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Divided America
Or The Haves and The Have-Nots by James Glaser December 7, 2010 
We keep hearing how the rich are getting richer and endless talk about extending unemployment benefits. The Republicans want the Democrats to come up with some way to pay for jobless benefits before they agree to vote for them, but those same Republicans will not even talk about paying for tax cuts for the rich. The problem for us (the middle class) is that the "rich" run everything. People with money, a lot of money, are the vast majority of our elected officials. The Senate, the House, and the White House are filled with millionaires. The truth is that our media is filled with the rich, too. Those talking heads on network news and the commentators on cable, take home a lot of money, and when you listen to those so-called Round Table discussions on the Sunday Morning news shows, the people talking are all well heeled. How can people making six figures or more talk intelligently about what it is like to be one of the unemployed? There are about 15 to 20 million Americans out of work, but our media can not find even one of them who is able to talk intelligently about how important it is to pass this new extension for the long-term unemployed. Why is that? Some how, when an American loses their job, they become like an "Untouchable" in India. The "haves" don't want to mingle with the "have nots." Even working media types want to stay away from non-working media types. You lose your job, and you lose your place in American society. There must be something wrong with you or you would be working, is the thought in the America of the 21st century. It has been reported that the separation between the rich and everyone else in America is greater than any other industrial country in the world. We have become a Banana Republic, and we didn't even see it coming. I started looking up statistics about the wealth distribution in America, and there are thousands of pages to read if you like, but the University of California at Santa Cruz put this out, and it seems to sum it up very well. Of all the Financial Wealth in the United States, the top 1% has 42.7% of all that wealth. The next 19% have 50.3% of the wealth, and all the rest of us, 80% of the American population have 7% of the financial wealth in this country. So, the top 20 % control 93% of the wealth, while everyone else controls just 7%. To me, that means the "Haves" number 20% of the country and the "Have-Nots" number the remaining 80% of our population. Which Group are you in? |
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