Injustice in America
Wealth disparity in America disturbs me more than religious wrongdoing. I’m particularly upset that our public air waves are drenched in rhetoric from the right, the tax-cutting extremists who blast social programs that make life tolerable for some of the poor. Facts I wish our media would broadcast: • Incomes in the U.S. are less equal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. We have roughly the same inequality as Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador. Latin American incomes are actually equalizing, but inequality continues to increase in the United States. • Our income tax code essentially ignores top incomes—those making hundreds of millions, even a billion dollars a year! These billionaires are taxed at the same low rate—35%—as those making $373,650 a year, less than half a million! Our tax code fails to distinguish between them. Insane! • The richest 1 percent owns 34 percent of our nation’s wealth—that’s more than the entire bottom 90 percent, who own just 29 percent of the countr...