Time to Act on Inequality

In newsrooms, a favorite excuse used by reporters and editors to kill a story is to say, "We already had that." Why waste space on old news? Readers already know that income inequality is growing ferociously in America. Some indefatigable reporters, however, bull their way past the objections. David Cay Johnston of the New York Times recently came up with new facts that make the familiar old story shocking again. The top 1 percent of Americans are now getting the largest share of national income since 1928. And a mere 300,000 are now getting almost the same income as 150 million others on the bottom of the wage ladder.

The wage gap has nearly doubled since 1980, the dawn of the conservative era. The deterioration of equitable income in American society is not over. It continues to get much worse. The top 10 percent--the people earning roughly $100,000 a year and higher--now get 48.5 percent of total income. Not surprisingly, average incomes for the bottom 90 percent are down slightly. These numbers are from the Internal Revenue Service for 2005, and experts agree they understate the disparities.

This country is already in the thick of another presidential election, and we need to learn more. Might we hear the candidates address this national scandal and say concretely what they intend to do about it? Republicans, we know, will duck and dodge. But Democratic hopefuls are not exactly speaking out on inequality either. John Edwards is an admirable exception; he has declared unilaterally that income inequality is no longer a taboo subject.

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