INEQUALITY

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..."
However, this country was not founded on the principle of strict equality, which would be impossible to enforce and, if enforcement were tried, would be stifling to any society and economy.
No, friends, Ned is no advocate of legislated equality, but the situation in which we find ourselves, thanks largely to our Republican friends and their craven Democratic enablers, makes Ned's blood run cold with fury. Here's what we mean: As of 2007, the last year for which we have IRS data, the top .1% of households appropriated 11% of national income. The top one-tenth of one percent. This is the worst inequality of income since around 1928, and we all know what happened a year later.
Ned feels it's outrageous enough when the top 1% of households stole (legally) 23% of national income that same year, but to have the top 13,000 households collect 11% should make any American who has any concept of what this country stands for, mad with rage.
And yet, what do we hear in the hysteriasphere (Ned's friends know that this is his term for the Mass Media and blogosphere collectively)? That Republicans who gave us this economy, this regulatory apparatus in shambles, Katrina, the housing collapse, and two unwinnable wars, not to mention this gridlocked Congress, are slated to pick up massive gains in the House and Senate because voters are "disgusted with the mess in Washington."
Let Ned ask the more rational of his readers to consider for a moment what this obscene income inequality means.
First, the NYT reports that an income of about $75k is necessary to relieve the average person of anxiety towards the necessities of life: anything over that is increasingly gravy.
Second, spending (which, like it or not, drives this consumerist economy) is inversely proportional to income, in that those with the lowest incomes spend more proportionally than anyone else, and those at the highest levels hoard most of their lucre and spend comparatively little.
Here's Ned's point: the more we concentrate income at the "top", the less of that money is spent to drive the economy.
So, not only is it positively unAmerican to support such an obscene wealth misallocation, it is calamitous practical fiscal policy.
Never forget that from the '30s until 1962 we had a marginal income tax rate of 90% on incomes over $200k. The period from 1947-1965 was, not coincidentally, a period of great national prosperity.
So, en fin, what sort of amoral creature would support and even advocate MORE such income inequality?
Why, your average Republican candidate. And the fact that the voters seem to be agreeing with them tells Ned all he needs to know about the level of analytical skills and basic morality at large in this degraded country today.
But, perhaps, as the poets say, 'it's always darkest just before dawn.'