On the gap between the rich and poor in America

5 Oct 2010 RT
Max Fraad Wolff is Economist at The New School. This video contains some great information on the income distribution.

Background:
Millions of Americans are unemployed and living off food stamps. Latest census shows the United States has the biggest gap between rich and poor compared to all westernized countries today.


(Presenter)
Max, help us understand the significance of this latest data? What does it mean for many Americans?

(Max Fraad Wolff)
80% of people in the country are feeling that they can't get ahead. They have seen themselves working for more hours if they're fortunate enough to have a job and taking home less money. They are increasingly living in a society with a distribution of income that we would usually associate with a developing country and a particular unequal one. Work isn't getting people ahead, homes are not getting people ahead, savings are difficult and if you're not in the top 10% of the society it's going to be very hard to get there. The social glue, the social mobility is getting into an increasingly incorrect fable which has little or no bearing on the lives of the people particularly young people.

(Presenter)
The rich are doing pretty well. How can that be?

(Max Fraad Wolff)
First of all we should be careful here. The wealthy have been doing better than everybody else for the last 30 years. What's happened in the last two to three years is that everybody else has been doing deadweight worse [Amazing]. So the average person adjusting for inflation and even in some cases not adjusting for inflation in the United States is actually worse off and the wealthiest people are relatively better off. And we can see a micro example of that right now in that we couldn't decide to get rid of the Bush tax cuts which have been ruinous for the US budget. People forget we've had a tax policy which has made society more unequal over the last 20 years. The market and the tax system are working together to reduce the few things we had that used to equalize the distribution of income in this country. And lastly wealth is much less equally distributed than income [Incredible]. Our real wages in the United States haven't gone up for 30 years. We're seeing the cumulative effect of that.

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[tomatodamashi]

I hate how the host said "socialism" as if it is a loaded word that she cannot agree with.

[toddg562]

wake up 99% and get educated on how your future is being stolen from you.