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The Price of Civilization

Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
voisjoe1
Sep 29, 2013voisjoe1 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
From 1970 to 1977, the top CEO/Avg Worker Ratio compensation was at 30 and then skyrocketed to over 1000 in 2000 has been reduced to 775 at about the time that the Clinton tax increase produced a rare period of surpluses. In 1929, the top 0.01% made a whopping 5% of the nation’s income, which FDR reduced about 2%. Then the Bush tax cuts increased the 0.01%’s share of the national income to 6% for another “ gilded age”. Many economists said such savage inequality in our society makes it extremely easy for the economy to fall into a depression or great recession. Sachs makes many proposals for us to reduce the inequality of America, but he wrote this book before the great gerrymandering of state districts and federal Representative districts, which have created a huge advantage for the Republicans in these elections where they can win a large majority of seats with much less than 50% of the overall vote. Now it seems to me that rather than the majority passing good laws to improve America, we will have to wait until the majority gets sick of the crazy minority Republicans attempting to pass laws to increase income inequality, laws allowing corporations to freely pollute the air and water, passing laws to make it difficult for middle-class to get college educations, etc.