Day: October 28, 2011

125th Anniversary Of Statue Of Liberty: Its Message Regarding Immigration

Ronald Leave a comment

Today marks the 125th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, an icon of American values which has inspired generations of Americans, and has been a symbol of the best about America: its Immigrants!

The author, with his two sons, visited Liberty Island in 2010, and found it truly inspirational, with its message of the reality that America is a land of immigrants, the last best hope for refugees all around the world.

It is significant that Immigrants through the generations have faced discrimination, prejudice, and injustice, and the same fate awaits many immigrants, legal and illegal today.

Immigration has become a hot button issue in American politics, and its ugliness is very disturbing, but it must be remembered that it has always strengthened us as a nation, and we cannot allow nativism to rear its ugly head and deny basic human rights to those who come to our shores for a better life.

America is a nation of all nations, and that is its greatest virtue!

The Growing Inequity Of Wealth In America: Unconscionable!

Ronald Leave a comment

The Congressional Budget Office confirmed this week what has been well known for quite some time: America has seen a concentration of wealth in the past thirty years as never before in American history.

Income for the top one percent increased 275 percent, while the top 20 percent went up 65 percent. At the same time, the 20th percentile to the 80th percentile went up about 40 percent, and the lowest fifth 18 percent.

The top one percent of income earners control as much of the nation’s total income as they had on the eve of the Great Depression. They had 23.94 percent of the national income in 1929 and 23.5 percent in 2007.

When one looks at the top one tenth of one percent, the richest of the rich, they controlled 2.8 percent of national income in 1913, when the income tax amendment was put into the Constitution. In 2007, the top one tenth of one percent earned 6 percent of national income.

One major difference today is that the wealthiest usually have it from being financial and corporate executives, while in earlier times, they were mostly living off inherited wealth.

These figures cry out on why the “Occupy Wall Street” movement resonates among many Americans, and calls for some kind of action to tax the wealthy more to help resolve the budget crisis and deal with the many social and economic problems we face today in 2011.