Banana Republic’s not just the name of a store
Posted by Michael McKenna on Monday, January 24, 2011
When you think of the American Dream, you probably think of a solidly middle class family. But that vision is increasingly becoming nothing more than a dream, as a growing share of the country’s population grows poorer while the superrich get superricher. No, I’m not about to talk about class warfare, I’m just stating the facts. This is the age of American Inequality.
New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote a great piece in which he shared this startling fact:
“The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976” (Source: Cal-Berkeley Econ Department).
Census data bears this out. The lowest 20% of households accounted for a mere 3.4% of the country’s aggregate income. Guess what? That puts us in the realm of inequality that characterized the banana republics, the dictatorships in Central and South America of the last century.
But the good news is that the age of inequality can be short-lived if good public policy gets put in place. Programs exist already that help low-income families during trying economic times. I’m talking about programs like food stamps that help shore up a family’s budget while also bringing dollars to local grocers; programs like WIC that get kids proper nutrition during that critical development window of 0-2 years; and programs like school breakfast that can help boost kids performance (which is so important in today’s knowledge economy).
We must protect these programs, but the new Congress has been sharpening its ax to hack away at the federal budget as many ways as possible. I fully agree that the long-term health and wealth of this country depends on our ability to reign in the deficit. But our wealth as a nation also depends on the health of our children.
Activists who care about kids need to tell their members of congress that programs that advance children’s well-being should be exempt from budget cuts.
January 24, 2011 | 1 comment(s) | Tags: inequality, poverty, school breakfast
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1 reader comment so far.
Very well put, Mike. I've been thinking the same thing for some time now, just didn't have the facts to make the case, nor the words to put it so clearly.
Posted by Cate Puzo on January 25, 2011
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