A new survey demonstrates that the biggest problem developing socially in America is economic class conflict and division, more than racial differences or the debate over immigration.
Economic inequality, leading to a sense of rich versus poor, and very little middle class, is a time bomb that could endanger the nation’s future.
The great increase in this feeling is, interestingly, most common among whites, middle income earners, and independent voters, but also increased among Republicans.
73 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Independents believe there is strong economic class conflict.
Also, 71 percent of those who earned between $40,000 and $75,000 believed there are strong class conflicts, up from 47 percent in 2009.
The Census Bureau has come up with the figure that the top ten percent of the population have 56 percent of the national income in 2009, up from 49 percent in 2005.
If this trend continues, and if the masses become more and more resentful at the unfairness of national income distribution and taxation policies, it is not going to benefit the Republican Party, and could lead to demands for far greater taxation of the wealthy, already at the lowest level it has been since the 1920s!