Writers, John Cavanagh and Chuck Collins, recently reported that over the past three decades, market-worshipping politicians and their corporate backers have engineered the most colossal redistribution of wealth in modern world history, a redistribution from the bottom up, from working people to a tiny global elite. Wat do you think about that?
In a recent special issue of The Nation, through the mind of Cavanagh and Collins, we learned that the widespread of costs of this rising inequality and offers a blueprint on how to reverse course. We will never achieve social and economic justice for those at the bottom of our economic pyramid until we tackle (Obama and McCain, listen!)wealth concentration at the top.
The gap between the top and the bottom (rest of us like you and me) is simply staggering. The richest 1 percent of Americans currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than the bottom 90 percent. A worker making $10 an hour would have to labor for more than 10,000 years to earn what one of the 400 richest Americans pocketed in 2005. Go figure!
So what will happen? The government has to protect the common good. To reverse the reckless course, we need to change our nation's dominant political narrative and restore faith in the critical role that government must play. But we cannot stop there either. We need to confront directly the threat posed by this inequality.
The 2008 election could help open the door to tackling inequality. Whule previous leading presidential candidates have shied away from the issue, Obama and Clinton have drawn attention to problems such as the staggering CEO-worker pay gap and tax loopholes for hedge-fund managers.
According to the Cavanagh and Collins, no President is likely to embrace a bold agenda on inequality without heavy pressure from unions, religious groups, small business, environmentalists and other activists. Concerted citizen action helped end the first Gilded Age and usher in a period of broadly shared economic well-being after the WWII. Today we have the opportunity, and hte imperative, to do so once again. Now where is Hillary. She seems to have it put together. Can Obama and McCain do address the significant problems we face as long as America tolorates grand concentrations of private wealth? We'll see. What do you think queers?
In a recent special issue of The Nation, through the mind of Cavanagh and Collins, we learned that the widespread of costs of this rising inequality and offers a blueprint on how to reverse course. We will never achieve social and economic justice for those at the bottom of our economic pyramid until we tackle (Obama and McCain, listen!)wealth concentration at the top.
The gap between the top and the bottom (rest of us like you and me) is simply staggering. The richest 1 percent of Americans currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than the bottom 90 percent. A worker making $10 an hour would have to labor for more than 10,000 years to earn what one of the 400 richest Americans pocketed in 2005. Go figure!
So what will happen? The government has to protect the common good. To reverse the reckless course, we need to change our nation's dominant political narrative and restore faith in the critical role that government must play. But we cannot stop there either. We need to confront directly the threat posed by this inequality.
The 2008 election could help open the door to tackling inequality. Whule previous leading presidential candidates have shied away from the issue, Obama and Clinton have drawn attention to problems such as the staggering CEO-worker pay gap and tax loopholes for hedge-fund managers.
According to the Cavanagh and Collins, no President is likely to embrace a bold agenda on inequality without heavy pressure from unions, religious groups, small business, environmentalists and other activists. Concerted citizen action helped end the first Gilded Age and usher in a period of broadly shared economic well-being after the WWII. Today we have the opportunity, and hte imperative, to do so once again. Now where is Hillary. She seems to have it put together. Can Obama and McCain do address the significant problems we face as long as America tolorates grand concentrations of private wealth? We'll see. What do you think queers?