Conspiracy against fixing the cancer of an income chasm
- By Greg Cusack
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, February 27, 2015
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Sociology and political science professor Lane Kenworthy and his new book, Social Democratic America. |
With "Social Democratic America," Professor Kenworthy provides a welcome addition to a number of recent studies — initiated by last year's superb "Capital in the 21st Century" by Thomas Pickety — focusing on the growing chasm between the wealthiest elite and "the rest of us."
This book, however, is not primarily concerned with further documenting the gravity of the situation but to drawing attention to specific policy proposals intended to address and reduce this disparity and its consequences.
The chart from page 37 clearly shows how growth in average income over the past 30 years has overwhelmingly benefited just the top 1 percent of citizens in the US.
In fact, the lion's share of this growth actually occurred within the uppermost sliver of that 1 percent, reflecting the inflated compensations paid to the CEOs of private companies as well as to key players in the financial services industry. Meanwhile, for the bottom 60 percent of Americans real wages (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated, leaving millions ill-prepared to cope with steadily rising costs for health care and other essentials. At the same time, the social safety net, designed to protect against job loss, disability, and insufficient income in retirement, has become significantly frayed.
Welcome high employment rates in recent months, unfortunately, have not been accompanied by a similar uptick in wages. Further, many of those re-employed have had to take positions paying considerably less than their former positions as the largest numbers of job openings are occurring in lower compensated positions.
This significant erosion of the economic, social, and political well being of most Americans actually began over 30 years ago, and dramatically reversed the post World War II environment — extending through the 1960s — of expanding opportunities for the middle and lower economic classes.
The cumulative effective of several decades has been to create, in Kenworthy's words, a growing "opportunity gap" that represents a real and grave threat to America's future ability to retain its economic and intellectual competitiveness for the rest of the 21st century.
Indeed, Kenworthy shows that in many ways the United States has already fallen into the middle to lower ranks. This can be shown by comparing the US experience with other wealthy, industrial nations in such areas the value of health care received vs. expenditures, or the number of people graduating from college annually, or the level of employment among adults of employable age.
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