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a good article on income inequality and IMAGINED social mobility. a good argument to maintain a progressive income tax, and by extension, letting the bush tax cuts for wealthiest among us expire.
The Great Divergence: Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime. (1) - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
Economically speaking, the richest nation on earth is starting to resemble a banana republic. The main difference is that the United States is big enough to maintain geographic distance between the villa-dweller and the beggar.
But income inequality is a topic of huge importance to American society and therefore a subject of large and growing interest to a host of economists, political scientists, and other wonky types. Except for a few Libertarian outliers (whose views we'll examine later), these experts agree that the country's growing income inequality is deeply worrying. Even Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Board chairman and onetime Ayn Rand acolyte, has registered concern. "This is not the type of thing which a democratic society—a capitalist democratic society—can really accept without addressing," Greenspan said in 2005. Greenspan's Republican-appointed successor, Ben Bernanke, has also fretted about income inequality.
The Great Divergence: Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime. (1) - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine