Many people believe that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
A lot of time was spent by some of the Democratic candidates during the debates – leading up to the Iowa Caucus next month – regarding the subject of income inequality.
Simply stated, this means that the highest one percent of income earners own more than 80 percent of the wealth.
The question to ask yourself is, should we do something about this?
Robin Hood did, but most of us think it is wrong to steal from someone to enrich someone else. President Franklin Roosevelt did, so he pushed Social Security through Congress. This was a tax on income – up to a cap – to create a fund that would help folks to live a decent life when they reached a certain age.
President Lyndon Johnson added Medicare to the equation, so that people over 65 could enjoy health care. President George W. Bush added outpatient drugs to Medicare. All of these advances did not happen without a struggle in Congress.
For many years, the rich did get richer, but the poor and middle class could rely on these and other programs to at least provide food, shelter and a minimal standard of health care. The middle class also grew as a percentage of the population.
To bring this home to Graham County, the Median Household Income (MHI) in the State of North Carolina was $52,797 per year, measured in 2017. Graham County MHI was $37,748. The Poverty Rate for children 17 and younger statewide was 21.7 percent; the Poverty Rate in Graham County was 34.8 percent.
These numbers tell a story that should get every voters’ attention. We need substantive change in how we operate this community, to bring up our median income and bring down the number of people in poverty. It will not happen if we preserve the status quo.
This column is not meant to vilify the rich. Many are very philanthropic and the very fact that they are economically successful is nothing to be criticized. The solution to income inequality is not to bring down the rich, but to bring up the folks at the lower end of the economic scale. How should that happen? Here are a few suggestions:
* Reform the recent tax reform package. All it did was reduce taxes for corporations and the wealthy and create massive federal deficit increases.
* Create a minimum tax rate for corporations and the wealthy regardless of all the creative ways they end up paying no taxes. It is simply wrong from a policy and fairness standpoint that creative accounting and loopholes let people off the hook completely.
* Come to the realization that there are people who cannot help themselves and provide a basic decent standard of living for them.
* Change the current thinking that everyone deserves or needs a college education to be respected and to earn a living. What everyone needs is to be trained with skills that allow them to earn a living whether with their backs or their brains or both.
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You have to start somewhere and the place to start is to elect leaders who really care about the common folks after the election is over and are willing to fight for change that will level the playing field. Let’s ask our candidates what they plan to do to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
Feel-good pablum response just won’t cut it.
Roger Carlton is a columnist for The Graham Star.