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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Ted-</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>No question ... you have been raising the important
issues on V2020. Thanks</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Have you ever considered contacting the Daily News
(Lee Rozen, 882-5561) and writng for a wider audience on their opinion
page?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>BL</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=starbliss@gmail.com href="mailto:starbliss@gmail.com">Ted Moffett</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=rforce2003@yahoo.com
href="mailto:rforce2003@yahoo.com">Ron Force</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, September 19, 2010 2:16
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] Income
Inequality</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>It is ironic is that the political/economic ideology of
lessening regulation of business and/or finance, with the goal of improving
the economy, of letting the "free market" work its magic to generate
wealth, that the middle class in the US has supported to some extent, has
resulted in wealth generation that has gone mostly to the upper classes, in
recent decades. Voters under the guise of the wisdom of free
markets are voting for politicians who allow big corporate and
finance interests to control government legislation to favor the wealth
generation of the wealthy. The facts are clear the middle class is being
economically hoodwinked; and this has been supported by both Democrat and
Republican party policies influenced by money pouring in to politics.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For over a decade I have commented repeatedly that the US was being
transformed into more of a "third world" nation (using that exact wording),
with an increasingly economically marginalized lower and middle class
dominated by a small group of powerful and wealthy. Just a few days
ago I saw Arianna Huffington being interviewed regarding her new Sept. 2010
book "<A
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719820?ie=UTF8&tag=daikos-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307719820">Third
World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and
Betraying the American Dream</A>" ( <A
href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/18/901673/-Book-review:-Arianna-Huffingtons-Third-World-America">http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/18/901673/-Book-review:-Arianna-Huffingtons-Third-World-America</A> ),
and was both pleased and annoyed at her book title. I
thought, "She stole my idea!" though it is probable that many people have
described what is happening to the US in terms of the US becoming more "third
world."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The title or subtitle of this excellent article on Slate, "Introducing
the Great Divergence," by Timothy Noah, regarding income inequality, is
borrowed from Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman. The excerpt below
from this article contains facts that should be repeated in headlines over and
over:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"The Great Compression ended in the 1970s. Wages stagnated, inflation
raged, and by the decade's end, income inequality had started to rise. Income
inequality grew through the 1980s, slackened briefly at the end of the 1990s,
and then resumed with a vengeance in the aughts. In his 2007 book <EM><A
onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393333132?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0393333132"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0066cc>The Conscience of a Liberal</FONT></A>,
</EM>the Nobel laureate, Princeton economist and <EM>New York Times
</EM>columnist Paul Krugman labeled the post-1979 epoch the "Great
Divergence."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It's generally understood that we live in a time of growing income
inequality, but "the ordinary person is not really aware of how big it is,"
Krugman told me. During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States
experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth—the
"<A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://www.abebooks.com/abe/ParaRoute?pid=17184&url=http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=2886391131&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3DSeven%2BFat%2BYears%26x%3D0%26y%3D0"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0066cc>seven fat years</FONT></A>" and the " <A
onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738203645?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0738203645"
target=_blank><FONT color=#0066cc>long boom</FONT></A>." Yet from 1980 to
2005, <EM><A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/07-002.pdf" target=_blank><FONT
color=#0066cc>more than 80 percent</FONT></A> </EM>of total increase in
Americans' income went to the top 1 percent. Economic growth was more sluggish
in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 percent.
Yet <A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp195" target=_blank><FONT
color=#0066cc>virtually none</FONT></A> of the increase translated into wage
growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists
scratching their heads."</DIV>
<DIV>-----------------------------------------</DIV>
<DIV>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</DIV><BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=gmail_quote>On 9/17/10, <B class=gmail_sendername>Ron
Force</B> <<A onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="mailto:rforce2003@yahoo.com" target=_blank>rforce2003@yahoo.com</A>>
wrote:</SPAN>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote>
<DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman,new york,times,serif; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV>Slate magazine (a subsidiary of the Washington Post) has an interesting
10-part series on the rise of income inequality in the US:<BR><BR><SPAN><A
onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"
href="http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/"
target=_blank>http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026/</A></SPAN><BR><BR>It
includes a widget so you can enter your zip code and income to find out
where you rank in the U.S. and compare with the averages for the zip, Idaho,
and the US (if you want to know).<BR><BR>"A man worked for years and years
on a philanthropic project - to arrange the transfer of the money that the
rich don't need to maintain their lifestyle the poor who need it. After
years and years of work he declared that the work was about 50% complete -
the poor have agreed to accept the money."<BR><BR>Ron Force<BR>Moscow ID
USA<BR> </DIV><BR> <BR> </DIV><BR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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