Rich-poor gap gaining attention

[cynatnite]

WASHINGTON - The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.

Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20050614/ts_csm/ataxing_1

[EVDebs]

1. Louis Brandeis put it this way

"You can have great wealth or a democracy, you cannot have both"

...."and deliver us from evil" - Jesus

as in deliver us from the BFEE !!!!!

[xmas74]

2. I was just going to post this.

I found it to be an interesting article and am sending it on to all of my email contacts-even the conservative ones.

[kenny blankenship]

3. why that sounds downright utilitarian!

The income distribution is a moral absolute not subject to pragmatic concerns from lyin' socialist weasels. You can't take money away from rich people because some bearded hippie like Alan Greenspan thinks it might be better for the stability of democratic society.

Rich people are entitled to ALL the money poor people make for them. It's in the Bible people!

[GetTheRightVote]

4. At last Greenspan has made a statement worth listening too

:kick:

[Angry Girl]

5. The Origins of the Overclass

Bush's outrageous tax cuts for the wealthiest start to make sense in this context, nuh?

The Origins of the Overclass
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind - June 5, 2005 (NYT)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html?ex=1118894400&en=04755e917719f53a&ei=5070

Class Warfare, Bush-Style: The administration's stealth attack on U.S. unions
http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/3/borosage-r.html

[applegrove]

6. This is class warfare! (Sarcasm). Why the rich have to go out into

the big world out there with job security and huge portfolios. But sometimes their portfolios go down and that makes them very, very sad.

What is your problem? Why would you target such a delicate group of people? They send their kids to private schools and are protected from every slump or unemployment. The only area they didn't have complete control over was governance... and it was such a hard time to year after year not see their needs reflected in government decisions 100% of the time. Now things a just so! Leave them alone!! What is this Nazi Germany? :cry:

Everyone knows that all in their lives should be perfect. That the middle class should be gutted and have to pay for everything...to punish them for voting the way they did. :sarcasm: Now the middle class knows how it feels to be squeezed all the time. Why Muffy and Buffy had to share an SUV during their teens? How cruel is that?

Please - let the MSM give equal time to stories on the lives of these people. Paris Hilton is a pop culture story. We need more human interest stories on the lives of the uber-rich. The issues they face. The trouble around every corner. To be fair. Come on ... 1% of the MSM stories need to be on the very rich!!

[SlightlyWorried]

7. IMO this is *the* issue that the democrats should have run on

It was the basis of Edward's platform and I think that he was able to sell it.

Sadly for him the establishment has a real motivation to keep the status-quo and they would have fought him tooth and nail. And since they own the media they probably would have crushed him like a bug.

I think that the establishment is really just taking back what is "rightfully" theirs. The meltdown of the great depression and the need to scale back the economy required the establishment to "give" the general populace far more than they ever had before. Luckily for the establishment they had the money to start a long term plan back in the late 1960's to get it back. By 1980 they had their man in office and they started taking back in force. Now 25 years later the wealth distribution is getting more into line but there is still work to do. Hopefully if all goes according to plan the distribution will be back to pre-1900 levels soon.

I really think that such levels of wealth distribution lead to instability but perhaps they are betting that with the new mass media technologies that they will be able to placate the masses in a way that the old romans could only dream of with the circus maximus.

[LisaLynne]

8. Yep, heading back to the "Guilded Age"

Welcome to DU! :)