Income inequality worldwide: Bad and getting worse

There is a sobering new report from Oxfam about income inequality worldwide. Some lowlights:

• The richest 1 percent of the world's population currently controls 48 percent of the world's total wealth.
• If trends continue, Oxfam predicts that the most affluent will possess more wealth than the remaining 99 percent by 2016.
• The 80 wealthiest people in the world possess $1.9 trillion, which is almost the same amount shared by some 3.5 billion people at the bottom half of the world's income scale.
• Thirty-five of the lucky 80 were Americans with a combined wealth of $941 billion. Germany and Russia shared second place, with seven uber-rich individuals apiece.

Although late to the game, Obama is at least attempting to do something about this egregious problem and will announce a plan to extend tax credits to the middle class by hiking taxes on wealthier Americans and big banks during his upcoming state of the union address. It’s a step in the right direction, but we’ll have to wait and see what the dim bulbs in Congress have to say about this.

As bad as things are for the 99 percent here in America, there is one statistic that is perhaps the most shocking and damning of all.

More than 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1.25 a day.

America’s decline: Not the envy of the world anymore

If you take a college class and your answers to questions are continuously wrong, you get a failing grade. In politics, you can be wrong about everything and still be rewarded with a seat in Congress. People like Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Joni Ernst and Steve King shouldn’t be allowed around sharp objects, yet there they are, sitting in the seats of power, making decisions that affect the lives of millions and millions of people.

Americans, in general, are yawning with disinterest as the inmates take over and run the asylum. Beyond our borders, however, people are dumbstruck at how badly we are behaving. In her Salon article “Has America Gone Crazy?” Ann Jones writes about the grave concerns expressed by Europeans, Africans and Asians over the direction America is taking. They don’t understand how our government can have so little regard for the health and welfare of its citizens. They are angered by our military interventions around the world. They are appalled by the unconstitutional excesses of our security agencies. And they can’t understand why we tolerate a tax system that so unfairly favors the rich over the average citizen.

This is not how a good portion of the world operates. In Europe, and especially the Scandinavian countries, governments have the welfare of their citizens as a top priority. There are high taxes, but those taxes provide healthcare and education for everyone. The government helps people meet their basic needs. It’s not dog-eat-dog capitalism where you get what you want by climbing over the backs of your fellow human beings, but a cooperative society where you can truly pursue your dreams because you don’t have to worry about how you’ll pay for your heart operation or your retirement.

Conservatives and the capitalist elites have convinced Americans that any type of socialism is bad, bad, bad, with the poorly informed, nationalistic red-staters nodding blankly in agreement. The reality is that we are not the envy of the world anymore. Citizens of other countries do not look to the United States for guidance or direction. They’ve moved beyond us and are creating more equitable and fair societies on their own. The question is, will we join them or will we collapse under the weight of our hubris and blind nationalism?

The American economy: It’s worse than you imagined

Writer Michael Snyder has an eye-opening article posted on the Zero Hedge site titled, Which America do you live in? — 21 hard to believefacts about ‘wealthy America’ and ‘poor America.’ It’s basically a compendium of economic data reflecting the colossal and continuously expanding inequality between rich and poor in this country. It’s sobering stuff, because those of us lucky enough to have decent jobs can too easily barricade ourselves from the reality of poverty and inequality that exists all around us.

I have actually lived in both worlds. During the financial tsunami of 2008 I was laid off and it took me over two years to find another job. Never having the luxury of being able to save money, I lost my condo and went through bankruptcy during that period, and if it were not for my girlfriend, I could have easily found myself living on the streets. It was a bleak period of bouts with depression and anger and self-esteem issues, and it is the curse that more and more Americans are experiencing in their lives. It is not, as conservatives would have you believe, only a problem for the laziest among us.

The cars in the parking lot where I work are almost all newer model, mid-priced vehicles. There are a few BMWs, one or two Mercedes, and a clunker or two, but the lot generally reflects a group of mostly white men and women with college degrees making a reasonable income. I would guess that many of them are two-earner families with homes they are paying for. They, we, are isolated in a way, living on a shrinking island of middle-class comfort. If nothing is done to address our broken economy, if we don’t demand that something be done, the island will eventually be swallowed up by the sea and we will join the millions of other Americans treading water merely to stay alive.