The Income Gap
Again, the Christian Science Monitor:
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.It's interesting that Greenspan sees a direct link between the education of Americans and the loss of income. He also credits the top 20%, a number most Democrats are likely to downplay, but which is probably very accurate. It is still stunning to say that in America, 80% of the population has seen no real financial gain.
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.
...
Greenspan's comments at a Joint Economic Committee hearing last week were typical, for him. Asked a leading question by Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island, he agreed that over the past two quarters hourly wages have shown few signs of accelerating. Overall employee compensation has gone up - but mostly due to a surge in bonuses and stock-option exercises.
The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.
The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. "As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing," Greenspan told the congressional hearing.
The cause of this problem? Education, according to Greenspan. Specifically, high school education. US children test above world average levels at the 4th grade level, he noted. By the 12th grade, they do not. "We have to do something to prevent that from happening," said Greenspan.
posted by General Stan at 4:40 PM
1 Comments:
granted, your hometown is of the extremely surreal variety. It is interesting, however, how true this evidence is, anecdotal or otherwise. With exception to the highly urban cities of America [NYC, etc] the primary trend of growth has been outward. Wealth has rapidly moved further and further from the geographical or traditionally cultural center of a city [aka: DOWNTOWN] in a crazy project of futher expansion. The schools easily have followed that pattern nationwide. Go down to Phoenix and check out how the schools operate there. Your project is dead-on: take a look at one of the poorest area schools, then look at a new school. It will be shocking. But not only because of the building itself: the because of the lack of updated learning materials inside the school. Books, desks, lightbulbs, heaters, etc. poorer, older schools, apart from simply being overcrowded, often lack all of these.
And you're right- there's definitely a concerted effort to build policy to preserve this. It is a part of the cultural class system in America that we never think about; and that has probably the greatest effect on oru culture.
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