America spends an inordinate amount of time, applauding its own self, as being the greatest nation that the world has ever known. Yet, these words are belied not only by all sorts of statistics, but also by anyone that has ever bothered to congregate with the suffering middle class as well as with the most impoverished enclaves of people in America, of which, the richest nation in the world, has as reported by statistia.com in 2022, “…a total of 7.4 million families living below the poverty line in the United States.” Additionally, usatoday.com informs us that “The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation’s entire middle class,” of which “the middle class is defined as the middle 60% of households by income.”
Perhaps this is the way that it should be, the rich never having been richer, the poor we will always have amongst us, and the middle class just aren’t smart enough, they don’t work hard enough, and aren’t then really deserving of having more money and accumulated assets than those that are in the top 1%. We are told through census.gov that “Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022,” which would seem to be a household income that if it held for every household in America would make for a society that would be in a good position to be pretty comfortable. The fact is, that the income and wealth is so skewed to the top 1%, that those that are not in or close to that elite status, aren’t typically in a very comfortable position at all, and millions of our fellow citizens are most definitely impoverished and are hurting.
The thing about America is that what we currently have and see in our gargantuan income and wealth disparity, does not need to be the case, because this government has the power and the authority to tax appropriately those that have massive assets and wealth, be it corporations or individuals. After all, the very point of a progressive tax system is to tax those that have more with a higher tax rate that thus is then utilized as a material aid for those that have so little. Indeed, America is incredibly ineffective in the real world taxation of those with colossal amounts of wealth, who can readily afford the best tax lawyers, the best lobbyists, the best tax accountants, and pretty much put off till another day, indefinitely, the taxation reckoning that should be done and needs to be done in the here and now.
Look, it has to be said, most people would not begrudge the very rich, at all, if they could look around at society, and see that everyone has had a fair shake, a fair chance, and are food, shelter, and healthcare secure, but this is most definitely not the situation for so many in America. Indeed, this governance really does need to answer forthrightly to the people, but seems only to answer to the rich and the powerfully placed, instead, which is why this nation has such a huge amount of abject poverty, ill-educated citizens, high incarceration rates, and fares poorly in taking care of those that are its most vulnerable.
The reality of the situation is that America should feel a great shame in professing its greatness, when it is surrounded by the ill effects of its inability to do right by so many of its citizens, of which, the essential “crime” of the impoverished seems to be to have been born within an enclave of poverty that they have no hope of ever generating the escape velocity to successfully leave from, because this nation prefers to keep them forever oppressed.