Letters to the Web Editor

Bill Pelland · Joined: 25 Feb 2008 07:34 am Posts: 425

Smith and Marvin
Found on the internet:

The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.

While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.

The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.

Conclusion: Trickle down (Voodoo economics) is not working. Not all boats get lifted.

One of the causes of growing disparity in income is the decreasing benefits of workers such as health care. While premiums go up, employers are forced to offer less benefits which affects the workers more adversly. Other drastic increases come in college tuition which affects the ability for the middle class to achieve the American dream of upward economic mobility.

The question then is it better for a small percentage of Americans to increase disproportionatly in wealth or would it be better for society to expand the percentage of people making higher incomes.

If we help more to achieve better education we also increase the one area we lead the world in; intellectual property. Not doing so can only lead to a decreasing lead in this area.

The higher income gains are not neccessarily made thru increased business as you suggest but is being made in speculative investments in things like subprime mortgages, oil, and dot.com stocis. None of these three things have been beneficial to the nation.

Obama for POTUS
Noriega for US Senate.

Bill Pelland

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