plu'to·crat' (plōō'tə-krāt') n., One who exercises power by virtue of wealth. A member of the plutocracy.
plu·toc·ra·cy (plōō-tŏk'rə-sē) n., 1. Government by the wealthy. 2. A wealthy class that controls a government. 3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.
Is the Republican Party really the party of Joe the Plumber? Really? Since when are the Republicans on the side of working class people? Since the year 2000, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also growing between the rich and the middle-class. When adjusted for inflation, the median household income of the average Joe out there is lower today than it was in the year 2000. In the year 2000, 57% of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits. Today, only 45% of those same-sized companies do so.
KEEP READING. GREAT NEW STUDY AFTER THE FOLD!
Are you Better Off Now?
According to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also the growing between the rich and the middle-class. Here are a few quotes from the study regarding the United States.
"...nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is $93,000...the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of $5,800 per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries."
Did you see that? The top income in the US is the highest of the 30 countries studied, while at the same time, our low-income citizens earn 20% lower than the average.
"Social mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries like Denmark,
Sweden and Australia. Children of poor parents are less likely to become rich than children of rich parents."
This says that the poor in the US have less chance to become middle-class and the middle-class have less chance of becoming rich than in many countries in the study.
Switching from the topic of income to the topic of accumulated wealth, the study points out the top 1% controls about one third of all of the wealth in our nation.
"Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some 25-33% of total net worth and the top 10% hold 71%."
Stunningly, the report says:
"The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly."
Since 2000, the year that George W. Bush won the White House, income inequality has increased rapidly.
The Gini Out of the Bottle
The OECD study also looked at the Gini-coefficient of inequality, a commonly used measure of the gap between the incomes of people within a society. The coefficient ranks inequality on a scale between 0, which is complete equality (everyone has the same income) and 1, which is complete inequality (one person has all the income and all others have none).
They ranked 30 countries by their Gini-coefficient. Out of the 30 countries studied, the US ranked 28th in income equality. Not only is the gap between the rich and poor in the US widening, but it is widening at a much higher rate than the other 29 countries in the study.
The Party of Joe the Plumber or Joe the Plutocrat?
Obviously the Republican Party is here to enrich the already-rich by "spreading the wealth around" from the poor and the middle class to the rich. The Party of Joe the Plumber? Would Joe the Plumber spend $150,000 for clothes for a six-week campaign? I don’t think so. Working people need change. Working people need Barack Obama.