"Romney, Ryan and the Real Risk of Rising Inequality" by daniel altman at Daily Kos

[applegrove]

Romney, Ryan and the Real Risk of Rising Inequality

by daniel altman at Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/17/1121159/-Romney-Ryan-and-the-Real-Risk-of-Rising-Inequality

"SNIP.....................................

With rising inequality comes the risk that economic opportunity will be denied to talented, hardworking people who happen to lack the connections or resources of the wealthy. This is a threat to economic growth, because all the ideas and potential of those people will be wasted. As a result, inequality can eventually reduce incomes for the rich, who need economic growth to receive higher returns on their capital, as well as for the poor. It's one reason why feudalistic countries dominated by small elites tend to have lower incomes than countries with strong middle classes.

There are only two ways to avoid this long-term economic catastrophe. One is to improve the bargaining power of owners of labor. De-unionization and the growing availability of offshore labor have taken away much of workers' power to negotiate for a higher share of national income. Yet neither of these trends would be easy to stop or reverse. Organized labor has been trying for decades to restore unionization without much success, and the global economy will only become more integrated.

It would be much easier to change the tax system. Owners of capital may have the upper hand in bargaining, but we can compensate for that through redistribution. Our goal in making the tax system more progressive should be to ensure equal economic opportunity for all Americans. If the children of the wealthy don't have to worry about food, shelter, health care, and safety as they try to get ahead, then neither should the children of the poor. Only under these conditions will we realize our economy's full potential for growth.

Not surprisingly, Romney says he opposes this kind of redistribution. In fact, his support of Paul Ryan's budget proposal suggests that he wants to go in the opposite direction, making it even easier for owners of capital to avoid future taxes. Romney apparently does not appreciate the enormous risk that rising inequality poses to the economy - the same economy that made him rich.

......................................SNIP"

[Speck Tater]

1. "This is a threat to economic growth..."

Good! Right now we can use every threat to economic growth we can find since economic growth is what is destroying our planet and hastening the extinction of the human race.

Politics won't matter when we are all starving to death and gasping for what little oxygen is left in the atmosphere. And while the planet dies most everyone else thinks it's all "business as usual." And the rich will be dying right alongside the poor because all their money won't buy breathable air or food that won't grow without water in hot, parched desert sand.

(End of rant)