John W. Whitehead | The Huffington Post, March 11, 2008
"The very rich," observed F. Scott Fitzgerald, "are different from you and me." And nowhere is this so-called difference more apparent than in the growing divide between poor and working class Americans and the rich who rule over us.
While working class Americans are getting poorer (there are five million more poor people today than in 2005), studies show that the rich are indeed getting richer. According to the Center for American Progress, 37 million Americans, a size roughly equivalent to the population of California, live below the official poverty line. Thus, in a nation of almost 297 million people, 12.6 percent are poor (for instance, a family of four that makes less than $19,971 is considered poor). And one out of every three Americans is considered low-income.
At the other end of the spectrum, 19 percent of the nation's income is held by the richest one percent of Americans who, according to former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, have gotten richer as a result of taxes, subsidies and regulatory policies that "take from the many to give to the already superrich."
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