Het Neoliberale Geloof 9

Dit is het resultaat van het neoliberale geloof dat ook onze regering aanhangt:

'The Gap Is Getting Wider.


You can imagine that the latest release of income and poverty statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau landed with a thud at the White House.

The headline is that for the first time since President Bush has been in office, the poverty rate has not increased; it has instead remained stable. But there is worse news under the headline: Because the poverty rate was unchanged, but real median household income rose 1.1 percent between 2004 and 2005, that can only mean one thing: Income inequality between the rich and the poor in America is getting worse.

It gets still worse: According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the increase in median income in 2005 was driven by an increase in the income of elderly households. Non-elderly households—working families—saw their median income actually fall by 0.5 percent. Since 2001, the median income for non-elderly households has fallen 3.7 percent, or $2,000. “That is both stunning and unprecedented,” said economist Robert Greenstein with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in a conference call with reporters.

Economist Jared Bernstein at the Economic Policy Institute said that the 2001 recession has been followed by “an unusually uneven economic recovery,” making a mockery of the promises the Bush administration and congressional Republicans made when they rammed record tax cuts for the wealthy and for businesses through Congress. Those tax cuts, combined with the low-interest-rate policies of the Federal Reserve and a booming real estate market, were supposed to be a rising tide for everyone. As progressives warned, they were not. Now, interest rates are up, the housing boom is over and the caffeine buzz from the tax cuts is long gone. “I’m concerned that for many working families, this is as good as it gets,” he said.

The Gini Index, which is used to measure income inequality, has increased 4.2 percent since 1995, according to the Census Bureau. Today, the wealthiest 20 percent of households earn 50.4 percent of the nation’s gross income; the poorest 20 percent earn just 3.4 percent. The real median income of the top 10 percent of households increased 13 percent in that period, while it increased just 2.3 percent for the bottom 10 percent.'

Lees verder: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/29/the_gap_is_getting_wider.php