Travis Waldron of ThinkProgress.com on May 17, 2012 writes:
“As ThinkProgress has reported, American income inequality has skyrocketed over the last three decades. The wealthiest Americans have captured a large share of the nation’s economic prosperity, and their incomes continue to rise even as middle class wages remain stagnant. This income inequality has serious repercussions for the middle class, jeopardizing their economic ability and their political power.
But it doesn’t just affect people who are currently in the workforce. It has also contributed to a growing education gap that is affecting low- and middle-income children, according to a Center for American Progress report on income inequality and the middle class. The lowest-achieving students from high-income backgrounds are more likely to obtain a college education than the highest achieving students from low-income backgrounds, the report showed.”
As is the norm, the people who write about American income inequality never speak to the reality of the cause––that is concentrated ownership of the non-human productive capital assets of our business corporations and companies. The term “OWNERSHIP” is not well understood and instead statements flourish such as “the wealthiest Americans have captured a large share of the nation’s economic prosperity, and their incomes continue to rise even as middle class wages remain stagnant.”
Labor wages will continue to stagnant because the REAL productivity gains in the economy are due not to labor workers but to capital workers, those who own the productive capital assets of our business corporations and companies.
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 capital estate without having to take away from those who now own by using the tax system to redistribute the income of capital 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.”
If we not recognize this reality, the continued stagnation will further dim the economic hopes of America’s youth, no matter what their education level. The result will have profound long-term consequences for the nation’s economic health and further limit equal earning opportunity and spread income inequality. As the need for labor decreases and the power and leverage of productive capital increases, the gap between labor workers and capital owners will increase, which will result in upheaval.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/17/486244/chart-income-inequality-education/?mobile=nc
