Income Disparity Series

[Moksha]

Such questions can be necessary and prophetic, or they can be manipulative. In political discussions that share partisan viewpoints injecting such inquiries will give the appearance of the latter.

In questions that have a direct bearing on the welfare of the poor and downtrodden, a reminder that we are to champion their cause is never misplaced. The words in the chapel have meaning beyond the chapel doors.

[FunkyTown]

I'm a little uncomfortable that a crook like David Rosen is being quoted.

"A federal grand jury indicted David Rosen, a former chief fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), on four counts of misleading the Federal Election Commission about the amount of money raised and spent during a Hollywood gala that topped $1 million in contributions for the senator’s 2000 campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 8 (subscription required). The 10-page indictment includes an allegation that an unidentified contributor paid more than $1.1 million to produce the event, held Aug. 12, 2000—two days before the start of the Democratic National Convention in L.A.—in payments that should have been disclosed as direct or in-kind contributions. Rosen, who runs the Chicago-based consulting firm Competence Group, also worked on Gen. Wesley Clark’s failed 2004 presidential bid. No others, including Clinton, are named in the indictment. It is unclear whether Rosen’s motive was to circumvent federal campaign finance regulations that limit individual contributions, according to the Times report. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began looking into the event in 2001. Aaron Tonkin, who helped to organize the fundraiser, pleaded guilty in 2003 to fraud in connection with other charity events. Rosen, who has not been arrested, is scheduled to make his first appearance in Los Angeles federal court Jan. 24." [4]

(From the ever-important Sourcewatch.org)

There are some good points being made and I think I might actually be closer to PCs viewpoint than we realized originally.

I would never suggest incautiously regulating something. My belief is that the purpose of government is to reign in the excesses and I think I may have been a bit overzealous in how I interpreted PCs words.

From the Counter Punch site by David Rosen:

...as of 2004, the top 20 percent controlled 85 percent of the nation’s wealth.

David Rosen: The End of the American Century?

The Economic Policy Institute’s recent report, “State of Working America,” details America’s post-war ephemeral growth. It soberly details how, in the face of significant productivity gains, median household income remained stagnant. Most disturbing, it shows that wealth has increasingly gone to the top 5 percent (and especially the top 1%) of Americans; as of 2004, the top 20 percent controlled 85 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Ordinary Americans are suffering. EPI warns, “Today’s economic crisis finds America’s working families in an ever harder place. … [R]ecent developments are compounding a broader economic failure that has been not months or years, but decades in the making.”

* * *

The most disturbing graph in the EPI report is one that shows that in 2006, the top 1 percent controlled 23 percent of all income. What makes this so disturbing in that the super-rich have regained the position they held just prior to the 1929 stock market crash when they controlled 24 percent of all income. In the light of the current great recession, one can anticipate that the share controlled by the top 1 percent will have only increased. America has come full circle to a point when the American Century was not even a notion in Luce’s dreams. Have the forces of reaction set the stage for another Depression, a "new normal"?