Economic Inequality Is Not A Symptom, It Is A Cause

The largest underlying factor that is killing the "American Dream" is wealth and income inequality.  This is what we need to address now.  The quoted language below is excerpted from Paul Krugman's column which was the jumping off point for the linked post.

The Right can't handle the reality of the 21st century economy, by @DavidOAtkins

But that was a long time ago. These days crime is way down, so is teenage pregnancy, and so on; society did not collapse. What collapsed instead is economic opportunity. If progress against poverty has been disappointing over the past half century, the reason is not the decline of the family but the rise of extreme inequality. We're a much richer nation than we were in 1964, but little if any of that increased wealth has trickled down to workers in the bottom half of the income distribution. The trouble is that the American right is still living in the 1970s, or actually a Reaganite fantasy of the 1970s; its notion of an anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare. The reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don't pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn't sunk in. And the idea of helping the poor by actually helping them remains anathema.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-right-cant-handle-reality-of-21st.html

Typos courtesy of my iPhone