Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon News

Regrets, he has a few
In his best sugar-toned, pedagogic style, Kenneth Starr defends his tattered reputation in front of a tony L.A. audience.
By Vivienne Walt
[09/16/99]

Shays' rebellion takes the House
One determined Republican overcomes his own leadership's opposition to pass a bipartisan campaign finance reform bill -- again.
By Jake Tapper
[09/15/99]

The Amazon.com primary
Was Buchanan trying to seduce readers, not just voters, with his latest TV splash?
By Anthony York
[09/15/99]

The Buchanan triangle
Most analysts think a run by Buchanan under the Reform Party banner would hurt Bush more than Gore. It's time to think again.
By Micah L.Sifry
[09/15/99]

The real Bush drug scandal
Texas Gov. George W. Bush has presided over a crackdown on first-time drug offenders from poor neighborhoods like Houston's Third Ward Bottoms.
By Debra Dickerson
[09/14/99]

Complete archives for News

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

What, you may ask, is a conservative doing ringing alarm bells about growing income inequality and America becoming "two nations"? Let me first of all remind you that it was a Tory, Benjamin Disraeli, who coined the term. In 1845, the future prime minister of England warned of the danger of his country disintegrating into "two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy ... as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets."

Teddy Roosevelt carried on in Disraeli's tradition, speaking about the perils of "predatory wealth" and the "abuses of the criminal rich," and challenging his fellow Republicans to support such progressive policies as child-labor laws and government inspection of food. Since the presidency of the other Roosevelt, poverty and inequality have become potent Democratic issues.

But New Democrats seem to have gotten tired of them. The Democratic National Committee went so far as to revise its party platform in 1996 to strike out the promise that the party "will continue to help those who cannot help themselves." Was this really that offensive a statement? Would this really have cost Democrats votes?

It might be time for them to ask themselves why they are in public life if they agree with the president that "most things are going right for our country." This is a chilling statement for anyone who's keeping an eye on the other America: nearly 700,000 layoffs in 1998, 56 percent higher than the year before; the biggest surge in unemployment claims in six years; and a study of four Northwest states that revealed more than half of the available jobs do not pay a living wage.

At the same time, corporate America has never been more robust. In fact, since 1990 -- the supposed end of the Greed Decade -- the pay of CEOs has gone up more than 440 percent. While the conventional wisdom holds that America is thriving, it's hard to escape the notion that the United States has been torn in two -- divided between a moneyed elite that has greatly benefited from globalization and an increasing number of citizens who have been left choking on the dust of the bulls as they rush past.

In 1964, 36 million Americans lived in poverty. Thirty-five years and a War on Poverty later, 35.6 million Americans live in poverty.

The Casey Foundation's "Kids Count" report, released this spring, identified 9.2 million children "growing up with a collection of disadvantages that are cause for exceptional alarm" and focused on "the persistent exclusion of far too many of our children and families from the full promise of American life." "Kids Count" directly contradicts the rosy data being spun from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue by reporting the significant increase in the number of children -- 5.6 million -- in families of the working poor. Despite the economic boom and an unemployment rate at a 25-year low, the U.S. child poverty rate remains at 21 percent -- the highest in the developed world.

This spring, the United Way of Los Angeles released its "Tale of Two Cities" report, spotlighting the growing disparities in the richest city in the nation and concluding that "economic conditions for children have not been so precarious since the Great Depression." One out of three children in Los Angeles lives below the poverty level, the number of abused children placed in foster care has risen 86 percent in the past decade and even with the recent drop in violent crime, homicide is still the largest single cause of death for children under 18.

According to officials of 30 major cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "The strong economy has had very little positive impact on hunger and homelessness." Ninety-three percent of those responding expected requests for emergency shelter to increase further next year. Second Harvest, the biggest national network of food banks, says its clientele is growing by 10 percent a year, a rate not yet rivaling Starbucks, but demonstrating the growing divide. A flurry of reports over the last few weeks documents the split:

• According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, among families headed by single women, the poorest fifth lost an average of $577 a year in income and benefits between 1995 and 1997.

• Another center report projected that the after-tax income gap between rich and poor will reach record levels in 1999, with the poorest fifth of Americans left with 9 percent less than they had in 1977 and the richest fifth with 43 percent more.

• A study by the Children's Defense Fund shows that in one year, from 1996 to 1997, the number of children living in extreme poverty -- defined as less than half of the poverty level -- rose by 26 percent among single-mother families.

• According to the Urban Institute, the median annual income of welfare recipients, including those with children, who left the rolls for jobs between 1995 and 1997 was $13,788. So they escaped welfare but not poverty.

Next page | Tony Robbins, not Robert Kennedy