On September 2013 Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! conducts an interview with Sasha Abramsky, author of the new book, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives.
A new study shows that income inequality in America is at a record high. According to an analysis of tax filings, the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the other 99 percent widened to unprecedented levels in 2012. The top 1 percent of U.S. earners collected more than 19 percent of household income, breaking a record previously set in 1927. Income inequality in the United States has been growing for almost three decades. We speak to Sasha Abramsky, author of the new book, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. It is written in the spirit of Michael Harrington’s groundbreaking 1962 book, The Other America, in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the ‘age of affluence.’ Harrington’s book went on to inspire President Lyndon B. Johnson’s subsequent “war on poverty.”
Both Sasha Abramsky’s and Michael Harrington’s books fail to address the REAL problem at the root of income inequality––CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP of wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital. And to advocate for solutions that systematically broaden private sector individual ownership of the formation of FUTURE productive capital investment to empower EVERY American to accumulate over time a viable capital trust (super-IRA) portfolio of stock in diversified companies and reap the full earnings payout of corporate earnings as dividend income to support their livelihood and retirement.
As we seek to eliminate human toil jobs by substituting non-humans means of production for human means and accomplish new feats that only technology can produce, the reality is that private sector job creation in numbers that match the pool of people willing and able to work will constantly be eroded by physical productive capital’s ever increasing role.
Given the current invisible structure of the economy, except for a relative few, the majority of the population, no matter how well educated, will not be able to find a job that pays sufficient wages or salaries to support a family or prevent a lifestyle, which is gradually being crippled by near poverty or poverty earnings. Thus, education is not the panacea, though it is critical for our future societal development. And younger, as well as older people, will increasingly find it harder and harder to secure a well-paying job––for most, their ONLY source of income––and will find themselves dependent on taxpayer-supported government welfare, open and disguised or concealed.
While arguments point to measures that will benefit “educated” Americans, the authors fail to address the necessity for broadened private sector individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital asset economic growth, connecting people with individual super-IRA-type Capital Homestead Accounts (CHPs) by which to build viable, sustainable diversified ownership portfolios in America’s corporations and future corporations, and to provide financial security in retirement.
See “Education Is Critical To Our Future Societal Development” at http://www.nationofchange.org/education-critical-our-future-societal-development-1373556479
See “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.orghttp://www.nationofchange.org/
