[Livingwage] Fwd: Two Americas

[Belden Fields]

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>Subject: Two Americas
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>Two Americas
>
>By Walter Williams
>Baltimore Sun - Originally published July 6, 2004
>http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.economy06jul06,0,2973575.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
>
>["John Edwards' campaign highlighted the theme of "two
>Americas;" the reality that America is failing the
>bottom 90 percent of the country. Now that he's on Team
>Kerry, will Edwards' fundamentally class-based analysis
>translate into political garnish or real economic
>transformation? Walter Williams takes another look at
>the reality of class warfare in 2004 America." -
>tompaine.com http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/#000832]
>
>SEN. JOHN EDWARDS' compelling campaign theme of "Two
>Americas" should be returned to center stage. Worsening
>income disparities - greater than at any time since the
>1920s - have produced two critical gaps that threaten
>American democracy.
>
>Upper-middle- and upper-class families that constitute
>the top 10 percent of the income distribution are
>prospering while many among the remaining 90 percent
>struggle to maintain their standard of living. Further,
>a widening chasm separates the 13,400 families, who on
>average earn just under $24 million a year, from
>everyone else.
>
>Two Americas has undone the historic balance between
>the nation's two most important values: liberty and
>equality, which pull in different directions. Liberty
>implies that people have full freedom to do as they
>choose with their resources. Equality of economic
>opportunity requires a fair start for all those in the
>race toward success.
>
>Today, the continuing imbalance between liberty and
>equality jeopardizes ordinary citizens' economic
>opportunities, and hence their middle-class status. Yet
>democracy in America demands a prospering middle class.
>The imbalance also raises the specter of an aristocracy
>of wealth, which was anathema to the nation's Founders.
>
> >From 1970 to 2000 (adjusted for inflation), the bottom
>90 percent's average income stagnated at $27,000 a
>year. The top 10 percent experienced an average yearly
>income increase of nearly 90 percent, from $119,000 in
>1970 to $225,000 in 2000. The top one-hundredth percent
>had their average yearly incomes skyrocket by
>$20,327,482 between 1970 and 2000.
>
>Education provides a stark comparison between the
>wealthiest families and those struggling at the bottom.
>Horace Mann, an elite New York City private school,
>will have a tuition of $26,100 beginning in September.
>The price may seem high, but it offers the kind of
>rigorous educational setting that qualifies its
>graduates for Ivy League schools and similar top-of-
>the-line institutions.
>
>At Edward Williams Elementary, the poorest school in
>Mount Vernon, N.Y., 97 percent of the students were
>black, 90 percent received free lunches and nearly 10
>percent lived in homeless shelters.
>
>When reports were assigned during Black History Month
>on famous black Americans, the library shelves yielded
>little help. Despite there being numerous books, New
>York Times columnist Michael Winerip pointed out, "much
>of the collection is from the 1950s and 1960s and
>before, when this was a white school."
>
>The Williams Elementary students likely will work in
>dead-end jobs rather than graduate from any four-year
>college.
>
>The limited life chances of these poor black students
>is so at odds with the country's long-held vision of a
>fair start in life that it is best described as un-
>American.
>
>In Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in
>the Liberal State, the centrist social philosopher
>William Galston wrote: "The life chances of individuals
>should not be determined by such factors as race,
>economic class, and family background." But the many
>Williams Elementary-like schools around the nation make
>a mockery of any claim of a fair start.
>
>The statesmen who produced the Declaration of
>Independence and the Constitution believed that
>equality of opportunity resulted in national
>efficiency. They opposed inherited wealth because the
>heir who took over the family business would not
>necessarily be the individual most able to run it at
>maximum efficiency. Hence, inherited wealth could be
>the enemy of national efficiency.
>
>As the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood
>wrote: "As long as the social channels of ascent and
>descent were kept open, it would be impossible for any
>artificial aristocrats or overgrown rich men to
>maintain themselves for long." National efficiency
>further required a strong public education system.
>
>Were the creators of the republic to return for a day,
>they would be appalled at schools that hold back the
>stimulation of talent. They would also strongly support
>continuing the inheritance tax because it was intended
>to ensure that those with the greatest skills, not
>less-able heirs, could most efficiently use that
>wealth.
>
>Restoring the balance between liberty and equality
>demands that the redistribution of income upward must
>be redirected toward the bottom 90 percent. The wealthy
>will cry "class warfare," but it is the wealthy who
>began that war and created the dangerous imbalance.
>
>The great statesmen of the 18th century would applaud
>restoring the balance between liberty and equality
>because it would increase the life chances of most
>citizens and help breathe new life into a now-
>diminished American democracy.
>
>Walter Williams, professor emeritus at the University
>of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs, is the
>author of Reaganism and the Death of Representative
>Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2003).
>
>Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun
>_______________________________________________________
>
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