The Very Rich

Keep in mind this one astonishing fact extracted from official government tax data: in 2005, the 300,000 men women and children who comprised the top tenth of 1 percent had nearly as much income as all the 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population. Add the income the rich are not required to report and those 300,000 made more then the 150 million.

This growing concentration of income at the top is nothing like the distribution of income America experienced in the first three decades following World War II. Nor is it like those found in Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Instead it resembles the distribution of income found in three other major countries: Brazil, Mexico, and Russia.

In ways that most Americans do not imagine, but that have been thoroughly documented by political scientists, sociologists, and others, these three nations and the United States are alike. They all have a rapidly growing class of billionaires. They have growing and seemingly in retractable, poverty at the bottom. And all four countries have a middle class that is under increasing stress. these four countries are also societies in which adults have the right to vote, but real political power is wielded by a relatively narrow, and rich segment of the population.

But distribution of income in a society does not take place in a vacuum. It is also the product of government rules.