"An article in Business Insider graphically represents just how wide the income gap has become. The gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties."
15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America
See also, previously posted: How Does USA Compare in Re-distribution of Wealth?
And:
Also, there is good evidence that income inequality correlates strongly with a dysfunctional society. The more inequality you have, the more your society is dysfunctional. Excerpt:
"...almost every social problem, from crime to obesity, stems from one root cause: inequality. It became clear," Wilkinson says, "that countries such as the US, the UK and Portugal, where the top 20% earn seven, eight or nine times more than the lowest 20%, scored noticeably higher on all social problems at every level of society than in countries such as Sweden and Japan, where the differential is only two or three times higher at the top."
...To ensure their findings weren't explainable by cultural differences, they analysed the data from all 50 US states and found the same pattern. In states where income differentials were greatest, so were the social problems and lack of cohesion."
Link.
From the comment thread of top article:
...look around you...carefully.
Now, from all you can see, strip everything that was built with our taxes. And I mean everything: roads, sewers, courts, schools, firefighters, police, borders, the whole 9 yards.
Tell me what you see now.
Do you like it? Is that your definition of paradise on Earth?
This is what sensible people mean by "fair share": Everyone contribute in proportion of their means to stuff that helps each and everyone at one time or another in their life.
Fucking amazing that something so basic has to be explained time and again. It is one of those signs that society is disintegrating before our eyes. Driven by pure egotism and unrestrained greed, concepts that everyone should hold has self-evident are now challenged with cheap ass pseudo-libertarian sophistry and bullshit.
*****
The reason for the great amount of entrepreneurship, investment and the like which built up the upper income group is due to the infrastructure and services in the form of bridges, roads, fire departments, police departments, military, etc. It is due to the infrastructure and productive services that life for the public as a whole improves, unlike say in Haiti where there is only a tiny feudal class holding the wealth of the public...
The reality is that the top upper income group receives more in income than other groups and are afforded privileges, yet they receive much more economic rent over the real production of the economy. The increasing income to wealth gap is a sign of the deteriorating conditions of the nation, not the other way around. These same wealthy often pay less in taxes relative to their living costs due to the price of land.
The only ignoramus here would be your type. The Austrian school anarchists that want to privatize everything including the military and the nuclear weapons industry in the name of the "Free market". The "Free market" was not what built the US, it was what built Haiti.
