Widening income gap bodes ill for U.S.

In case you’re wondering, the net worth of an average household supposedly fell 41 percent from 2007 to 2009. The net worth of the poorest households fell to a negative $27,000.

Such numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but in an era where it is common for the affluent to allege that the federal government is redistributing wealth from the wealthy to the poor, there is evidence that the redistribution of wealth is going the opposite direction. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is shrinking.

It is not in the longtime interest of any nation to have economic and social policies that widen the gap between rich and poor, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The causes of the widening gap are not likely to be simple to determine, much less fix, and policies that punish people for being successful are not the answer.

The growing gap between rich and poor can be partly attributed to America’s export of its manufacturing capacity to Mexico, India and China. Jobs that 40 years ago provided good wages to millions of Americans are gone to Beijing, Bhopal or Mexico City in exchange for cheap clothing, contaminated baby food and disposable electronics. As those jobs left, so did the pathway for many poor to move into the middle class and for many in the middle class to become wealthy. Meanwhile, economic and tax policies are written by lobbyists and politicians beholden to the corporations owned by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy.

Right now, economists and politicians have the more pressing concern of strengthening the economy in the short term, but if we expect America to remain a free society and a world power through the 21st century, the increased concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer people must be reversed. We ignore the issue at our own peril.