Who gives a flying fig about the middle class?

You may recall back when I blogged about "The Winner Take All Society", reviewed in the NYTimes "Class Matters" series in 2005, I pointed out that history seems to be telling us it is time to be rich, and not middle class. My reason: the cold war is over, so, thanks workers for all your hard work in defeating socialism, and now the very wealthy can go back to accumulating wealth, at your expense.

Well, it comes up again in the NYTimes
year in ideas as The New Inequality. It seems that even the average college graduate (Bachelor's degree) are barely seeing their earnings increase against inflation. So, college-boy? You've got a 50/50 chance of being on the losing economic divide. And, this year, two economists showed that the very 0.1 percent increased their pre-tax income to 6.8% of the total income, up from 4.7 percent 10 years ago, and from 2 percent in the 60s and 70s.

The reason, I repeat, is that there is no longer any idealogical constraint against becoming an old-fashioned robber-baron. Between 1920 and 1990, the Soviets would have scored political points with those governments we competed for, if our very wealthy were as wealthy as they are now. And, the average Bachelor's degree holder (average!) would have looked at the very wealthy, and said -- why am I working my ass off so that this joker can have a 9th zero after his income? And that joker can now think to himself, as he demands that 10th zero from the board that will give it to him, "if the workers don't like it, they can go to Cuba!"

This will not change until people look at their losing wages, and realize that they have no recourse but to band together -- either politically or socially -- to shame or produce enough fear in those who vote themselves the 10th zero, that they decide it's time for that increase in salary.

Really, what else changes the distribution in wealth?

Oh, no, I don't believe that a person can do $100,000,000,000 worth of work in a lifetime. I do believe they are benefiting from our legal structure, infrastructure, government, and workforce. Time to reprogressivize the income tax; and keep that inheritance tax in place.