US income inequality continues to grow

[Belsnickel]

(08-02-2018, 11:46 AM)Beaker Wrote: I disagree in that prevent means to keep from happening. These policies don't prevent you, they make the challenge  larger, but do not prevent. 

Making something more difficult is preventing it from happening. Take it up with Daniel Webster.

(08-02-2018, 11:46 AM)Beaker Wrote: I agree that voting to change things is part of an individual working to better their position. But I disagree in that I don't think economic equality within or between classes will ever be achieved, nor should it be expected. And that's ok. It is just framed too often in the form of "look what somebody else has, that's not fair" which fosters entitlement rather than innovation and perseverance.

I don't expect a completely egalitarian society, but I'd like a society more equal than it is, today. Experts has estimated the Gini coefficient for 1779, and it showed a more economically equal society than today. This includes the slaves. Think about that for a second. There were literally people that were owned by others, yet the United States was more egalitarian than it is today. Our society was built upon the idea that there are no economic classes in our society. The framers created our Constitution with that premise in mind. Because of this, increased economic inequality lessens our democracy because we lack the safeguards put in place in some other democracies to protect against the power that comes with extreme wealth.

Our framers didn't want this. Hell, people complain about the estate tax these days but Jefferson didn't want inherited wealth and would have taxed it to the extreme. They saw the threat in economic inequality but they didn't have the foresight to see the industrial revolution and the corporations that would come from it that have dismantled the society they knew.