Income Inequality Increases

Income inequality perpetually increases, as from between 1979 to 2007, when “the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer,” ending that state of initial equality in America that so impressed de Tocqueville, who attributed financial equality as the material basis by which the experiment of American democracy was possible. Not that the constitution legislated to secure or maintain such equality, but we see, nevertheless, that that pattern persists, as with this September 2012 report data from the U.S. Census Bureau who has recently been compiled into a chart.

What we see is that the impoverished remain about equally impoverished, but that lower and middle class people have lost money over the year, while upper and highest class people have gained in their annual income.

The increase in such income inequality leads to such problems for democracy as plutocracy, and class tensions in a society that once was called “classless.”

The census also makes clear that real median house hold income declined between 2010 and 2011, for a second year, and that the percentage of people without health care insurance decreased between 2010 and 2011, a trend that will of course be dramatically affected once Obamacare kicks in and refurbishes the system.