Lou Dobbs had Bill Moyers on last night and Moyers made some excellent points on the current income gap in America.
The inequality in this country is greater than it's been since 1929. When I went to Washington in 1960, the gap between the highest paid and the lowest paid was 20-fold. Now it's 75-fold.
Notice the year he mentions that previously had such a gap? 1929. Hmmm. He goes on:
The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that if you were a child born in poverty in Europe or Canada, you have a better chance at prosperity than a child born in America today.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have also reported that the upward mobility of people at the bottom has stalled. And, no Marxist rag, The Economist, one of the best friends business and capitalism have, reported just the weekend before George W. Bush's second inauguration that the inequality that is growing in this country means America's on the way to becoming a European style class-based society. I didn't make that up. That's not my term. That's The Economist.
When hope and opportunity close down, democracy is in trouble. That's why I'm concerned.
He got the facts out there. Then the conversation turned to values, and I personally was moved. Lou Dobbs put in his 2 cents:
When I was growing up, we wouldn't even think to refer to class, because it's America, where there isn't a class. It's one people, aspiring to -- with one set of ideals and values.
And more by Moyers:
It's in our DNA. We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union...there was this sense of a social contract. There was this sense that we are in this boat together, and that there wasn't this great gap of people living in isolated communities.
Notice how, sadly, they speak of this "social contract" in America in the past tense. Moyers refers to a book to read and sums up the problem thus:
Jared Diamond's new book -- he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar -- his new book is called "The Collapse: How Societies Create Their Own Downfall." And he says the one sure blueprint for failure is when the elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their action. That's the problem today. You talk about the lack of outrage and indignation. Washington lives in a cocoon, a bubble, and the rich and the elite, the privileged and the powerful, they live in those cocoons, too, and so there's nobody really reporting on or speaking up for or voting for working people.
My admiration for Moyers just doesn't quit. Dobbs and Moyers continue with a conversation about the corporate money dominating both parties and the media now.
Moyers ends on an appropriate note, I believe, for all of us.
Am I optimistic? Look, who was the Italian philosopher who said, "I believe in pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will." I believe in looking at the facts -- the truth shall make you free -- and then acting on it. And that's what we have to discover -- rediscover -- if democracy's going to be revitalized.
The class division situation is real. We have to wake up the people to what is happening!
Full transcript on Lou Dobbs' CNN website.