Private affluence and public squalor

"...Spending money on public goods (better public transportation, universal health care, and so on) is a way to improve the quality of life for the average person. But by definition, the bigger the income inequality in a society, the greater the financial distance between the average and the wealthy. The bigger this distance, the less the wealthy have to gain from expenditures on the public good. Instead they would benefit more from keeping their tax money to spend on their private good-a better chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. So the more unequal the income is in a community, the more incentive the wealthy will have to oppose public expenditures benefiting the health of the community. And within the U.S., the more income inequality there is, the more power will be disproportionately in the hands of the wealthy to oppose such public expenditures. According to health economist Evans, this scenario ultimately leads to “private affluence and public squalor…”

"...“(as a result) America has the greatest income inequality (40% of the wealth is controlled by 1 % of the population) and the greatest discrepancy between expenditures on health care (number one in the world) and life expectancy (as of 2003, number 29)..”

Scientific American p.99 December 2005 www.sciam.com

Poverty is bad enough, but when you have the wealthy out to make you more poor, then it truly is a stacked deck. The one definitive thing that can be said for Bush, his neocon ilk and the conservative christian right is that they have made America a land of entitlement and class warfare. They have taken the basic belief that we are "all Americans" and turned that into, "Those of you who agree with us, will get to share the spoils...those that don't can starve."

I'm sure that is what Mr. Jefferson and all of those others had in mind....

We are becoming a nation ruled by an entitled and obscenely wealthy elite and the poor rabble.