One wouldn’t necessarily know it, by virtue of the stock market hitting ever new highs, seemingly on a weekly basis, and by the fact that America is still the richest nation that the world has ever known; but there are serious cracks in what has occurred in the pocketbooks for the core of Americans; that is, those that aren’t superrich or just plain rich, as well as those that are not poor, or just plain dirt poor. While there are lots of ways to measure the greatness of a country, certainly one of those is how the hard-working middle class is faring vis-à-vis historical records, as well as how they are doing in the present day. Regrettably, the middle class in America is regressing, not because they aren’t working as hard as they ever have, and not because America isn’t producing buckets of profits for many of its biggest and most influential corporations, but rather because the allocation of that income and monetary pay is heavily skewed progressively ever more to those at the top of the pyramid; with those that are middle class as well as the poor, progressively falling ever further behind, and of which the progressive income tax code, is effectively, not even close to being robust in the re-distribution of that income and wealth.
We read at epi.org, that the productivity growth and typical hourly worker compensation in the years of 1948-1973, were pretty much in lockstep; demonstrated by productivity growing at 96.7% during that period of time, and with hourly worker compensation, growing at 91.3%. We then discover that from the period of 1973-2013, while productivity continued its growth at 74.4% during that period; that on the other hand, there was a huge disconnect with hourly worker compensation which only grew at an anemic 9.2% pace during that same period. This so signifies what is fairly obvious to those that look at the growing wealth gap between the pinnacle of the top in America, as compared to those of the middle class, which is that the wealthiest, the elite of Americans, have taken almost full control of the lion’s share of profits and income, and left the scraps for the middle class to fight over, thereby leaving that middle class, in a far worse position and of much more vulnerability, financially, then they were back in 1973.
For those that somehow believe, that this is okay, or is some sort of normal process or outcome of the capitalistic system, they are wrong. What this reflects, more than anything, is that those in the highest echelons of power and governance within this nation, are either outright corrupt or compromised in such a way that their decisions are consistently those decisions that favor a small subsection of Americans at the expense of the middle class and the people in whole. Further to the point, it isn’t healthy for any country for just a small elite to have such a significant amount of its wealth; in fact, this is something that is expected more from a corrupt and backward nation, not from that country which prides itself as being the emblem of a Constitutional republic, with a vibrant democracy.
The fact that so few have so much at the direct expense of the majority of Americans, is indicative that our governance has failed us, and until such is corrected by those that have the vision and the courage to do right by the people of this land, things will only get progressively worse.