President Obama Identified Economic Inequality As the Defining Issue of Our Time:

[amborin]

President Obama ......pointed to a combination of growing income inequality and a lack of upward mobility as “the defining challenge of our time,” arguing the government should take further steps to reverse a decades-long trend that has widened the gap between the nation’s richest citizens and everyone else.

“The basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed,” Mr. Obama said. He repeated later in his speech that “the combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe.”

The president’s speech, from a community center in Anacostia, one of the poorest sections of Washington, D.C., is an attempt to reclaim the agenda for the remainder of his presidency.....

snip

During one of the longest speeches he has given this year, Mr. Obama paid homage to his predecessors, including Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, who used government to create opportunities and weave safety nets for more people in the United States. It was a follow up on a speech he delivered in Osawatomie, Kansas – the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech a century earlier – to lay out some of the major economic themes of his 2012 campaign.

He warned that the social compact has broken down since the 1970s, when a combination of technological advancements, globalization, a breakdown of communities, weakened unions, and increased lobbying by businesses weakened the country’s economic foundation and vastly increased the income gap.

To make his case, the president cited statistics about the growing percentage of the country’s wealth held by the top 10 percent (up from one third to one half, he said), a runaway gap between CEOs and their workers, and the decreasing likelihood that children born into poverty can escape it in adulthood.

“It should compel us to action. We are a better country than this,” he said.

.....He also cited recent exhortations against rising income inequality by Pope Francis, echoing the Catholic leader’s question, "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?"

These trends, the president argued, are bad for both the economy and for democracy, as the ordinary people feel like they can no longer participate in government. He also urged people to move beyond what he called a “myth” that inequality runs only along racial lines.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-income-inequality-the-defining-challenge-of-our-time/




http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/


Work to Be Done on Inequality and Race, Obama Says

President Obama said that the recent debate about the state of race relations in the United States has been “healthy” for the country and that despite the situation in Ferguson, Mo., and the Eric Garner case in New York, black people are better off then they were before he took office.

However, Mr. Obama said that the income and wealth gaps between black people and white people have persisted and that there is more work to be done on inequality. ......

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/12/19/work-to-be-done-on-inequality-and-race-relations-obama-says/

Black incomes are up, but wealth isn’t

By Drew DeSilver

2011

Since the 1960s, household-income growth for African-Americans has outpaced that of whites. Median adjusted household income for blacks is now 59.2% that of whites, up slightly from 55.3% in 1967 (though in dollar terms the gap has widened).

But those gains haven’t led to any narrowing of the wealth gap between the races. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, the median net worth for black households in 2011 ($6,446) was lower than it was in 1984 ($7,150), while white households’ net worth was almost 11% higher. And as NYU researcher David Low noted in a recent working paper, high-earning married black households have, on average, less wealth than low-earning married white households.

Exactly why income gains haven’t translated into wealth gains for blacks is something of a puzzle. Researchers have identified several possible factors — less intergenerational inheritance, higher unemployment and lower incomes, differing rates and patterns of homeownership, marriage and college education — without reaching any consensus on their relative importance. As Low commented, “[t]here is…little quantitative understanding of why the black-white wealth gap exists, despite an almost embarrassing number of potential explanations.”

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/30/black-incomes-are-up-but-wealth-isnt/

July 26, 2011

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics

Twenty-to-One

By Rakesh Kochhar, Richard Fry and Paul Taylor

Executive Summary

The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from 2009.

These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these three groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.

The Pew Research analysis finds that, in percentage terms, the bursting of the housing market bubble in 2006 and the recession that followed from late 2007 to mid-2009 took a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households.

As a result of these declines, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009; the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth; and the typical white household had $113,149.

Moreover, about a third of black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative net worth in 2009, compared with 15% of white households. In 2005, the comparable shares had been 29% for blacks, 23% for Hispanics and 11% for whites.

Hispanics and blacks are the nation’s two largest minority groups, making up 16% and 12% of the U.S. population respectively.....

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/07/26/wealth-gaps-rise-to-record-highs-between-whites-blacks-hispanics/

[merrily]

1. Yes, wealth inequality and income inequality both--and Bernie was the first

candidate to raise both and, AFAIK, the only candidate to discuss both. There is also inequality in the opportunity to acquire wealth and high income and Bernie is addressing that as well.

[amborin]

4. yes, and more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.

Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.

Two decades ago...... the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups.

The inheritance tax has been a primary target. In the early 1990s, a California family office executive named Patricia Soldano began lobbying on behalf of wealthy families to repeal the tax, which would not only save them money, but also make it easier to preserve their business empires from one generation to the next. The idea struck many hardened operatives as unrealistic at the time, given that the tax affected only the wealthiest Americans. But Ms. Soldano’s efforts — funded in part by the Mars and Koch families — laid the groundwork for a one-year elimination in 2010.

[merrily]

6. Thank you. Almost every penny that changes hands gets taxed if a certain amount is

involved, but huge estates should not be? Why? I know people who are still getting money from the estates of John D. Rockefeller and his brother, ffs . WHY should that money be tax free when a bus boy has pay taxes from money he earns by hard labor. What benefit to society is being served that society's tax laws should favor estates?

[arcane1]

2. Up next: Obama is accused of being a "One-issue Candidate"

[tk2kewl]

3. ha

beat me to it

[Jarqui]

5. I think Bernie has been howling about it since the 60s nt

[thereismore]

7. Obama's legacy will be in good hands of President Sanders! nt

[SamKnause]

8. He is a tad late to the party.

[Recursion]

9. He's said this for years

People just don't notice. Same thing will happen with any President, unfortunately.

[SamKnause]

12. He is the president of the United States.

Why did he have such a difficult time getting the message out if he has

been saying this for years ???

When Bernie came on the national stage in 2015 the majority of people did

not even know who he was.

He has had no trouble getting the message out.

Maybe people did not believe president Obama because of his dismal record

of not going after the Wall Street thieves.

Instead he referred to them as the 'Best and Brightest'.

Bernie reminds the people in every speech and debate that the thieves are still

walking around free without a criminal record.

Pay a fine, walk free.

All of this is happening under president Obama.

That's my 2 cents.

[Recursion]

13. Well, how many of his speeches and radio addresses did you listen to?

Because he's mentioned income inequality in pretty much all of them, unless there just wasn't a reasonable way to do it (like ribbon cuttings for the new post office or whatever).

Why did he have such a difficult time getting the message out if he has been saying this for years ???

That's a great question: why weren't you paying attention to what he's been saying? Now multiply that by 320 million.

[SamKnause]

14. Nothing in your post answered any of my questions !!!

Not one did you answer.

I was not expecting you would.

No radio addresses.

All televised and internet speeches.

All debates while he was running for president.

I follow politics closely.

[Aerows]

10. Bernie Sanders has a good platform

and a good foundation on how to implement his ideas.

That is specifically why I trust him.

[FreakinDJ]

11. Black and Hispanic taking the brunt of the Outsourced Economy

So where does the TPP fit in this debate Mr Obama