A new report released today conclusively points to Washington politics as a major contributing factor in income inequality in the United States. The report compiled by international news agency Reuters points to the growing share of wealth held by a select few of the nation’s wealthiest people and the increasingly small amount of wealth held by everyone else in the nation.
According to the report, that disparity is worst in the nation’s capitol. “In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.”
The special report found that the top 5 percent of households in the nation’s capitol made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.
That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities. This at a time when income inequality in the United States as a whole has risen to levels last seen in the years before the Great Depression.
Reuters went on to say, “Two decades of record federal spending and expanding regulation have fostered a growing upper class of federal contractors, lobbyists and lawyers in the District of Columbia area. The federal government funneled $83.5 billion their way in defense and other work in 2010 – an increase of more than 300 percent since 1989, even after adjusting for inflation. Private industry poured more than $3 billion into lobbying to influence the government, nearly double what it spent a decade ago.”
Read the full article here: https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/18/us-equality-washington-idUSBRE8BH0IJ20121218
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