Veteran newsman Bill Moyers brought an eye opening report to his pulpit this week, discussing the income gap and inequalities in America, in the context of "The Next Gilded Age.". Awareness of this gap is crucial; most Americans are so busy either trying to keep up with their bills by working two or three jobs in addition to raising families, or on the divergent side, spending vast amounts of disposable income on incredible luxuries, that they do not notice the burgeoning divide in this country. It is more than a divide; it is a virulent chasm in our landscape. The middle class, in a traditional sense, has been all but wiped out in the last decade, replaced by mounting debt cycles and lower real wages for many than they were making 50 years ago. Concurrently, the rich and affluent continue to get richer; hedge fund managers make billions speculating on the sub prime mortgage market, profiteering off of other Americans' destroyed lives. The capitalists scream for capitalism, until trouble brews; then they run for government handouts and bailouts, just like the poor they so bemoan. And who pays the bills in America? Its the citizens, the very ones who struggle to make ends meet, the ones who end up bailing out white gloved Wall Street banks for their misdeeds. Moyers remarks, quite clearly, "The government is us. The Taxpayers." And us, we, make up this country, which is rotting from within. We can do better than this.
CEO's make hundreds of millions of dollars annually, while the workers they represent struggle to survive on minimum wage and no health benefits; the chasm in this country is growing, and along with this, the American ideal is vanishing, its insides being devoured by greed and disconcern.
As Per Moyers:
"Even as our streets and highways crumble, our schools gasp for help, and health care becomes more and more costly for those who are fortunate enough to have it, wealth is being so ostentatiously squandered that historians are calling this the Second Gilded Age."
And his guest, Steve Fraser, of The Wall Street Journal:
"...when you have such enormous disparities of income and wealth, there's a kind of warped set of priorities. So that the amassing of wealth and this was true of the first Gilded Age, comes at the expense of funneling vital capitol resources into improving the material lives and even the cultural lives of ordinary folk. Because we're living in the Second Gilded Age during a period of downward mobility for millions of Americans, even while the hedge fund managers are or others are accumulating this wealth."
And, as usual, it comes back to the government, the elected representatives of the citizens of the United States, tasked with being the voices of the many, who fail to hear the cries of their citizenry. They are, in most cases, beholden to only the great dollar; the dollar that allows them to campaign for another election, to maintain their personal grip on power and affluence. "Money is the golden rule of politics; those who have it, rule," says Moyers. And wealth, in the hands of the few, buys the policies that only work to further enrich these few; it is a vicious cycle, one in which the only winners are those lined up to the feeding troughs.
There will be nothing left for the rest of us when they finish eating.
