In Sickness and in WealthHow America's rising income inequality figures in to the debate over health care.

Is that really what we want . . . redistribution?

In every walk of life there are the more and the less ambitious. I don't want to be CEO . . . my young boss clearly does. I spend more time with my family -- he works longer hours and arrives bleary-eyed in the morning from night classes and studying.

His way most likey results in him exiting the middle class eventually, upwards. My way more than likely leaves me squarely in it. We each have looked at the tradeoffs and made our respective choices. That's the American way . . . isn't it?

All the government should be doing is clearing the barriers to opportunity, not trying to rig the results.

Health care reform, in a vacuum, is a Mom and applie pie kind of thing. Like more vacation, everybody wants it, in the abstract. It's going to be messy and expensive in practice. It may still be worth doing. But financing it with tax increases is a singularly bad idea.

-- kencleanairsystem
(To reply, click here)

Doesn't looking at it by quintile obscure the issue of the top 1% gaining more than all the rest? The top 20% gaining doesn't say much if most of those gains are by 5% or less of that group.

Well, all of this is pretty much moot, the real issue of redistribution of wealth is as much WITHIN corporations as it is within society as a whole (the other half of the story is energy and finance versus the rest of the economy). If we really, really want a change all we need to do is set in law a ratio of earnings so that the CEO can only get, say, 15x what the annual salary of the lowest paid worker is (of course other compensation would have to be included). Never going to happen, but I'll throw it out there, because the real truth and the real issue is that corporations are feudalistic entities unto themselves.

-- Adamatari
(To reply, click here)

Spitzer indicates the Middle class is suffering from stagnant earnings and the lower class is getting killed. He correctly states this has occurred at the same time our manufacturing base has eroded. No kidding.

Our economy has evolved. We are slowly but surely getting away from manufacturing. The days of someone graduating from high school and heading to the local factory for a lifetime job earning middle class wages are over. Yet, too many in this country believe they have a vested right to this type of arrangement.

I live in a town where GM closed its doors after some 90 years. I am amazed at how many of these displaced workers refuse to believe they need to build on their high school diploma to become more employable. We are building a new hospital that will employ hundreds. Yet you need at least some technical training to qualify for these jobs.

The key to raising middle class earnings is for the lower middle class to understand education is the key. Get training, learn technical skills at least. Make yourself more valuable in the job market.

Taxing the affluent to death is not the answer, but a job killer.

-- Hogie
(To reply, click here)