The US Census Bureau just released their latest
report on the wealth gap in the the United States and the results are shocking and extremely dangerous to a society that continues to claim that it is democratic.
Family wealth for the bottom 60 percent fell by more than $5000 or 6.8 percent, between 2000 and 2011. Meanwhile, the median net worth of the richest people in our country INCREASED by $630,754, or 11 percent, between 2000 and 2011. That is on top of the largest income and wealth gap in history.
These are figures from the the US Census Bureau.
There simply is no reasonable or justifiable excuse for the rich to wallow in their hoarded wealth or transfer it through fake, paper headquarter moves to other countries, or invest that massive wealth in the exploitation of the most vulnerable workers in the world while the American middle class is eviscerated before our eyes, our people fall into poverty, more and more children are raised malnourished in poverty, and our nation needs massive investment in our own future.
Now, of course, the Supreme Court has ruled that those with vast wealth can use it to undermine our democracy by buying elections, swamping opponents with ads that do not even identify who is paying for the ads.
And 22 states have already enacted legislation to restrict the vote and limit the franchise since the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
It is time for us all–labor, civil rights organizations, students, people of color, LGBT folks, people of faith, patriotic Americans, all progressives to talk openly and often about the ongoing destruction of American democracy.
Ask yourself what would happen to the world if American military might were in the hands of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson who wants to declare nuclear war in the Mideast, Dick Cheney, and that crowd of neo-cons who never saw a war they didn’t love, but who were always too privileged to have to fight.
Photo source: www.pfaw.org