"They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor"

Let's talk about poverty for a moment. There were two stories that came out today about the subject. The first saying that poverty on a global level is declining, albeit not everywhere, but still as a whole. The second is about poverty in the US specifically and how the rate is increasing substantially.

Now I'm all for a lower global poverty percentage, I think you all could have guessed that. However it begs the question, why are rates in the US increasing against the global trends? This isn't anything new though, it's been happening for years, as you can see in this chart found in a study by UCSC:

Now that only compares the top 20% with the lower 80% and even  there you can see that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the middle and lower classes. The Working Group on Extreme Inequality has compiled a plethora of graphs and chart showing the distribution of wealth in America, including this one:

As you can see the bottom 50% of American's control only 2.5% of the wealth. 2.5%!!! If you don't find this alarming, you should. As this gap between the wealth and the impoverished continues to grow we're going to to see more and more dire consequences.

Wikipedia sites Charles E Hurst's work Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences when it states, "Currently, the richest 1% hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States while the bottom 90% held 73% of all debt.^[10]" And we wonder how we ended up with a financial crisis that's been crippling our economic growth for three years so far.

Now there's a lot of people out there that are saying we shouldn't come down on the wealthy because they worked hard to earn what they have. That's simply not true. The system we have in place is set up to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The Economic Mobility Project has found that, "More than 50 percent of
individuals who start in the bottom income quintile remain there 10 years later, and 70 percent remain below middleincome status. Despite notable changes in the U.S. economy, this immobility at the bottom has remained unchanged since the 1980s."

So where am I going with all of this? There are a couple of things happening in the political arena that apply directly to this problem.

The first I'll mention is Washington State Initiative 1098. The income tax initiative. Currently middle and lower class families are paying 11% of their earnings to state taxes while those with the highest incomes are averaging 3%. This has Washington ranking 50 of 50 in terms of tax fairness. We need to start addressing this problem locally and the first step is to vote YES ON I-1098!

The other thing that you can do is write you senators and congressman regarding the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts. Everyone agrees that the middle and lower class tax cuts need to remain in place, the issue is over those earning more than $200,000 a year. Now upper class Americans never asked for these tax cuts when they were given and they don't need them.

Yes the economic situation has changed since they were implemented but we can't afford to extend them. Remember what happened when the real estate bubble burst? Imagine what'll be like when the government debt bubble burst. I for see it being much like what happened recently, the rich find more ways to get richer at the expense of others. I for one don't want to see that happen and hope that we can start doing more to deflate it before we're suffering from even worse problems than we have now.

The last thing that you can do has more to do is support education. Education is the best way of leveling the playing field in America. Now this could mean voting for school levies or taking an extra hour to help your own kids with their homework or volunteering to help tutor underprivileged children. All of these thing help children succeed. And for those living in the poorer parts of our country they're going to need every advantage they can get. But just because it's hard to move up doesn't mean it's impossible.

For those of you who don't know, the title of this post is taken from the 2pac song "Keep ya head up". He immediately follows up with the line, "Say there ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is there ain't no hope for the future". The unfortunate thing is that unless we start to address this problem plaguing America, he's right. And we need to start now. If we wait much longer we're going to see the death of the middle class and the "American Dream" in our lifetimes.