We Have The Wealth - But Lack The Political Will

The Republicans have been successful in convincing a large part of the American population that the United States cannot afford to fulfill its obligations to our children, our unemployed, and our poor and disadvantaged citizens. They have used this to cut social programs to the bone, and they want even more cuts. They want to spend even less to fund education, feed the hungry, help the poor, or create new jobs.

This doesn't mean they actually want to spend less though. They just want to use the money to cut taxes for the rich, provide more subsidies for corporations (so even more of them could avoid paying taxes), and funnel more money into the corporations of the military-industrial complex -- and to build up our military presence in the world to force other nations to accept American policies (even though we already have over 800 military bases around the world).

The charts above, from Credit Suisse, show the Republicans are lying to us. The United States is still the richest nation on earth -- and we could easily afford to spend adequate money to solve our social problems, and still have enough to defend this nation. All we need to do is ask the rich to pay taxes on their income as earned income (rather than the much lower capital gains rate), ask the corporations to pay their fair share of taxes (like they used to do), and cut back some on our military spending (Do we need 800 foreign military bases?).

We have the wealth and income to fulfill our social obligations (and make a big dent in world poverty and hunger). We just lack the political will. We lack it because our population fell for the economic con game of "trickle-down" put in place by the Republicans. That policy caused a serious recession and killed millions of jobs in this country, and now the GOP is trying to convince us that we just need to keep that failed policy -- and cut programs that help people to do that. That is just not true. We have the resources, but just need to spend it in the right places (helping Americans instead of letting the rich and the corporations off the hook for taxes, and spending even more on an already bloated military budget).

But while we are still the richest nation on earth, that does not mean all Americans are well-off. We have one of the most unequal distributions of income in the world. The chart below is from the U.S. Census Bureau, and it shows just how out of whack our income distribution is in this country. Note that the bottom 20% of our population (about 65 million people) must survive on only about 3.2% of the nation's total income. But the top 20% get to divide up more than half of the nation's total income.

And it's continues to get more unequal. Note that in the last 10 years the top 20% of income earners increased their share of the nation's total income, while the bottom 80% all must now divide a smaller share of that total income. This is because the Republican "trickle-down" economic policy has tilted the economic playing field to favor the rich and corporations -- and hurt all other Americans.

How much longer will we put up with this growing inequality? How much longer will we fail to live up to our obligation to help the less advantaged in this country? We have a chance in next month's election to make a start in fixing this mess -- by voting the Republicans out of power. And it's time to do just that.