Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, Paul Solman & Elizabeth Shell did a distressing story about wealth distribution in the United States. The pie chart breaks out wealth here by fifths of the population. Actually the chart is misleading. It is in fact much worse. While twenty percent of the American population control eighty-four percent of the wealth, If I got this right, in fact one tenth of one percent control most of this.
Solman took a piece of paper with three charts, the one posted here, from the U.S., another showing Sweden, which has a lot of rich people, but in general has much more equity, and a faked up chart where wealth was equally distributed. None were identified. He asked people he accosted on the street which was America. Almost everyone picked Sweden.
In a 2010 unsigned article “Upper bound” in the Economist, states “Compared with people in other rich countries, Americans tend to accept relatively high levels of income inequality because they believe they may move up over time. The evidence is that America does offer opportunity; but not nearly as much as its citizens believe.” More eloquently John Steinbeck, one of the heroes of my youth commented on this economic myopia, that “socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
The pie chart give the lie to this. As far as social mobility is concerned, compared with other industrialized nations we’re pretty much in the middle of the pack. One essay I read said if you really want your children to do better than you did, move to Canada. Here we are on a serious roll with the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer. Our shrinking middle class is ever more fragile.
So, we have an economic meltdown that drives everyone into a ditch, a deep recession for most, a depression for African Americans and other minorities, and a continuing downgrading of our economic lives as individuals, and what do our outraged citizens go after? Plutocrats? Grasping banks and bankers? The uber-rich?
No.
They bring out the pitchforks and burning torches and want to stick it to labor unions and government regulations.
So, what’s the take away? As was quoted on the show, Warren Buffet wryly notes “Yes, there’s been a class war in the United State. And my class, namely the super rich people, have won.”
And, if the current confused wave of political emotion is any indicator, this situation isn’t going to be changing anytime soon…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In