November 3, 2012

Has the 1% Caused Our Economic Woes?

By E. Jeffrey Ludwig
The Occupy Wall Street crowd emphasizes the growing disparity of wealth between the poor and the rich.  They typically make the incorrect assumption that it is this disparity that is the cause of the poor getting poorer.  This assumption is in turn based upon the false premise that there is a fixed amount of wealth, and that if one gets more, someone else (or multiple others) loses out by an equivalent amount.  Hence, if one gets a raise, someone else, or multiple someones, somewhere, are getting less.  A parallel illogical thought would be that if one gains weight, then someone else, somewhere else, will lose a comparable amount of weight. Additionally, in our modern statistics-oriented society, the overall growing disparity in wealth portrayed in various graphs is not experienced by either rich or poor.  The poor know that they are poor.  The rich know that they are rich.  The poor may know they have less disposable income than they did, say, ten...(Read Full Article)