The rich get richer as the rest of us get poorer.
This reality does not make the headlines in a country where any politician or activist who dares to discuss class is accused of fomenting “class warfare.”
Not a single news organization reported on how new data that were released by the Social Security Administration Oct. 15 suggests obscene income inequities.
This according to Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, who searched Google and Nexis databases in search of the news. So he took up the task, wading through the data in an article on the little known website called tax.com.
Johnston informs us that every 34th wage earner in America in 2008 went all of 2009 without earning a single dollar, as reported by the Social Security Administration. Meanwhile, “Total wages, median wages, and average wages all declined, but at the very top, salaries grew more than fivefold,” Johnston writes.
Johnston’s analysis of the tax and economic policy isn’t easy reading, but it's well worth the effort as we seek to understand just what is going on in our country --- one which a friend who lives in Mexico refers to, ironically, as a “failed state” because of the state of our economy and our failure to provide decent health care, education and housing for all our citizens.
Check out Johnston’s article here.
Fellow NCR Today blogger Joe Ferullo has a related piece here: The Haves, the Have-Nots, and The Angry Electorate
