequality is the main reason equal opportunity is fading and poverty is growing.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/lev radin
February 6, 2014
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This article originally appeared at RobertReich.org, and is reprinted here with their permission.
Is it to be inequality or equal opportunity?
Under a headline “Obama Moves to the Right in a Partisan War of
Words,” The New York Times’ Jackie Calmes notes Democratic operatives
have been hitting back hard against the President or any other
Democratic politician talking about income inequality, preferring that
the Democrats talk about equality of opportunity instead.
"However salient reducing inequality may be,"
writes
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, “it is demonstrably less important to
voters than any other number of priorities, incudlng reducing poverty.”
The President may be listening. Wags noticed that in his State
of the Union, Obama spoke ten times of increasing “opportunity” and only
twice of income inequality, while in a December speech he spoke of
income inequality two dozen times.
But the President and other Democrats — and even Republicans,
for that matter — should focus on the facts, not the polls, and not try
to dress up what’s been happening with more soothing words and phrases.
In fact, America’s savage inequality is the main reason equal
opportunity is fading and poverty is growing. Since the “recovery”
began, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent, and
median incomes have dropped. This is a continuation of the trend we’ve
seen for decades. As a result:
(1) The sinking middle class no longer has enough purchasing
power to keep the economy growing and creating sufficient jobs. The
share of working-age Americans still in the labor force is the lowest in
more than thirty years.
(2) The shrinking middle isn’t generating enough tax revenue
for adequate education, training, safety nets, and family services. And
when they’re barely holding on, they can’t afford to — and don’t want to
— pay more.
(3) Meanwhile, America’s rich are accumulating not just more of
the country’s total income and wealth, but also the political power
that accompanies money. And they’re using that power to reduce their own
taxes, and get corporate welfare (subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts) for
their businesses.
All this means less equality of opportunity in America.
Obama was correct in December when he called widening
inequality “the defining challenge of our time.” He mustn’t back down
now even if Democratic pollsters tell him to. If we’re ever to reverse
this noxious trend, Americans have to hear the truth.
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