In this op-ed by Tami Luhby @CNNMoney May 2, 2012 she writes:
“The rich are getting richer, and everyone else is going deeper into debt trying to keep up.”
“The bottom 95% of Americans have seen debt levels balloon compared to their earnings over the past 20 years or so, as falling incomes made them more dependent on credit to maintain their lifestyles.”
“The debt divide is a result of the growing income gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else. The top 5% saw their share of total income rise to 34% in 2007, up from 22% in 1983. This excludes capital gains, which pump up the income of the rich even more since they are more likely to invest.”
In order to create a just balance and flatten the inequality equation, we need to reevaluate our tax and central banking institutions, as well as, labor and welfare laws. We need to innovate in such ways that we lower the barriers to equal economic opportunity and create a level playing field based on anti-monopoly and anti-greed fairness and balance between production and consumption. In so doing, every citizen can begin to accumulate a viable productive capital estate without having to take away from those who now own by using the tax system to redistribute the income of capital (owner) workers. What the “haves” do lose is the productive capital ownership monopoly they enjoy under the present unjust system. A key descriptor of such innovation is to find the ways in which “have nots” can become “haves” without taking from the “haves.” Thus, the reform of the “system,” as binary economist Louis Kelso postulated, “must be structured so that eventually all citizens produce an expanding proportion of their income through their privately owned productive capital and simultaneously generate enough purchasing power to consume the economy’s output.”
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/02/news/economy/income-debt-inequality/?source=cnn_bin
