It is the government's responsibility to protect the population from harm. Most Republicans seem to think that only means protecting them from violent attack by terrorists, or from crime. But there are other ways you can protect your people such as protecting them against starvation, protecting them against health problems by providing adequate health care, or even protecting them against natural disaster as should have been done in New Orleans last year.

As I recently pointed out in another thread, if our infant mortality rate was equal to that of Canada, then 72,000 American babies who currently die each year would instead live. And Canada does not have some sort of "world class" health care system. There are countries whose infant mortality rate is much much lower than Canada.

But apparently our government thinks that 3,000 people killed in a terrorist attack 5 years ago is far far more important than something that kills 72,000 infants each year. The amount of money needed to improve our health care system in this way is miniscule compared to what is being spent on the military.


I propose we do the same thing that Canada, Britain, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, Israel and every other non-3rd World country on the planet does. They all manage to provide health care to all of their people. It would be a shame if the richest country on the planet somehow was not able to manage that.


Then get ready for that revolt to happen a few years down the road, because unless there are drastic changes made, things are moving in that direction. Here are some numbers from an Auguest 2006 report by the Economic Policy Institute:


More Wealth Flowed to the Top

While the distribution of income and wages has become increasingly unequal, the distribution of wealth has become even more so. In 2004, about 17% of all income nationwide went to the top-earning 1%, while the bottom 90% received just under 58% of all income. That same year, however, the top 1% held over 34% of all net worth, while the bottom 90% held a little under 29% of net worth.

The wealth disparity has grown over time. In the early 1960s, the wealthiest (top 1%) Americans held 125 times the wealth of the typical (median) household; in 2004 the wealthiest held 190 time more. In dollar terms, the disparities are clear. Between 2001 and 2004, average wealth grew by $1.2 million (about 3% per year) for the wealthiest 1%, raising their average wealth holdings to about $15 million. Wealth for an average household (the middle fifth) grew only about 0.8% per year to reach an average of about $82,000 in 2004. Meanwhile those at the bottom of the wealth distribution (the bottom fifth) fell farther behind, as their average wealth fell from -$8,700 in 2001 to -$11,400 in 2004 – as they owe more than they own.

Many households have little or negative wealth. About 30% of households had wealth holdings valued at less than $10,000 and for 17% wealth holdings were zero or negative.

Taking Stock of Stock Ownership

It probably would surprise a lot of people to know that less than half of American households are invested in the stock market in any form--either directly or indirectly through mutual funds or 401(k)s. The percentage of households that own stock declined from 51.9% in 2001 to 48.6% in 2004 – the first decline recorded.

Furthermore, the percentage of households with more than $5,000 in stock fell from 40.1% to 34.9%--the first decline in this share. Stock ownership remains concentrated among the wealthiest households. The wealthiest 20% of households own over 90% of all stock value. For the top 1%, the average value of stock holdings was $3.3 million in 2004, down from $3.8 million in 2001. The average value of stock holdings for the middle 20% was $7,500 in 2004, down from $12,000 in 2001.


Red Ink Rises

A key finding regarding the other side of the wealth ledger – liabilities – is that household debt has continued its upward trend. Since the early 1980s debt has grown significantly as a percentage of disposable personal income, and steep increases have occurred since 2000. In 1982 debt was 67% of disposable personal income; by 2000 it was 102% and in 2005 it reached an all time high of 132%.
Debt consumes a growing share of household income – up from 12.9% in 2001 to 14.4% in 2004. Middle income households spent close to a fifth (19.4%) of their income paying down debt in 2005, an increase of 2.3 percentage point since 2001.



Do you still think that things have gotten better in recent years?

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...