Top Values Stories to Watch in 2010: No. 3 ... Class Warfare?

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That’s been the trend in America since the 1970s.
   

Real wages for the average worker have fallen at the same time the wealth at the top has skyrocketed.

In 2005, the top 1% of U.S. households earned 70 times as much as the bottom fifth. In 1979, it was 23 times as much, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates cited in a Los Angeles Times article earlier this year.

Sociologists call it the Matthew Effect, a term coined by Robert Merton and derived from the gospel of Matthew:

“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have in abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

The recession may take a toll on rich and poor, but it’s the poor who suffer more. In a comment on OurValues.org this week, Chiana E. observed the widening gulf between the haves and the have-notes in big cities like Boston—what she called “the extremes of wealth and abandonment.”

Bush’s tax policies strengthened the Matthew Effect. Obama’s efforts to rollback Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have been called class warfare—robbing the rich to benefit the undeserving poor. It’s a great leap for socialism, the critics say.

“Yet the true class war of recent American history,” writes Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times, “is the one that has pitted the upper 1% of income earners against almost everybody else.”

The redistribution of wealth—or, if you prefer, class warfare—will be a prominent issue in the run-up to the 2010 elections. It’s a perennial issue, of course, but the 2010 elections will be the first reckoning by the electorate on Obama’s policies, making economic issues my #3 pick for top values stories to watch in 2010.

So, you have my Top 3 on this list: war in Afghanistan, culture war, and class warfare. Do you agree?

Please, add to our list!

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