Rich-Poor Gap Explained

For non-academics, those Associated Press reporters are a sharp bunch:

The disparity between rich and poor is growing in America as the federal minimum wage has remained flat for years, union membership has declined and industries have faced global competition, according to a study released Thursday.

Well, it's obvious that the income gap is growing. Just think about your own experience. In school, you shared a dormitory room with other students -- and you were all equal. And now, a handful of you have become obscenely wealthy by exploiting the labor of your former roommates -- who live at subsistence wages when they manage to stave off starvation.

I even coined a phrase to describe this: "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer."

But let's look closer at the reasons for this growing gap, as detailed in the news story. (Note: This is a news story, and not an opinion piece. That alone is evidence of its validity.)

A) The Federal Minimum Wage has remained flat. Indeed, I have long been a proponent of the $275/hour minimum wage. Can you imagine how wealthy we would all be with earnings like that?

B) Union membership has declined. Elementary economics says that unions make everyone better off because their members work hard and increase productivity. No unions mean shoddy work habits.

C) Global competition. Well, of course competition is a bad thing. In order for people to become affluent, we must replace competition with government monopolies -- and eventually a single, global monopoly. The Soviet Union did not become a great power because of competition, and we shouldn't expect any different for other nations.

To see what the enemy thinks, see the corporate-fascist lies over here.