Showing posts with label Income inequality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Income inequality. Show all posts

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Republican Voters Want to Keep Grabbing the Wealth


Economic inequality, which includes income inequality, has been growing at a rapid pace in the last few years making the middle class and the poor the losers. The only ones to reap rewards are the wealthy...that despised 1%. But a new Pew Research study says the Republicans/conservatives like that just fine and want to leave it that way. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll this question was asked:
“Do you think the federal government should or should not pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans?”
The results shouldn't surprise Progressives but it should shame conservatives. Republicans don't want to do anything about it and white evangelical Protestants are evenly split on the issue. In reverse, Democrats and Independents support efforts to address the wealth gap and 62% of all American adults believe the government should try to reduce the huge chasm. With only 31% believing otherwise, that’s a 2-to-1 advantage.

Add to this the fact that a majority of Americans regardless of race support actions to reduce the wealth gap, as well as by age, gender, level of education, household income and geographic region. What we have is a broad consensus that this is an issue worthy of national action.

This 62% figure, which includes Progressives and Independents, leads me to the conclusion that a recent post of mine, "Hail-Hail...Conservatism is Declining," predicts the future of American politics.

Monday, May 18, 2015

BERNIE SANDERS TAKES EARLY POSITION WITH HILLARY CLINTON


Bernie Sanders has made a strong point in his fight against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. He calls her a newbie when it comes to the left's fight against income inequality. Is that true? Well about a year ago she did come down hard against it at the New American Foundation. She brought it up again this past April. In June of 2014, The Guardian reported that Clinton herself had an income problem and it started with her own income. Recently, the Clintons have reportedly made $30 million on their speeches since the beginning of 2014. It would appear that her populist approach is recent, at least in relation to income inequality, and Bernie Sanders is correct in his portrayal of her as a "newcomer." She, like her husband, Bill Clinton, has mostly chosen the middle of the road position before. In the past that path would most likely lead to getting one elected but this new Progressive awakening makes that need passé.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Who do you trust? Not your government?

There are polls on Congress, the President, and government in general everywhere, coming out on almost a daily basis.  They reflect a rabid distrust in the system that runs our country and that is not good.  Only a pathetic 9 percent of the voting population thinks Congress is doing a good job.  Only 22 percent of voters strongly approve of Barack Obama’s job.  These are both recent surveys taken by Rasmussen, a conservative leaning research organization.

But the worst, coming from the New York Times/CBS News poll, found Americans’ highest level of distrust ever in their government.  Close to half of the public agree with the Occupy Movement in that it represents the will of the people.  A whopping two-thirds of the public want wealth spread more evenly in the U.S.  (There’s that old Social Democracy rearing its head again)  Seventy percent of Americans think Republicans favor the rich, 66 percent object to corporate tax cuts and want increased income tax on millionaires.

I could stop right here and have illustrated the dismal support Uncle Sam has from his constituents.  But unfortunately, there is much more.  Case in point, income inequality is greater today than it has been since the 1920s.  According to David Leonhardt in the New York Times, this is due to two broad categories: market forces and institutional forces.  The former a result of increased productivity and technology moving some workers up the ladder into better paying jobs.  The latter deregulation, decline of unions and the retardation of the minimum wage.

Another whopping 89 percent of Americans distrust government to do the right thing, and 74 percent think the country is going in the wrong direction.  In the NYT/CBS poll, 84 percent disapprove of Congress, but the President’s approval rating is 46 percent but with an identical disapproval rating.  More than half of the public are concerned over his plan to create jobs; the key complaint out there right now, especially if you are jobless.

If you are out of a job, the income inequity issue is simply not acceptable.  “Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats, two-thirds of independents and just over one-third of all Republicans say that the distribution of wealth in the country should be more equitable…”  (There’s that Social Democracy talk again)  With the disapproval of Congress jumping 22 percent since the first of the year when Republicans took over the House, people are definitely looking for a different, improved style of government.



And one of the primary reasons is that the top one-percent of earners more than doubled their incomes over the last three decades with those at the other end struggling to find jobs, put food on the table and keep their house out of foreclosure.  This report from the Congressional Budget Office also states that “…government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income.”

Other points in the study:

·       The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007
·       People in the lowest fifth of the population received about 5 percent of after-tax household income in 2007
·       People in the middle three-fifths of the population saw their shares of after-tax income decline by 2 to 3 percentage points from 1979 to 2007

We are where we are today due to an eight-year run in the White House by George W. Bush and his ultra-conservative policies, followed by a brief period of respite in which Democrats did nothing.  Then, the GOP gains control over the House, with hefty numbers in the Senate that thwarts almost everything President Obama attempts to accomplish…just because it’s him.

But progressives have awakened and they are tuned in to 2012, alongside an American public that is fed up with the present government.  It should be an interesting year.

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