Richie Rich

A new article in the New York Times today reveals that Bush's upper-class tax cut in 2003 did exactly what all the critics predicted - continued to concentrate wealth among the top 1% of Americans. According to the NYT

In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data. The top group's share of corporate wealth has grown by half since 1991, when it was 38.7 percent.

That's, quite frankly, an astounding rate of growth simply from 2002 to 2003, years that the economy was dragging and certainly the rest of America did not recieve the same advantages the Bush Administration deemed worthy to bestow on the very, very rich.

This is all troubling, because, as the Republicans will surely tell you, anyone can achieve the American Dream and become fabulously wealthy if they just work hard enough. This latest data, however, shows that claim to be the pipe dream is really is. Democrats have long argued that the American Dream is unachieveable if the playing field isn't even. Not everyone starts from the same starting line, and it seems that once they're off the block, the already advantaged are still recieving a huge hand up from their buddies in power. Meanwhile, those Americans who most need a hand up, not a hand out, are floundering without the assistance that their more fortunate collegues are recieving simply by the mere fact that they're rich.

The White House spokesman who commented on this story had the sagacity to say the White House wasn't sure that their tax cuts had caused the increase in wealth concentration but that the really important issue illustrated here was a disparity in education distribution.

"We want to lift all incomes and wealth," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "We are starting to see that the income gap is largely an education gap."

Unfortunately, Mr. Duffy only managed to spin the story to another area where the Administration's actions have been less than commendable. While the statement is entirely accurate - quality of education is, in fact, a gigantic factor in determining economic success, the Bush Administration's education policies have only perpetuated that system.

Their heralded "No Child Left Behind" program, while bearing a catchy name, in reality punishes schools which serve low-income neighborhoods by providing a very small window in which to improve performance and then withdrawing financial support when the school is not able to meet requirements. There is no offer to increase financial support in order to increase performance - thats just a little too egalitarian for this Administration. Their proposed school vouchers, in another example, would allow the rich to spend their money elsewhere while the underprivileged would continue to be stuck in underperforming schools. Doesn't that sound like the fast track to the American Dream?

If we could only just tax those poor people out of existence, then we could all afford private schools, we'd all be rich, and we wouldn't have to pay those silly taxes to support public education...