And the rich get richer....

If you want to understand--really understand--what's been happening economically in the US during the past 60 years, read this article by Paul Krugman.

Krugman is no left-wing commie, in fact, he started off as a stern critic of Democratic economic policies in the 80's and 90's. In this article, he demystifies America's transformation from a nation in which the working-class could live fairly well, into one in which the working class has become the working poor, the middle class is vanishing, and the wealthy are living like pashas.

...During the 2000 election campaign, George W. Bush joked that his base consisted of the "haves and the have mores." But it wasn't much of a joke. Not only has the Bush administration favored the interests of the wealthiest few Americans over those of the middle class, it has consistently shown a preference for people who get their income from dividends and capital gains, rather than those who work for a living.

Under Bush, the economy has been growing at a reasonable pace for the past three years. But most Americans have failed to benefit from that growth. All indicators of the economic status of ordinary Americans -- poverty rates, family incomes, the number of people without health insurance -- show that most of us were worse off in 2005 than we were in 2000, and there's little reason to think that 2006 was much better.

So where did all the economic growth go? It went to a relative handful of people at the top. The earnings of the typical full-time worker, adjusted for inflation, have actually fallen since Bush took office. Pay for CEOs, meanwhile, has soared -- from 185 times that of average workers in 2003 to 279 times in 2005. And after-tax corporate profits have also skyrocketed, more than doubling since Bush took office. Those profits will eventually be reflected in dividends and capital gains, which accrue mainly to the very well-off: More than three-quarters of all stocks are owned by the richest ten percent of the population.

The US is on its way to becoming a sort of Latin American economy, Krugman says, in which both income and political power are inequitably distributed to the wealthy few at the top.

Article here.