Sean-Paul Kelley, at The Agonist, is depressed about the financial burden of supporting the baby boomers in their retirement. At the same time, Matt and Ezra debate the impact of education level on income, touching, once again, on income inequality.
While the debate itself is interesting, in the context of Sean-Paul’s worries, it just serves to remind me about how ill-prepared we are to face the significant challenges ahead of us. In the last 30 years or so:
the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. […]But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent.
and the trend is still visible for the last 20. And, somehow, it seems connected to Republican presidencies. And so, we’ve arrived at a point in time when energy, food, and commodity prices are rising (and don’t seem likely to ever fall) and when health care costs are sky-rocketing; essentially, when everything is getting more expensive.
And what are we facing? Retiring baby boomers, the need to get serious about combating global warming, millions of people without health insurance, and a trillion dollar debt from a pointless war.
All of this costs money, and the assumption is that overcoming each of these challenges will cost the middle class more in the way of taxes. And that may be true, but, with income inequality as large as it is, there must be some way to shift the burden to those who have been doing so well for the last 3 decades. And then there’s that military budget I mentioned yesterday.
Regardless of how we pay for it, though, I think it’s painfully clear how incredibly Republican policies have failed this country (28 of the last 39 years have seen a Republican President). We coasted while things were good, never thinking about preparing for what might come next, and now we get to pay the price.
UPDATE: The CBO provides a nifty little picture today, after I spent an hour last night trying to find something like it:
Posted by Shane 
Damn Lefties 