Friday, February 25, 2011

The Growing Gap Between The Rich And The Poor... And Its Frightening Implications

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THE GROWING GAP BETWEEN THE RICH AND THE POOR… AND ITS FRIGHTENING IMPLICATIONS

Dear Friends and Readers:

As cited before in THE GLOBAL FUTURIST, THE INTERNATIONALIST PAGE, and in THE TNNWC SUPPLEMENTAL RSS FEED AND DAILY E-MAIL DELIVERY BLOG: Following every economic catastrophe, a smaller percentage of the world’s population gets wealthier and more powerful, while the swelling ranks of the “middle class,” the “working poor,” and those living either on the government dole or in abject poverty get poorer, as they grow more plentiful in number. This is a recurring, historically-proven phenomenon.

The concern here is that every great empire in history was built upon the initiative of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and an upwardly-mobile, aspiring middle-class. With each successive shock to the economic system of every nation, and the world-at-large, this gap widens. When the difference between those wealthy few at the top of Olympus’ peaks and those swelling, discontented, hungry and homeless (or in immediate danger of losing their hard-won shelter, and their life’s largest investment), the seeds of revolution, long sown, but lying dormant, begin to sprout seedlings of violent upheaval.

This can happen anywhere. The only thing necessary for the full blossom of these hardy seedlings is that enough of a percentage of the population becomes financially desperate enough, and distrustful enough of the persons in power that the risk of anti-authority upheaval (whether organized or anarchistic) starts to seem minimal compared with the risk of dying in the clutches of the intolerable status quo. When desperation becomes more powerful than fear and inertia, Human Beings take leave of the divine component of their nature and become animals….feral creatures with a “herd” or “mob” mentality.

What we are witnessing in Northern Africa and in the Middle East is merely a distant potent of what could come upon us like a giant cyclone in the West – particularly in the United States, where the population has become increasingly frustrated with paying for the excesses and mistakes of those in power.

The following article is an example of what I’ll gently call “seedling” awakening.

Read the statistics and their inferences carefully. You’ll remember this post.

Faithfully,
Douglas Castle,
Chairman and CEO
TNNWC Group, LLC
http://www.TNNWC.com (visit to join us and become a Member. There is no cost, and your benefits begin immediately.)

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Separate but unequal: Charts show growing rich-poor gap

By Zachary Roth of MOTHER JONES, courtesy of Yahoo! News

Wed Feb 23, 5:13 pm ET

The Great Recession and the slump that followed have triggered a jobs crisis that's been making headlines since before President Obama was in office, and that will likely be with us for years. But the American economy is also plagued by a less-noted, but just as serious, problem: Simply put, over the last 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened into a chasm.

Gradual developments like this don't typically lend themselves to news coverage. But Mother Jones magazine has crunched the data on inequality, and put together a group of stunning new charts. Taken together, they offer a dramatic visual illustration of who's doing well and who's doing badly in modern America.

Here are three samples:

This chart shows that the poorest 90 percent of Americans make an average of 31,244 a year, while the top 1 percent made over $1.1 million:

• According to this chart, most income groups have barely grown richer since 1979. But the top 1 percent has seen its income nearly quadruple:

• And this chart suggests most Americans have little idea of just how unequal income distribution is. And that they'd like things to be divvied up a lot more equitably: